Doctoroncall

I'm in the original one, enjoying the scoreline care of Will.

oh dear, the worst one... stress fractures of the base of the Fifth Metatarsal sometimes show a poor healing capacity. Do you know if he has been under the knife or had a cast on his foot?

if it wasn't for gonig into administration, they would be in league one (I think).

which one?

There's more to it than playing games to gain experience. The young players are now responsible collectively for gaining points for survival. Normally, youngersters have gained exposure to the first team in one's and two's and have not been burdened by the additional pressure and could focus more on their performance and play like most do, without fear. Perhaps if the preparation of the team was better to handle the pressure then the performances would be better, it's all conjucture. What I struggle with is how will the team gain the wins and the confidence to stay in the league. Playing first team games as they are will not lead to this.

sternyyy!!!

...and struggle against the drop.

lack of investment

It is for me although I'm a bit closer in Switzerland.

BWP still doesn't count though!

bart cork , perry, killer, mills wotton james, surman lallana mcgoldrick

As soon as the Sky money goes down, so does the hush money paid by the PL to the football league clubs. Maybe then there will be some revolt but to what extent? The big clubs will get stronger regardless, they are the ones with the large fan base and at the top of the food chain.

That depends on what assets he buys at what price, but you're right it is a bigger risk than what he's doing at the moment of playing some old timers with the youth team and a new management...oh!

...but if the unloyal sod wanted to go!! what's annoying is bringing in two unfit midfielders when defence is the priority.

This is a good website about financews in football: http://www.footballeconomy.com/ News about the skates being a possible target by some arab group.

Nice site, perhaps you could also add a flag were username and password to log into forums (to browse content), e.g Ipswich.

I hope he does as well as he did for us, otherwise we should get a refund!

finishing school is for girls!

A question for those that went - was our defensive line pushed up higher than the two previous games?

To be fair, formations are a piece of the puzzle and provides a starting point. Arguing what formation is best is nonsense. I'm sure Chapman didn't have the best players available but still managed to win by applying what was required of the roles, especially in the early days when the opposition favoured the 2-3-5 and the weaknesses exploited. Perhaps these days you could say the better the players available to the team the more likely they are to win. However, I don't think it was always the case, as you could have a fantastic player but either doesn't fit into the system or the system had a weakness to great to overcome (Veron's role at Man Utd comes to mind).

I thought the Stoke fans were way ahead of us in appraising his footballing talents.

Like I said "Any system needs to have the right combination of players that understand the role and are good enough to play that role. " Formation is used and will continue to be used to describe positions on the pitch based on pre-match tactics and part of the role taken on by the player. The role of each position is different but they have been defined overtime so you cannot talk about formation alone. To take the example of the WM formation: Chapman moved the centre half from a position in midfield to the centre of the defence. With what were called the inside forwards at the time (part of the 5 front line) brought back to the midfield to cover for the absence of the centre half and link up with the forwards. This changed the usual formation of a 2–3–5 to 3–4–3, or a 'WM', so called after the shape it formed on the pitch. The consequence of this was to push the full backs out to cover the wings and the sole centre half controlled the off-site trap while the spare full-back now helped the centre back if there was an attack down the opposite wing. But if you see it as a points scoring contest, I'll leave you to it!

You are basing your argument of formation doesn't matter on corners, so that accounts for what, about 5 minutes play? Perhaps you maybe on to something and coaches know nothing and formations haven't changed over the course of history!

I think you'll find that's what happen at the start of the football era more than a hundred years ago before formations came into effect when winning games were more important than performance and scoring goals. The introduction of league football changed the development of team tactics and where teams played 1-3-5. Why do you think Chapman introduced the WM formation if players were only moving with the flow and his team became incredible successful with it? Any system needs to have the right combination of players than understand the role and are good enough to play that role. This is where JP will earn his wage by deciding whether he has the right group of players and developing them into the roles to play in the team.

That says more about the ex-managers than the current players IMHO. Let's see how the next few games pan out, at least they haven't had an inept performance and a drubbing like the palace game last season.