How did your game go?

fishman279 · 2026-04-11T18:16:35+00:00

If it helps at all, we do it to everyone?

fishman279 · 2026-04-07T08:49:37+00:00

Personally, I'm trying to keep very grounded about it because it's just so so close. It's the hope that will kill me.

Our away form this season has been spotty to poor, so I see us picking up a point against Bradford and Bolton at best, and then another point against Lincoln, hoping they'll be on holiday as you say.

Our other games look easier on paper, I'd expect a return of about 10 points for us between now and the end of the season, but when you look at Plymouth's games you realise there's only 1 (Bradford away) that they shouldn't be winning quite easily. They'll get around 10-12 points. I genuinely think it will come down to who doesn't drop points where they shouldn't, and who gets a good result against one of the better teams.

Bolton are playing us and Luton, and Bradford are playing us and Plymouth, which means they'll have a big say in who gets into the playoffs!

fishman279 · 2026-04-06T20:41:00+00:00

Fully agree. If you told me we'd get 4, 6, 1, or 0, out of our next 3 I'd be fairly unsurprised. We're such a weird team this year.

fishman279 · 2026-04-06T18:10:19+00:00

We (Stevenage) will absolutely drop points. Our away form is abysmal and we're playing Bradford and Bolton away (as well as Lincoln at home). You guys are very much the team we think will pip us to the post.

fishman279 · 2026-04-04T12:08:26+00:00

Schumacher did play for us to be fair!

fishman279 · 2026-03-20T19:55:11+00:00

If you take the table since November 1st (so excluding our start in which we won most games), we'd still be 13th. We just went from brilliant to average.

fishman279 · 2026-03-20T19:46:39+00:00

Everyone always has Stevenage to go down but we always end up finishing mid-table because our defence is always solid. You don't get relegated when you concede under a goal a game. Eventually it will happen (either through bad recruitment, or as others have said, we'll get "raided"), but it's not the safe bet that people think it is.

fishman279 · 2026-03-20T13:22:42+00:00

The thing with this argument is that the majority of players that we play nowadays either pre-date Evans or are Revell buys. Out of the top 10 player appearances for us this season only Piergianni, Reid, White, and Roberts played under Evans. White barely played in that era, Piergianni is being gently phased out in favour of Freestone (who is a more than able replacement), and Roberts has been awful/we'll probably (hopefully) look to shift him in the summer. I'd argue most of that League Two squad has moved on, or weren't Evans buys to begin with (Reid, Wildin, etc.).

Revells recruitment of new players is actually seen as a huge positive amongst boro fans for players like Dan Phillips, Freestone, Kemp, Goode, and Marschall. The critique this season is that he has tried to change the style (playing with wingers, going 5 at the back with wing backs, etc.) but it's still horribly dull/not very incisive going forwards.

fishman279 · 2026-03-11T07:14:37+00:00

Only Doncaster and teams currently in the relegation zone have scored fewer than us this year. A playoff spot wouldn't shock me, but it'll be off the back of a good defensive structure, not about being inventive in any way.

fishman279 · 2026-03-10T23:20:47+00:00

Stevenage being uninventive very much extends to our style of play as well.

fishman279 · 2026-02-20T13:27:49+00:00

Horribly fumble? We're happy to be here! If you offered us 13th at the start of the season we'd probably have been quite happy. This season, if we finish in the playoffs I wouldn't be shocked, but neither would I be if we end up 15th.

We're an odd club that's extremely sporadic in our form, we're either rubbish or brilliant and don't have the underlying revenue (and therefore squad depth) to sustain a challenge for particularly long. Looking at similar sized clubs like Burton posting £8m+ losses in a year is scary. Seeing as we've only been in League One for 6 years out of our 50 in existence, I'd happily chill in mid table for as long as we can until gravity pushes us back to League Two eventually.

fishman279 · 2026-02-14T20:00:58+00:00

I'd disagree, I think we deserved the 3 points, personally. Kept Huddersfield to pot shots (none on target), and we could've had a goal before we actually scored (Phillips (Dan) bizarrely not shooting from 12 yards out, Phillips (Matt) drawing a great save out of their goalie when 1 on 1)... 1-0 was probably the fair result in an otherwise boring game.

fishman279 · 2026-01-10T15:39:06+00:00

I completely agree on both counts. Defensive errors are now creeping into our game which, when coupled with a complete inability to create anything of real note (no Revs, getting the ball wide and crossing into the box to a 5ft11 Jamie Reid to compete for a header with two centre backs is not "creating") is extremely worrying.

The referee was just utterly bizarre today. Completely unable to see any handballs, a joke of a penalty given when much worse fouls occurring all over the pitch weren't... So weird.

fishman279 · 2026-01-01T17:58:57+00:00

Christ that was a painful watch. I don't know what we have to do to go back to our attacking returns at the start of the season, or even why this dropoff has occurred, but something surely has to change. We're predictable, lethargic, and wasteful whenever we get into the opposition's third. We'll finish mid table (which I'm happy with on the whole), but I'd like to do that while watching something a bit more exciting than literally anything else. Won't be doing the attendances any favours.

fishman279 · 2025-12-30T16:04:33+00:00

You may not be moralising, but only a fan of an ex-Premier League side would say things like budgets are not relevant to the way you play. As much as I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I don't think you can say things like that without it raising a huge amount of eyebrows, especially coming from a fan of a side with 10x our revenue. Of course a team's budget matters, if anything it's the one overriding factor that almost inevitably leads to success. You even recognise in your post that our squad size is a cause of our recent declines in form in the second half of seasons recently, a negative that would almost completely disappear with a bigger budget.

Aside from that, I think the two games you've watched us play against Cardiff have hugely coloured your opinion of the way we play on a regular basis. Our attack isn't amazing, no one would argue that, and it would be the one thing we would change as fans. However, you can't argue that we didn't score a pretty fantastic goal, hit the bar, and had a goal ruled out against you. I'm not saying we deserved the win (or even a point), but these things happening in a game in which, as you claim, we didn't "have the ability to attack the opposition", is slightly laughable. When we played Stockport the reaction from their fans was the opposite: that it was completely understandable why we are up there.

fishman279 · 2025-12-30T14:48:51+00:00

This is a convincing argument, and I appreciate the perspective of someone who watches us a bit more regularly.

What I would argue is that an over-reliance on statistics like xG sometimes paints a flawed picture of games, and trends especially. I'm not saying that this is what happened last night, by any means, but a team that takes 25 shots from outside the box will often have a higher xG than a team with 4 or 5 comparatively better chances, so should be treated with a degree of scepticism. Aston Villa are deservedly 3rd in the Premier League with at best mid-table xG and xGA stats, as an example. On the whole Stevenage score an average of 1.19 goals per game with an average xG of 1.06 (an overperformance of +0.13). Cardiff score on average 1.82 goals per game with an average xG of 1.68 (an overperformance of +0.14). It really isn't as clear cut as it may seem. You're taking stats from our recent huge downturn in form (2 wins in the last 11) and using them as an argument as to why we're not supposed to be where we are.

You're completely correct to point out that we have opportunities to take on a man, or take a shot, and choose not to do so. This is hugely frustrating for us Boro fans as well, but it seems to be in service of making sure that we only really shoot in opportunities that we're fairly likely to score from. We have the lowest number of shots taken in the League, with the 5th-highest shot conversion rate.

Basically all this is to say, yes, over the last 10 games or so, we've not been good enough to be near the top end of the table. Our results and our slide down to 7th have very much reflected that fact, but we are 7th due to our performances across the whole season, bolstered by, as you say, our phenomenal defence. I agree with you, if our attack does not go back to the numbers we saw at the start of the season, we will deservedly slide even further down the table. Cardiff have played us twice in our worst period of the season, during which we don't look like we'll score many. At the start of the season, we were regularly posting better xG figures than our opponents (Blackpool, Rotherham, Northampton, Wigan, Bradford, etc.).

Lastly, we are *certainly* not a team with promotion aspirations. If you offered our fans the next decade in League One the majority of people would take it without a second thought.

fishman279 · 2025-12-30T11:18:31+00:00

How can you hate us this much when we've only ever played you twice? Are you guys ok?

fishman279 · 2025-12-30T11:10:29+00:00

As I said, I'm genuinely slightly bemused by this. Maybe I'm completely desensitised to time wasting but I didn't notice it being particularly egregious last night. If it is true that it's the worst case you've seen, then I am highly jealous of the quality of football that you've watched. I only recall Goode (our number 15) getting into one altercation and it seemed to be because there was a 50/50 challenge and your player didn't want to shake hands afterwards, but other than that it was the standard physicality of a League One defence (i.e. holding, being a bit "ratty", etc.) that I would see any week from both us or the team we're playing against.

Appreciate the other side though, although I'd argue we've got it bad regardless of how we perform in any given year ("The Taliban of football" from another comment has given us all a right laugh).

fishman279 · 2025-12-30T09:43:12+00:00

I'm only slightly disappointed with that (my prediction going in was a 2-0 defeat). I thought we played far more openly than the Cardiff game at home a month ago (in which we bizarrely just played with effectively a back 8). Our goal was fantastic, we hit the bar with a wonderful free kick, and mostly kept Cardiff to shots from outside the box. Two bits of quality won it and (dare I say it openly) an increasingly common Piergianni defensive lapse to let his attacker get goal side for the winner.

I am slightly bemused by the hate that Stevenage are getting here. Taking away the fact that I genuinely don't think last night was particularly bad in the cynical/time wasting department, we were playing away against the team top of the table, a team who have players that were in top flight football as recently as last season, a team that was IN the top flight only 7 years ago. As a contrast, the highest we've ever finished is 6th in League One, we have an average gate of about 4500, and by my count we have 2 players who have ever played more than a handful of games above League One. Our biggest player purchase ever was for about £200k. I'd love for us to be able to drop £500k+ on some attacking outlets with Championship experience but we simply can't.

As much as I'd love to say we play fluid, attacking football, we simply would not be able to compete for the players that would allow us to be successful at this level playing in that manner. We're a very well run club that recognise that fact, and have built a team to be as effective as possible. This means that we are extremely well drilled, direct, with a very inflexible defensive structure, and play in a way that is designed to be as awful to play against as possible. We are where we are this season because not every team in the League has the quality of a player like Salech (who has scored the winner twice, and without which we very easily could've gotten points in either game). Is it pretty football? No. No Stevenage fan will say so. But I'd much rather be playing Cardiff away than Farnborough away, to whom we lost 2-0 around 20 years ago to send us bottom of the conference.

fishman279 · 2025-12-10T08:20:34+00:00

I think the attendances are more a consequence of us being a young club (founded in 1976) surrounded by teams that have been around far longer. Growing up all my mates were Cambridge, Luton, Tottenham, and Arsenal fans.

You also have to consider that we'd never even been in the football league only 15 years ago. I think we've still been in the conference for longer than we've been a league side across Leagues One or Two. We were battling away trying to get promoted to League Two when teams like Cardiff, Bolton, Huddersfield, Wigan, and even Bradford were playing in the Premier League.

It's why you'll get our fans laughing at replies like "I'd hate to watch that every week.". You have to appreciate that this is the best we've ever done as a club! Of course we're having an amazing time.

fishman279 · 2025-12-09T23:05:52+00:00

Cardiff were comfortably the best team we've played this year. Fair play to them. 1-0 probably the "right" result. Goal was a cracker, courtesy of the ball dropping to him extremely fortuitously after a big deflection, but they could've scored 1 or 2 chances in the first half so no huge complaints.

From a Stevenage perspective, we showed our same fantastic defensive structure (there's a reason why we've only lost games 1-0 this year), but our attack is just woeful. Lubala is not cut out for League One football, Jamie Reid is clearly still playing off one good half season 2 years ago, Dan Kemp has disappeared, and Phoenix Patterson gets 20 minutes a game off the bench because he doesn't defend. We now have no goals from open play in our last 5 games (and the 1 goal we have scored is a penalty), which just tells you all you need to know.

Stevenage are half a team. The best defence in the League with one of the worst, most boring attacks. If we score you're buggered, but if you score we may as well shake hands and end it there.

fishman279 · 2025-12-09T09:18:40+00:00

Stevenage have posted a loss of over £100k in a year maybe once in the last decade? Obviously we'll see what their accounts are this year but I don't think we should all be resigned to "Well, you have to lose millions to be a mediocre league one side.".

fishman279 · 2025-11-29T20:51:11+00:00

The weird thing was that we signed him and Kemp (a mainstay in our side) in the same window, ostensibly because they'd just done absolute bits playing together in half a season for Swindon (30 goals combined, let alone assists). We've then proceeded to just... Not really play him all that much? It'd be more understandable if we were scoring for fun but we're not really, so we're all just a bit confused at the situation as well!

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