Ex Lion Tamer

But if we'd sacked him when they said we should, he would never have had the chance to turn it around

I haven't particularly paid attention to this tactic with our full backs but my general understanding has always been that a narrow defence is the best way to park the bus and stop goals? Let the opposition have the flanks where they can't score and then deal with anything that comes into the centre

In the spirit of bringing ourselves back down to earth after a great win, there's three issues that I am worried about: 1) jack Stephens should not be playing at fullback 2) we will not find things as easy when teams come to defend against us. We may well find ourselves playing "sideways football" as we struggle to break teams down 3) related to that, we still need a clinical "fox in the box" striker to break the deadlock against tough teams

It was never about defending him to the hilt. No one can have known with certainty that he would have been a success, just as no one could have known he would be a failure. The point is that things can change in football and unless the circumstances are extreme, you can't judge a manager after 8 games or whatever it was. It's about understanding that football is unpredictable and that we need to have some humility about our understanding of it

Interesting figures. Doesn't it say that we are actually almost exactly hitting our xg? Which surprises me as I thought we were lacking a clinical striker and not taking our chances. Turns out we're converting averagely well

Championship is his level IMO. Good to see him finding some form

Ipswich are being opened up by Leicester at will. I don't think they are getting automatic promotion

Credit to whoever played in Fraser though

In all seriousness, there won't be too many teams that come to play like Swansea did. We can expect other opponents to park the bus, forcing us into Russ' preferred crab-style football

Ipswich are shipping goals now. 19 in the last 12. The wobble is on (cue victory over Leicester)

Was that the usual commentator on Saints player? Seemed like he'd been at the sherry with his comments on goals one and three. Clockwork mouse wtf

Not sure how long we can keep starting him on the bench

Bit of a sentimental pick that I think

Honestly, Mara has got something if we persist

Cancel his loan and we have a readymade left back

It's baked into the Sport Republic philosophy that players are bought for the future rather than for the present, so hopefully as we get our pipelines in place things will go better

Our 12-game form is now better than Leeds and Ipswich. We've scored nearly as many goals as the others and no one has conceded fewer than us

I think he was lucky to play under Ralph who favoured two strikers. He's best as a second striker and there's not many teams that do that

Makes sense for Che to stay till the summer now. He'll get a good contract somewhere as a free agent. Whether the club will let him is another matter

We supposedly offered £30m+ for Gakpo, so a statement signing isn't totally out of the question. But I'd agree it's highly unlikely

When I remember how Ralph's teams used to run out of gas for long spells of a season, I wonder if we might see a fitness dividend towards the end of this season from our possession game. It's possibly already there given how consistent our team selection has been able to be

It's all ifs and buts, but he could easily reject Premier League interest because he doesn't fancy a relegation scrap and his family wants to come back to Winchester

There's a deal to be done that suits everyone. West Ham gets a portion of his wages off the wage bill We get a great player for a wage we can afford Ings gets to earn the same wage as before and play in an exciting playoff final

Given that we'll need West Ham to subsidise his wages, there will be every incentive for them to drag it out and sweat a bigger % from us