verlaine1979

When fit, he's a better player than either Bednarek (who we should've shit-canned seasons ago) and Wood (who has improved of late, but from a pretty ropey base).

I disagree. I don't see us taking up the positions or showing the kind of movement that would have us looking like a Pep team if we had better players. Better players would certainly make Martin look better, but mostly because better players look for the ball and know how to position themselves to find it. He's not a master tactician undermined by the quality of players available to him. He's an extremely limited poser who has latched on to maintaining possession as his only footballing ideal, but doesn't actually have any clue how to progress the ball up the pitch when we've got it.

There's no way SR bought us as a premier league club, saw us relegated with one of the biggest budgets in the Championship, and thought "you know what, we should stay down here for a couple of seasons to get our bearings". It's fucking moronic.

That's as bad as I've ever seen at this level.

It sounds like you're trying to argue that our strategy has now evolved into "get the ball to Dibling or Fernandes asap" - which bears no resemblance to what we actually do with possession (though being in the middle does mean Fernandes sees more of it than Dibling). US commentators on Friday were even lamenting how rarely Dibling got the ball second half.

Based on how rarely Dibling's runs seem to trigger any sort of organised surge of support, I'm pretty confident that when he takes on 3 players and muscles through he's doing it on instinct rather than instruction. The idea that Martin's strategy basically amounts to "hey, 99 times out of 100 we'll piss about with it at the back and never get over the half way line, but then twice a game we'll let our 18 year old have a run with it" is asinine. We're a shit passing team that has a rogue teenager who made himself undroppable early in the season.

I take it we've all noticed that we only look decent when Dibling takes on two or three players and forces our play up the pitch. Which isn't exactly part of the "patient passing moves opponents out of position" strategy.

He did, he stuck out his leg to try and either knock it or move it on with his heel.

Armstrong was miles off. Had no business trying to flick it.

Brighton seem much closer to the model. Part of the Dortmund trading strategy typically involves gambling on several potential replacements any time a first teamer is sold. Saints on the other hand have largely always stuck to the one in, one out formula, which is inherently much riskier and prone to single points of failure.

This whole 'break the monopoly' line is such horseshit. Look at Dortmund - modest budget, modest debt, established as a great platform for young talent. They still lose their players every year. They still only get to win the league once a decade or so against the Bayern steamroller. There is no dynasty waiting to be created. There are just teams that play good football and teams that play shit football. And the football we currently play is navel-gazing, suffocating shit.

Not just a risk - you try taking that ball on the turn with that many players pressing on the edge of the box, you lose it 99 times out of 100 and concede.

Out of curiousity, how often have you seen b) fucking dreadful transform into d) an odds-defying football dynasty for the ages?

Jeez, give it a rest about PSR. Anyone would think you're a club plant sent here with the sole purpose of seeding a narrative about financial constraint. (Just like I was a plant sent here by the Catholic Church to undermine faith in Steven Davis).

So he's not fucked off yet then. Bah.

Ten year plan talk is guff. SR didn't buy the club with the intention of us getting relegated. They thought they'd bought a small but sturdy established PL club that had diced with peril for a few seasons because of underinvestment and poor scouting. They assumed that they could bring in slightly better adminstrators and infrastructure and we'd be up with the likes of Brighton and Brentford again. The fact that they didn't manage it should give caution to anyone imagining that the same approach can be taken to getting promoted reliably from the Championship. Best laid plans n'all that.

I'm pretty sure they were meant to have happened by now. As our recruitment has shown, it's impossible to replace good players when they're sold, and decline is inevitable.

Still waiting for the wheels to fall off at Brighton after "a couple of bad windows" then.

Wasn't Gyokeres one of the possible alternates if we'd not opted for Armstrong? Ah well.

Please, oh wise one, use this superior coaching knowledge to explain how the team with the fourth highest average possession in the league also has the fourth highest goals against and the second highest expected goals against?

I don't think that's what he said at all. Every team in the PL is now tidy on the ball and passes the ball around with zip and accuracy for the most part. There's just nothing clever (and plenty stupid) about our determination to do most of that passing within 20 yards of our own goal mouth.

FWIW, it's total revisionism to paint the Ipswich game as one where they stole a point. We didn't play well and the game was pretty even.

Eh, this shouldn't be enough to save his job. We've been shit and Everton are unlucky not to have 2 or 3.

He's got to go. This is fucking abject.

The way we play at the moment, if you'd said he'd forgotten more about football than I'll ever know, I might have believed you.