SambaMaverick

Yet not good enough for automatic promotion or to finish ahead of Leeds, and the results are certainly not good enough now in the Premier League.

He's fallen upwards twice already, clearly needs to have his wings clipped a bit if he's to come back down to earth

An absolutely unhinged 40 seconds, doesn't make sense to me at all. More concerned with losing his half-baked style than losing probably 30 games this season.

Russell doing the media rounds this week - Sky Sports, Football Focus Just shut the fuck up and deliver mate! We're not interested in your come-and-get-me plea to a bigger club

I don't think Martin's player development fits in with what we're trying to do as a club. Alcaraz was the saddest example of that. All the signs pointed to us having a £40m player on our hands, but Martin couldn't coach him and wouldn't coach him. Sulemana is another, although I have slated him. You seriously expect me to believe Martin couldn't have got a tune out of him in the Championship ahead of someone like Mara, Fraser or Brooks? He just doesn't want to do it, presumably because he doesn't want to pass it around at 5mph. Charles is another one who I didn't rate but Martin didn't really try. Chucked him in at the deep end at CB and he never really got going. That is just one of the problems I have with RM. If we could have Sulemana and Alcaraz firing now we'd be a much more dangerous proposition.

Lose against Leicester and he has to go, simple as that.

He will get us less than the PL record for points... it would be a black mark on the club, as if we haven't had enough with the 9-0s. He looks beaten now, imagine what he'd look like if we get to November without a win? It's possible, playing how we are.

A decent point about the trade-offs in our system. We draw teams onto us but don't attack at any pace at all. Even last season, I'd bet the majority of our goals came from us being camped in the oppo's half with them trying to contain us. It's clear we don't have the quality to play through teams. We don't have the quality in defence for the ball to be in our half for more than 60% of the game. We may, however, have the quality to try and engage teams higher up the pitch and then try and pen them in. But whenever we actually play a striker, they are too isolated to hold the ball up. Martin has got it wrong again and again. I still don't think he's as stubborn as he says he is, he's clearly tweaked things for different opponents - but none of those tweaks have worked, and that is worrying.

Petulant fuck

He's proper lost his head with Alfie House this evening as well, his toes are to the fire for sure

Not only are we set up suicidally, we are weak and lazy. No graft in any of the squad. That can only be the manager's fault, there's no question of quality there.

That's bullshit. There are experienced gems abroad, Fernandes for one. Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford and more have done it for years. We've signed shite or RM's mates (shite)

It's deflected about five yards in front of him you dumb cunt

Bournemouth having the better possession and controlling the tempo perfectly with their press Martin getting shown up by a bloke who's chilling in the stands with a jug of sangria

Five yards away at most. The real problem is Downes and Ugochukwu turning their back like schoolboys

Desperate, second to every ball, not working hard enough and not set up well enough in either direction Shite

So much wrong with our 'recruitment' this summer How's Fraser - who wasn't even first choice in the Championship - swanned into the team with no proper pre-season? Why aren't we playing a proper number nine despite signing two? Why are there four forwards on the bench? Why isn't there a centre-half on the bench? One injury and we're playing rubix cube trying to fix it. Edwards and Wood clearly aren't good enough - why sign them? That side gets rolled over by our team from last season, let alone in the Premier League. I realise this is negative half an hour before a game, but fuck me, the state of it. COYR

Another goal this morning, tidy finish https://x.com/GoalsXtra/status/1840359866545606964?t=AxnvZ9-yhT-ykwf33nwbew&s=19

Is that the same sport where teams tank on purpose in the hopes of getting a better draft pick for the following season?

I know what you mean, but it's not a great argument. Too long in the Championship and the club would slowly disintegrate, especially one of our size. The Premier League is tough but the blueprint at the moment is you have to get up, invest wisely, be hard to beat for two or three seasons and then start to reinvent yourself and make a big push with three or four seasons of money behind you. We've tried to rip that up and launch straight into playing terrorball from day dot. Fulham and Bournemouth are great examples of how to do it right, and I hope they get their day in the sun in Europe - which unfortunately looks like the limit of what is possible at the moment.

There can't have been by the end, surely. I knew his days were numbered after Boxing Day, but I understood a lot of people wanted to give him a chance. Some people just seem oblivious to the fact that people have watched their team for decades might actually know what they're talking about.

Yeah, I'd be happy with seven points from that lot. Ambitious, but that's just what we need to have a chance. But what if we'd started even worse (hard to see how that's possible) and there was this charity game on the slate? Hard to see how that wouldn't enter the thought process in the boardroom and just comes across as incredibly naive.

Just seen there's a Russell Martin XI charity match at SMS in three weeks. What sort of club backs themselves into a corner like that? Odd.

I thought we played ok today. Another day (maybe with Che instead of Archer up front), we'd have won easily. That being said, it was the most anti-Martin performance I can remember. Long balls, balls being played straight into the centre-forward, proper 'chase that' balls over defender's heads. We played forward with a decent zip 50% of the time thanks to Fernandes, Sugawara and Dibling, which is a big improvement on the usual 10%. It was a basketball match at times, which Martin has said he really hates because there is no 'control'. For all his posturing about having a strict style, no plan B because it means you don't believe in plan A, etc etc - he played today to win at all costs because his arse is on the line. That's what he should've been doing from day dot in this league. Build your system in block by block, don't just chuck it like shit at a wall and see what sticks. Hopefully he's similarly pragmatic against Bournemouth or his time is up.