Jack

Another worry is what the hell has happened to Scienza? Looks completely devoid of confidence. It drives me nuts, he just doesn’t back himself to take his man on any more and when he does get a shot off, it’s always at a perfect height for the goalkeeper to save. Hit it low and hard and you give yourself a chance

Was keeping a close eye on Mubama when he came on yesterday, and it’s only reinforced my opinion that I never want to see him play for us again. Our players did well to avoid trying to pick him out as it would’ve been completely pointless, he was literally never onside. Not that he’d be able to control it if they had tried to find him. Spors has got work to do in January, him and Dobbin are a million miles off the required standard for the top end of this league. More shambolic officiating yesterday but we can’t keep blaming that, we need to be bigger than that and find a way. Decent night out in Preston, locals were sound. Helped by the gifted 3 points I’m sure.

Preston has one thing going for it - £9.10 for a Guinness and a Neck Oil. Few decent old school boozers about. Still a shithole though

2-1 Derby now. Could be good for us, might keep Eustace in a job. Both of these are garbage, absolute travesty we didn’t put Bolton away

I’m not sure I was even aware that there was a second professional football team in Oxford. Russ is the gift that keeps giving

Dave, mate, leave the ‘enter’ button alone when you’re typing out a reply. Preston away chit chat isn’t the best material for a Haiku or whatever that two-line poetry is

One of my favourite away games ever that. 3 English goal scorers, all starting to be in the conversation for England call ups and Saints playing great football. And like you say, really good Saints end as well with taking over most of the ‘neutral’ bit.

7k is top class for this stage of the season and the ‘turmoil’ they’re in, fair play. Far too many trips to the north west this season, it’s a lot of travel for us. Big allocations available though so those who want to go, can. Much easier from London of course with direct trains to Manchester, without having to remortgage.

It’s class, topsy turvy and anyone can beat anyone. I do think there are some false positions in there though: Stoke - regularly score screamers and win by a single goal despite not doing much else. Unreal run but unsustainable Swansea - really good start but being found out whenever they play anyone up the top end of the table. Will be top 8 I’m sure but not in the autos conversation Pompey - like Stoke, they’ve won a lot of games that were a coin flip and don’t actually play that well, but still find a way to win. Won’t last. Hopefully their form will drop off with their usual Xmas/January meltdown West Ham - you’d think Scott Parker will implement his boring brand of football enough for them to tighten up at the back, while having enough individual quality to score goals. Will probably still be in the mix for top 2

Yeah I’m pretty confident we’d be top if we’d won every game this season

You say that, in a lot of the games that they’ve actually scored in, they’ve been ahead and then fucked it up. We should fancy it and go for the throat even if we go behind, they’re dreadful

Some goals for Wrexham and Bristol City would make it a perfect evening

I noticed that too. I like it though, he went absolutely mental at Manning for terrible positioning and putting us in the shit. Great to see they’re holding each other to account

Has to be said that his lack of composure has probably cost us 4 points since the international break. It can’t all be put on him I know, but you need your centre forward to put away their one on ones more often than not, and he hasn’t.

Fair enough. Let’s hope so, they’ve lost to Boro, Wolves and Birmingham so far, obviously beat WHU who are in meltdown but yeah let’s hope they take some points off our promotion rivals the rest of the season