CB Fry

Simon Clifford as Technical Director too, absolute dream team.

Stoke away midweek as well right after Leeds. That's 10 games so officially "a fair crack of the whip".

Personally I have to say I am disappointed that this forum hasn't had at least one brand new contributor who within days of arrival is posting passionate defences of Russell Martin before disappearing never to post again once he's sacked. Come on Russell's extended family, get on board someone.

One of the best examples of "on paper, he'll be a brilliant manager" there is.

As long as he's working with a young up and coming manager, like Stuart Pearce.

They lost 5-2 in November, when they'd been top for weeks. Even though the team that beat them 5-2 was fellow auto promoted team Sheffield United, the Blades didn't knock Burnley off top spot, and they stayed top for the rest of the season, from November to May. The 5-2 in November was Burnleys second defeat of the season. In November. Already, we are not Burnley and we are not going to be Burnley this season.

Yes and I think Fulham was 10 the season before, but if you take the last twenty auto promoted teams it's going to be a single digit average of losses in the season. To be honest I'd say the goals against tally more telling and more of a concern. We're miles off it. Everyone can be optimistic, no problem. We win on Saturday and loads will suddenly believe again.

After 7 games Burnley were 3 wins, three draws and 1 defeat. And they were third. Sheffield United were top.

We've got a wage bill/squad supposedly built for automatic promotion but because the the third of our three defeats in a row wasn't quite as shit as the other two we're supposed to be grateful at the glorious improvement? Fucking great. We're getting worse because we've lost three in a row. Oh, tiny little Southampton can only dream of scraping a draw at home against mighty Ipswich. Thank you Russell Martin for keeping it down to one. Thank you for the improvement.

People can talk about patience but you can also talk about Automatic Promotion which is what the aim was before the season started. If you go back multiple seasons the rule of thumb for Automatic Promotion from this division is to keep defeats down to single figures. (It's extreme but Burnley lost 3 all season). Keep goals against below 40. We're clearly not going to deliver either of those. Automatic promotion is over, already and it's still September. That is the extent of the absolute fuck up Russell Martin has delivered. It's not "patience" to just hope that our goals against tally is going to be sub 40 when we are already at -17 a sixth of the way through the season. It's not patience, it's just hope. Which is fine if you want to believe. We can still go up, but we'll have to do it at Wembley.

The other way to look at it was that we beat a terrible Sheffield Wednesday team because we had JWP and Tella, not because of Russell Martin and his amazing pre-season. The "one draw" involved conceding four, at home. The longer Russell Martin is in charge, the worse we are getting.

Not yet. He's building up to it. Him going on about "scar tissue" from a relegation that happened four months and a pre-season and a transfer window ago is laying the groundwork.

100% this. Was an absolutely fabulous couple of days. Even though we did not have a significant budget we ended up in the same hotel as the team. Which was nice.

Russell Martin desperately trying to build a narrative of "oh, actually, come to think of it, finishing 9th would be like really good after the last few seasons". So he can then pivot next season to "well we can't possibly compete with these Premier League clubs that have just come down". He's achieved nothing as a manager and he will achieve nothing with us. His fall from grace post transfer window is absolutely spectacular.

I think a pretty dopey comparison. Champions League ties are a bigger deal than Europa and playing Saints in that competition would, for Milan fans, be comparable to us having a home tie with Yeovil in the League Cup. Without even looking can pretty much guarantee that Newcastle sold whatever allocation they got. Pretending that Newcastle couldn't easily sell 7,000 at the San Siro is just a ridiculous premise.

When he got the job it was clear he had achieved nothing as a manager. Nothing. We are now seeing why. Absolutely catastrophic appointment.

We haven't "sold everything that wasn't nailed down". Tella was obviously going on the day we were relegated so I don't know why anyone was remotely surprised he went.

Except they didn't do that, did they. Clearly there are issues but there's no point talking nonsense.

Maybe desperately clinging on to Che Adams wasn't that important after all.

We are never ever ever ever going to score.

#martinout is trending on Twitter. But it's about the Southend United chairman. At the moment.

Nice from Aribo then.

Down to 11th place in the as it stands table. Commonly known as "The Russell Martin Zone".

Yes, he said that in the press conference.