I've been saying for months that the manner and severity of our off days should have had red flashing lights and deafening sirens going off, but perhaps yesterday was finally the moment that people will see this isn't good enough and that we are in big trouble. We are eight points off the relegation zone - if you think that's too big of a gap to be in danger, or that we're too good to end up down there, you're as deluded as Pep seems to be after his absolutely incredible post-match comments. The worst team in the division spanked us 3-0 earlier this season, MK Dons reserves hit us for four in the tinpot when we actually put out a really strong side, we crashed out of the two major cups in the first round by blowing a 3-1 half time lead at home to Cheltenham and then going to Port Vale and not having a shot on target... this is serious and it's been going on in fits and bursts since the start of the season. Don't forget that the Cheltenham debacle was our second competitive game of the season - this started early. How can anybody, even one person, defend this man and say it's definitely going to be okay when we've just suffered our worst ever home defeat, and he's come out and said he can't criticise the players who gave everything they could and that there was nothing more we could have done? If that's truly what he thinks then he's a mad man, and if it isn't then he's playing a stupid game pretending otherwise.
If people are honest, we have been terrible since Plymouth. We went to Rochdale last weekend, a team who were in the relegation zone, and got battered, with Eastwood making multiple stunning saves and our defence clearing a couple off the line. All the while our only highlight pulled out by the cameras was Xemi scuffing a shot that trickled a couple of yards wide, and then Pep praised the performance! Before that we scored a 95th minute winner at home to Doncaster that came from Ruffels basically going "Oh, sod it" and hitting one that bobbled in somehow, when despite them clearly not being very good Doncaster dominated us at times and had the chances to win it comfortably. We have played poorly and unconvincingly more often than we have played well this season, it's simply that 4-1 against Peterborough and 3-0 against Portsmouth are the sorts of results that make people put the blinkers on. Well, here we are. The team that has been prone to collapses, shipping goals for fun and going entire games without having a meaningful shot on target turned up all in one handy package.
How did you like it? Personally, I loved it. I was baying for blood - I wanted us to ship more and more and more. I wanted ten goals. I wanted a result so utterly humiliating that it would go down in footballing folklore for years to come. Teams have lost 7-0 before, not very often at all but it does happen. I wanted more than that - I wanted a scoreline so shameful that we'd be the answer in quizzes, and the go to example of unacceptable incompetence, for decades to come. And I wanted it because I wanted that idiot of a man gone, and because it was only losing a game by something comical like 10-0 that might have been enough to trigger it. He's been overseeing inept and truly abysmal performances like this all season. Don't think that just because the results weren't 7-0 we haven't been nearly as bad as that multiple times this season. This has been coming - numerous people have been saying and thinking that. This was absolutely coming, and that is HIS fault.
These are his journeymen crocks, this is his mentality, these are his tactics, this is his culture - THIS IS HIM. This is the Pep Clotet who has only ever failed as a manager, and has never been manager of a team at any level in any country without being sacked while the team goes down. He's done it three times across Spain and Sweden; a proven failure with a track record for getting teams into tailspins from which they never recover. Well defend him now. f*****g defend him now, after that result, after what we've seen this season, and after what he had to say about it all. f*****g DEFEND HIM.
The football has been so bad for the last month or two, and I saw flashes of such dross even before that, that I have now stopped going to away matches. I used to go to every Saturday away game, and as many midweeks as I could manage, and now I've just stopped. Didn't go to Rochdale (and thank god by all accounts), won't be going to Gillingham or Bradford... I'm done. I'm not doing it again while that man is in charge. To be honest I can hardly bring myself to go to the home games anymore - we usually get battered and apart from our flukey Doncaster winner we've been taking it up the a**e left, right and centre at the wind tunnel for quite some time. The only reason I'm going is because I've paid my money and it feels like a giant waste to not, but I'm starting to wonder if actually, seeing as my ST money is already gone either way, I'm just throwing good after bad. I could be doing something else with my Saturday's, and not be spending £15-£20 on some food and a couple of pints before each match. I could take that money and pay somebody to kick me in the balls while repeatedly screaming the word "FOCKOOS" at me, and probably get as much enjoyment from it as I do watching the games now. The plus side being that it would save me hours of time in the process.
I said on the old forum that if we didn't go down this season (and we really, really might), that we definitely would go down next season if Pep stays in charge, and I was laughed at. Somebody actually offered me £50 on it. Whoever you were, if you're on here, step forward. I'll raise you to a full £100, if you still reckon you're quids in. I'll take you up for a hundred quid that Pep Clotet will get us relegated next season if he survives until then, and if he doesn't manage it at the first attempt.
Get the man out of this football club.
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