Jack

Exactly. If you can’t beat Watford or Stoke, who are you actually going to beat? Especially when you’ve said you want autos, you can’t follow it up with 2 defeats to those.

“Downes loves a booking”

Meltdown commencing in… Being serious, 3 out of that 4 are capable of being really, really shit defensively. Spors has got a lot of work to do. Ideally you wouldn’t want either Stephens or Wood as your starting CB for a promotion push

Yeah Manning is a liability at the back, would prefer Welington against the more competent attacking sides. Manning is useful going forward when we’re on top, loves to cough up a chance for the opposition though

Yeah the club really haven’t read the room with this. ST price rises I can accept, but surely just get bums on seats in a cup competition that nobody really cares about. Especially with three home games in a week

Are you trying to tell me that Scienza never drifts in from the outside and draws fouls from there, as well as being able to go on the outside and beat his man there too? Do you think he, and the team overall are more effective with Scienza playing through the middle?

The more time I’ve had to think about yesterday the more annoyed I am about it. All that Tonda did well last season - round pegs in round holes, best players in natural positions, clear player roles, he threw in the bin yesterday trying to be clever. Yes there were individual errors leading to goals, but we were absolutely all over the place after the first 10 mins and it took another 50 to address it. Was he too proud to realise the mistake? We should’ve made the changes on half an hour and got Leo into his normal position and give them something to think about. Two of their defenders were on a booking and we made it so easy for them. Against inferior sides just put your best players in their obvious position, work hard and the results should take care of themselves. He needs to go back to what worked last season on Saturday.

Wingers on the wing, a 10 as a 10, Jander straight in if possible, and Stephens on the bench to think about today’s performance.

It’s almost like playing a handful of non league standard friendlies at walking pace has meant we’ve started the season not looking very sharp.

Manning wasted one of our 5 added minutes on that throw in. He really is a thick cunt

Really not sure how Edozie, Matsuki and Diaz are getting minutes when we’re chasing a game and Fellows is sat on his hands. Just lumping it into the box isn’t going to cut it, they’ve defended everything

Unchanged. Watford showboating. Not a good day so far

Has Tonda tried to be too clever here? Just play our best wingers on the wings, a 10 as a 10, let them worry about us. We’re moving the ball so slowly but is that because we don’t know where the runners are supposed to be with this weird setup? We’ve had players getting in each others way loads. Tbf it looked alright for 10 mins but Watford kicked us off the park, been dreadful since. Stephens needs to have a real word with himself over that performance, taking absolutely no responsibility. We’ve gifted them something to hang onto.

Dobbin has been involved but yeah Matsuki just keeps giving it away. Get Fellows on to run at the 3 lads on yellows

Fair assessment. Playing right into their hands, slow possession and giving them all the time in the world to get back into position. And then stupid mistakes to gift them possession in dangerous positions

Possession with no purpose, slow, Stephens full of mistakes. Watford aren’t good but we’re making it easy for them

This spygate stuff is so boring, hope it becomes old news soon but doubt it. We have a fast start - spygate definitely galvanised us. Slow start - Tonda is only any good when he can cheat or it’s a hangover from spygate

It wasn’t one of Baz’s obvious howlers but I reckon Peretz would’ve kept the first one out. Went through him but was well hit. That one was more the fault of Manning rolling around on the floor rather than doing his job and defending. Their 2nd was that FK from Irankunda or however you spell it, hopefully he won’t be involved Sunday as he was a handful

Charles is an interesting one. You watch his highlights reel and you see a top class player way too good for the Championship, but he never made himself a guaranteed starter and was often guilty of lapses of concentration and/or looking far too casual. I’ll be sad to see him go but the club are never going to be turning down that sort of money for him. Hope he continues to improve as he seems a really decent lad.

Decent finish, big improvement on his airball attempt against Eastleigh. He’s still shit though

Feels like the FA could still derail our season with some bullshit call over this. So shit that we’re 3 weeks away from the start of the season and it’s not resolved, entirely predictable though

This will look like good business if he pings a hammy again playing for Scotland. It’s a shame but he’s never been fully fit and doubt he ever will be, we only got a tune out of him by having a like for like striker to play half the minutes for him, and that’s not the best business really. Shame as I wanted him to stay, but he could so easily be on the treatment table for the length of any contract we gave him.

Regarding Fellows I think he actually looked at his best when played out of position by Still, but maybe the caveat to that is that everyone else looked absolutely shocking. There’s a player in there, just needs to find his confidence. If he cuts in and slots one in the far corner early in the season, maybe it’ll jolt him into life. Just needs a bit more variation to what he’s doing. Work on crossing low and hard from the right, and early crosses with his left if he cuts in rather than dribbling into traffic. I doubt that position will be high on the list to make expensive changes.

This could also be decent, but he’s only had one decent season really. Will be interesting to see if he can replicate it. 23 goals in 44 this season, only 7 in 42 the season before, and 10 in 37 in Ligue 2 before that.

100%. Now that Larin has signed, I’d love to see Stewart stay. We’ve proven that by rotating the two of them we can keep them fit and fresh, and since Larin came in they were the top two in the league for goals/minute. If Stewart goes, that should still be the blueprint, get a second target man so we can play the same way whether it’s Larin or the other one starting.