Holmes_and_Watson

Not least the same reasons they put it forward in the first place. With a vast catalogue of incompetence, centralisation that abandons their support, ongoing police investigations into fraud/corruption, and being beholden to swivel eyed extremists from another party, they are desperate to gain any foothold they can over Scottish Labour (the previous collection of troughers). That's where the collective punishment part came from. They want to use Labour's division to score points at home. There's also a decent sized element of diversion from independence of another group, the Scottish one they now only pay lip service to, when there's an upcoming election. They know the figures don't support it, and trundle out more and more desperate soundbites, as time goes on. Their leader got confused only a week ago over what fantasy threshold they'd now put in place that supposedly represents the will of the people. With that gone, membership plummeting, unheard of division in their single voice output (dumped popular members after their dodgy election processes), their record on everything else being appalling, any flag waving cause is a good cause. That's the party level reality, leaving out the rights and wrongs of any stance.

I caught Kieran Maguire on the radio regarding Everton. He said there's a chance that any penalty imposed would be considerably reduced, based on the reduction via appeal of this one, and also the offence being related to one they've already been punished for. He was indicating it could be reduced by up to 2/3 so 2 or 3 points.

But don't they have the same charges to face for the subsequent annual accounts? I was thinking that they didn't want to give them twenty, but will give them 12 in the end, across them both.

Shouldn't this thread be part of the Liverpool build up thread?

3 defeats in 4 as the unbeaten run becomes a memory hurtling into the distance. I only caught the second half, but much the same as previous draws and defeats. A fair bit more possession, more so with Millwall ahead. More efforts on goal, but not able to capitalise enough on them to get the result. Other things we’ve seen before is how much we miss Downes. Charles clearly isn’t fancied as his replacement at present to give us a specialist DM. Stephens today was given a different role. Previously we’ve seen him come forward, allowing Smallbone to sit a bit deeper and support another DM. Without either Downes or Charles, this doesn’t seem to be working. With Adams and Aribo playing, we certainly should have offered more opportunities to get the ball up, and hold it, pushing it back. But we didn’t take advantage of that, relying on passing it around, allowing Millwall to reset and hoping that *then* we could try and pass round them. Rothwell is a player where whatever good things he’s brining in, are offset by the passes going astray, losing possession, not being in the right place or at the right tempo. We rely on turning our possession into moving teams around, creating space for chances, that we need a fair number of to be certain of the win. Millwall, ahead already, were fairly compact, only tiring later to give us some chances. Sule offered some attacking threat. But we don’t really play a system that allows us to capitalise on his pace consistently. So, he’s often pushed into other parts of his game that aren’t as strong. Alcaraz was in the same boat there. AA had a couple of chances when he came on. But none in areas where he’s strongest. When we don’t get a point, we can pretty much always look to the system. We can point out the lack of tempo, the risk aversion which means that we never go for the jugular. The passing that allows opponents to reset, rather than forcing them back and into making errors. Martin’s only too well aware of that, from September interviews. His system hasn’t changed majorly in that time and it’s the same improvements that need to be progressed. We managed to put together a long unbeaten run. Today, Baz got nowhere near a ball and we pulled someone back for a penalty. 2 errors, that changed the game. A game that, with the above flaws, we struggled and ultimately failed to get a result from. Martin will be frustrated, and showed it on the touchline. It will be more tweaking of the same approach to try and turn things round, and get us back into contention.

THB gets a yellow, and gives the ref some lip afterwards. He hates losing and will be a frustrated figure at this form.

Ah Rothwell again. Gets into a good space to receive it. Control deserts him, nad goes to Millwall.

Manning at least trying to release Sule. Didn;t come off.

Ah, ROthwell's pass just too hard for KWP to get to and out it goes for a goalkick.

Sule looks up, doesn;t fancy the optioons and passes back to Stu. Stu passes it square. After the pass he puts his hands out in exasperation at the lack of movement in front of him. Sule does his marker and gets a cross in. Nearly from AA.

Rothwell touch of a horse, as Edozie and KWP look to create something despite him. Yellow for Edozie as a result.

You can have moments where it goes okay, but make gererally little overall difference, I guess.

Next 15 minutes? #strawclutching 🙂

... and we're over the half way line (after 6 or 7 passes across the back)! Sule did get some space, but it gives Millwall all the time in the world to reset.

Nice build up, with some frustrating moments, but we kept at it. AA actually got some space for the header. Wouldn;t expect too much form us in terms of physicality in there. Maybe Sule., who did well keeping it in to create the chance.

Graphic has Millwall going up to 19th with this win over promotion challengers Saints.

Manning's pass results in Millwall getting it back. But then, he wanted it hit in fromt of him, and it wasn;t Down the right, ball coming in... free kick to them. We are getting a bit of space in behind them, even as they are trying to be compact.

Sule burning past his marker. Cut back...doesn;t get there. Corner. Millwall will be looking to close up that option.

Get in!!! 🙂

Brooks and Stephens off Sule and Manning on

Rothwell...straight at the keeper.

He's clearly been reading the threads where I called him a rubbish commentator. Bitter 🙂

Hammond saying that on the occassion that the momentum is with the team, having been out there, that you have to go for the kill. That you don;t need to hold onto the ball quite as much. This really isn;t the way Martin has ever set out to play. Going for the kill, opens you up to losing it and conceding. It's Plan A, all the way. Which has had it's strengths, and as we've seen those lows, where we allow teams back in, or pass it around and struggle to get that momentum back.

We're not going to be holding up the ball to bring others in. Hoping for pace and trickery (and a cut back to AA)

AA and Rothwell on for Adams and Aribo.