Cheltenham Town v Forest Green Rovers

Jon Palmer · 02 Nov 2019, 13:09

Team news, live updates and reaction all here this afternoon http://bit.ly/ForestGreenH" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

RegencyCheltenhamSpa · 02 Nov 2019, 14:16

It’s Christmas come early for the guy on the high street with the six fingered glove stall.

Anyone know if the Whaddon Rd end turnstiles are open for the CFS, or must one cross the disputed land to enter?

RegencyCheltenhamSpa · 02 Nov 2019, 14:38

That turnstile was open.

As was the second canteen kiosk. Roaring trade - would have lost hundreds of pounds in sales had they not opened it. Some individual groups/families spending £20+ on an order.

RegencyCheltenhamSpa · 02 Nov 2019, 14:45

Unbelievable noise from the C&G before kickoff. Rarely ever heard the noise travel to the half way line like that before

Ben3 · 02 Nov 2019, 14:53

Guess what? About 700 here from nailsworth. Loads of empty seats. Pathetic

Ben3 · 02 Nov 2019, 15:06

Absolute silence from away end. Beyond bizarre

SHANDY VOR · 02 Nov 2019, 15:42

What's the noise in the away end like now?

Ben3 · 02 Nov 2019, 15:49

What noise?

Alf · 02 Nov 2019, 15:53

Oh dear. First goal, static defending but I thought the second goal was offside.
Duffo’s going to have to earn his corn at half time if we’re going to impose ourselves on this game.

02 Nov 2019, 15:55

I trust Ben is just being provocative... I can assure you, FGR are out-singing us as well as out-playing us.

Shade · 02 Nov 2019, 15:57

f#!$ shambles. Why do we always save our qorst for this lot? Glad I changed my prediction earlier, but 0-2 was a bit optomistic. Had a feeling of all the teams to end our home run...

Big 45.

02 Nov 2019, 16:01

It's gonna have to be one hell of a halftime team-talk... Absolute shocker. Duffo going nuts on the touchline, so it's obvious the players aren't doing what they've been told to.

Shade · 02 Nov 2019, 16:59

s#!t performance, dog s#!t ref and a bunch of divers from Nailsworth.

Ben3 · 02 Nov 2019, 17:10

A display of quite breath taking incompetence from the officials. 36 years I’ve followed this team - have we ever had a worse referee?

ctfc-fan · 02 Nov 2019, 17:10

Red was really bad, so one sided. All they had to do was fall over to get a free kick.

Ihearye · 02 Nov 2019, 17:15

Well now we know why they claim to be the most fouled team. Have never witnessed a display of diving as I saw today. That 14 should be ashamed of himself! Even when he dived and didnt' get a foul, the ref said nothing. Where is the deterrent not to do it over and over again. The ref was conned all the time. The linesman at CF side, was to fat to keep up with play. Couldn't see an offside due to his belly being in the way.
We never had a chance with those two 'officials' on the pitch. As poor as we were in the first half. those two clowns were 10 times worse for the entire match.
Onwards and upwards, we can't come across cheats and vvankers in blue, every week !

Alf · 02 Nov 2019, 17:25

Totally agree. When are referees going to understand that players chucking themselves on the ground and holding body parts whilst writhing around have not necessarily been fouled. According to BBC stats we gave away 23 free kicks to their 9 and I wouldn’t say we are an over aggressive, dirty team.
FGR are a decent side and don’t need to do this but I suppose Mark Cooper thinks he’s being ‘professional’ getting his players to do it. Hope the ref checked his shoes before putting them on.

Jerry St Clair · 02 Nov 2019, 17:29

The ref was pretty poor, but that isn’t the reason we lost.

FGR were quicker, stronger, closed us down all over the pitch, and created loads of chances.

We were ponderous in possession, failed to close them down and weak in the challenge.

I’m still not sure if FGR were just miles better or we didn’t show up. Probably a bit of both

Ben3 · 02 Nov 2019, 17:37

We didn’t play well and they were the better team

However - back to the ref. What an absolute fool.

Alf · 02 Nov 2019, 17:38

Jerry St Clair wrote:The ref was pretty poor, but that isn’t the reason we lost.

FGR were quicker, stronger, closed us down all over the pitch, and created loads of chances.

We were ponderous in possession, failed to close them down and weak in the challenge.

I’m still not sure if FGR were just miles better or we didn’t show up. Probably a bit of both

Apparently, according to the ref, we weren’t weak in 23 of them!

Jerry St Clair · 02 Nov 2019, 17:51

Alf wrote: Apparently, according to the ref, we weren’t weak in 23 of them!

I think there were a similar number of completely uncontested headers FGR players won in the first half. It was maddening.

Nham68 · 02 Nov 2019, 17:51

We were poor today. FGR won as they closed us down, won 50-50 balls and competed better. Should have been 3-0 up by half time.

We seemed to struggle to go forward : very hesitant. Apart from a few hussey crosses, nothing down the wings. Midfield didn’t have movement ahead so spent time passing backwards and side to side. Very few shots on goal.

Blaming officials no good either : same set for both teams, we just didn’t adapt to what the ref would allow / not allow.

Though manager made good change at half time. I would have liked to have seen Adai come on (instead of Smith) and run at the FGR Defence : there was very little direct play on that today.

Maybe we froze on the occasion : very nervy start and were on the back foot from 1st whistle.

And lots of sloppy balls today. Their first goal was Broom giving it away cheaply in midfield.... second goal was static defending (waiting for the whistle that didn’t come ? ).

Maybe the break last week didn’t do us any favors... we were well off the pace.

Credit to FGR : looked a good side They will finish up there. A cut above us right now (no surprise as the are bankrolled to the tune of a few more M pounds).

RegencyCheltenhamSpa · 02 Nov 2019, 17:58

Real winner today they ref - must be taking home a tidy sum from the Ecotricity expenses budget. The game is gone and pointless as a contest and spectacle if that level of diving is going to happen in games. If I was a professional footballer I would be ashamed to be in that team diving like that. But fair enough, it is that lack of shame and willingness to cheat which is why they are top.

First half they had us worked out. Two rows of three and a row of four. Made us play out wide or hoof it and they mopped up the ball each time.

Making the midfield a bit more solid and grown up and bringing on Smith to hold it up and offer a threat to their defenders dragged us back into it.

drgm · 02 Nov 2019, 18:28

Nearly 5000 home fans today -Forest Green can only dream of numbers like that.
I don't think the weekend break helped us. We looked off the pace. We never raelly
got going.
FGR celebrated like they'd won the league lol!

RegencyCheltenhamSpa · 02 Nov 2019, 18:51

drgm wrote:Nearly 5000 home fans today -Forest Green can only dream of numbers like that.
I don't think the weekend break helped us. We looked off the pace. We never raelly
got going.
FGR celebrated like they'd won the league lol!

Cup Final for them.

King giraffe iii · 02 Nov 2019, 19:02

First commentary I've listened to this season. I wasn't expecting there to have been more than one goal in this. There's a long way to go yet for both clubs.

Malabus · 02 Nov 2019, 19:03

Ihearye wrote:Well now we know why they claim to be the most fouled team. Have never witnessed a display of diving as I saw today. That 14 should be ashamed of himself! Even when he dived and didnt' get a foul, the ref said nothing. Where is the deterrent not to do it over and over again. The ref was conned all the time. The linesman at CF side, was to fat to keep up with play. Couldn't see an offside due to his belly being in the way.
We never had a chance with those two 'officials' on the pitch. As poor as we were in the first half. those two clowns were 10 times worse for the entire match.
Onwards and upwards, we can't come across cheats and vvankers in blue, every week !

Totally agree.

Malabus · 02 Nov 2019, 19:17

Why was our headed goal disallowed in the first half? If it was a push then the game has gone to pot!

02 Nov 2019, 19:32

Weird game. We were so poor first half and after they scored the first goal you could hear a pin drop despite almost 6000 attendence. Also almost 900 away fans the FGR lot were bizarrely very quiet until the final whistle, only seemed to be 50-60 of them in the corner trying to generate noise the rest sat there comatose. FGR were not the best team we've played but they are solid, very well organised and err "professional". I thought the black lad in the centre of pitch was exceptional for them too. They deserved the win today, no argument from me.

02 Nov 2019, 19:34

RegencyCheltenhamSpa wrote:Real winner today they ref - must be taking home a tidy sum from the Ecotricity expenses budget. The game is gone and pointless as a contest and spectacle if that level of diving is going to happen in games. If I was a professional footballer I would be ashamed to be in that team diving like that. But fair enough, it is that lack of shame and willingness to cheat which is why they are top.

First half they had us worked out. Two rows of three and a row of four. Made us play out wide or hoof it and they mopped up the ball each time.

Making the midfield a bit more solid and grown up and bringing on Smith to hold it up and offer a threat to their defenders dragged us back into it.

The ref was shocking today, FGR players throwing themselves to the floor at every opportunity to break up play. If the ref didn't give it they bounced up immediately like nothing happened.

02 Nov 2019, 19:55

Oh, please...not this again... You want to know about 'quiet'? Under the Oxford English Dictionary under 'quiet' it says 'see Cheltenham Town fans'. I stand on the half way line in the Paddock and I'm deaf. I can assure you that there were only one group of fans I could hear all match - and it wasn't the fookin' home support.

I'm not debating, here - I'm stating a fact.

Horteng · 02 Nov 2019, 20:25

Thought we were poor in all departments today. Sod’s law it was today of all days to have a off day.

The least said about it the better. They were better in all areas I thought. We had a lot of possession but were very negative with it. Maybe FGR stopped us playing which is credit to them.

Time to bounce back and get on another run

Ben3 · 02 Nov 2019, 20:25

Haha asl you can state as many facts as you like - I couldn’t hear them

It’s bizarre that teams who bring 200 we can hear. I’m sure they were signing as they were jumping about a lot, but I couldn’t hear them

Fact

King giraffe iii · 02 Nov 2019, 20:27

I see that I'm apparently now a CTFC fan according to the FGR Forum. You know, the fan who has watched zero matches this season of any club including on television. You've gotta laugh!

Benny Profane · 02 Nov 2019, 20:38

Bit of an irony watching Winchester today; he didn't do anything overly flash, but never gave the ball away, looked utterly composed. He'd fit right into Duff's team....bit late now, obviously.

Anyway, as for today, not much more to be added that hasn't already been said. However, I actually like the fact we still tried to play the right way. We were too ponderous at time true (& I'd like to find space for Addai more often somewhere in the starting lineup), but we never resorted to hoofball.

Today we lost to a (slightly) better team who are a year down the line from us in terms of their development. We are still doing well & looking good for the season, one poor result shouldn't change that.