Holmes_and_Watson

We bounce straight back... with a game where we don't finish much and look a bit disjointed, but do enough to get a 1-0 win.

Seaman

The last time I looked there were various wheezes for deferring costs. Everything from allocation money being used to reduce designated costs, offsetting costs, trading costs with other clubs. At least at one point, you could trade a designated player spot. I'm fairly sure that only a set amount of the likes of Messi will go against their salary cap. The rest of the squad will fit within the many salary related rules.

Data

Oh noes... I just put the radio on for the news. Now, trapped under the cat I'm stuck with the arts show, that I still think is a parody show. And here we go... "the patriarchy" and the presenter's self-awareness of his male privilege.

Nice to know that our loan manager has such attention to detail, he can arrange for the same traumas as the parent squad. 🙂

Awww, I was thinking it would be more rainbowy. Perhaps an even more colourful one for adverse weather conditions?

Happy 2034! I hope you're as excited as I am at the launch of the new SFC! It's a whole new era for the fans... after the demise of the club, the phoenix club, and the phoenix phoenix club I'm sure we'll all embrace this new team. Not too hard though! We'll be playing in the Subutteo Leagues, and don't want any injuries. Especially not to our new left back, who although made of the same plastic as Russell Martin's hair, and glued onto a wobbly base, is still an improvement on Manning.

Yeah, well worth mentioning the absence of Adams. He offers another option to keep hold of that ball in the final thrd, that Martin was mentioning as a real issue today. Aribo coming back too, if he's at a level similar to that of his departure, will help us here too.

A few thoughts on how I think Starmer comes across on this one: Failure in integrity: If he really held these views strongly, they would have suspended Ali immediately. The comments clearly went past other suspensions. He didn’t feel strongly enough about it, in the face of having to give up a by-election. Failure in leadership: Instead of showing a strong personality, with committed values, he’s managed to alienate the Jewish community and those who view Labour as still tainted with anti-semitism. Then he’s got his party to defend Ali for a few days, making that worse. It also alienated the people and supporters of those who’ve already been suspended for what they feel were less severe things (if there is such a thing on this subject). Then he manages to alienate Ali’s supporters by having to suspend him anyway, as there were more reveals. Failure in governance: A number of days supporting Ali, and not finding out the full details of what went on in the meeting, why no one at it had seemingly raised it, and beginning to look to see if there were deeper concerns. For his team, who briefed on all those interviews, not to have the first idea on how a paper runs a story is laughable. To not know how to investigate an issue doesn’t reflect well on his past. Suspending Ali would have obviously ruined a whole campaign and upset a lot of supporters. Not an easy thing to do. But that’s the decisions he has to be able to get right first time as leader. Not just of his party, but of the country. He set out those standards. He’s been happily purging others from the party on those terms. But now had to be dragged into doing it, rather than on principle. Failure in Risk: How they thought this wasn’t going to be used endlessly by the Conservatives at every opportunity if was elected as a Labour candidate. Every single mention of Gaza with Ali on the Labour benches would act as a lightning rod. Any interview he did, it would come up. There would be ongoing damage limitation. Failure in Reason: He’s now saying he took “decisive action" over the incident. Had he applied the same criteria to this, as he has done in other incidents, then Ali would have been suspended. Instead, they took a tried, tested and flawed approach. Issue a humble apology, brief for lots of supportive interviews, hope the news cycle moves on and get through the by-election. Stumble blindly into the future isn’t a great look for a political party on any issue. Decisive action when he’s PM will seemingly be to act in the interests of his party over broader concerns, defend that to the hilt, get it utterly wrong, back track, and then treat the public like idiots by pretending all of the wrong bits didn’t happen. Something to look forward to.

Some decent questions from the sky interviewer. Talking about pace/ tempo of the game as opposed to saints possession. Gets good answers from those.

If you can’t handle the pain of defeat, see a chiropodist. Wait, dat’s the pain of de feet… 🙂

Martin was very calm and upbeat in his post match interview A lot of the things he mentioned, we're seeing as well (so he's not hiding any of the issues, which is nice). Most frustrated with the set piece goal. Wasn;t the biggest team he could have put out, but expected better from that. Felt that it gave City even more energy. Generally, he's saying that we're playing a lot of the game the way he expects. He said we played our own game for a lot of the match (high possession stat), and it's the same thing as before, we don;t make enough in the final third (more shots than them stat) . Today he added, that we also didn;t keep the ball long enough in that area, allowing city to push out. He highlighted AA as dropping deep, but that meant we didn;t have that finisher. He pointed out that we weren't clean enough with the ball. He said he won;t be frustrated if the passes are done with teh correct intent. But felt we tried to force the game at times. He was very calm about what we'll learn form it. He's going to make sure it will get better. The players will learn about each other as a result of this. The last time he had that sort of conversation they went on this run.

We missed Downes and, just as we did when we had lost JWP, and were waiting for him to return from illness. That we really perform that much better with a single player, says a lot about the system. For whatever reason, Charles hasn’t been able to push on. He has had some early moments, but tonight, it got to the point, he got subbed. That’s been the trajectory of his form for a while, to the point there were a few posts who wouldn’t have minded some defensive reinforcements in midfield in January. Rothwell and Brooks are both skilled players. I was a little surprised, considering all of the detail in Martin’s system, how quickly they made it into the starting 11. I think in the last couple of games we’ve seen the downside of some of that. We’re a bit disjointed and when we depend on that fluidity of passing moves, we quickly lose our momentum. We had a lot of misplaced passes, players not in position, clumps of players not offering passing angles even in the first half. Definitely not just Charles at fault. City were sharper, hungrier and direct when they got it. We looked tired and despite some moments from some individuals, looked a little out of ideas. Martin has a high possession stat to look back on. We relied on more individual players looking to step up than prolonged periods of passing with chances. We got more shots, and as many on target as they did. But ours come from a more patient build up, while City looked like cutting us apart on a number of occasions. It was a cracking unbeaten run. But, in a flurry of fixtures, we have to quickly dust ourselves down and keep working away. By the looks of Leeds’ form, we’re going to have to go on another decent run to keep up the pace.

Sulemana picking up an utterly pointless yellow.

Yeesssss!!!! The comeback begins! If not for this game, that for those to come! 🙂

Penalty! And the ref is saying that it's going to be worth 4 goals, if we convert it!....oh, my lip reading is rubbish...

Ooft. Taken apart now, with warning signs in the last game. use of the gap we leave down the flank, as we pushed up just a little. They also use the cut back that we love to do so much. We looked very pedestrian all round getting into position and getting abck for that one.

We do like to set ourselves up for these comebacks. Deep corner, free header and no one anywwhere near it.

Smallbone not making many decent tackles tonight, passes it back to them. Manning's awareness off and gets done, no one on front of their player to block it. Ugh!

Well, foo...

AA pass just a little ahead of Edozie, or Edozie just not quite prepared for it. That was quite an impact on the post. Hopefully can continue.

Not massively convinced with Smallbone in Charles' role. Generally, but his own first half wasn;t great. Oooooh.... should have been one up there.

Pretty early doors, I was thinking it's going to take another buit of individual skill to get ahead in this one. We certainly went on to have some of those moments. KWP took on more and more of an attacking role at times, Brooks and Edozie also looked likely. Later, we got possession with a couple of things created for AA. Elsewhere, we really miss Downes. We miss that engine and control. Smallbone has ahd a couple of good positions further up, but hasn;t really been central to anything we've been doing. Brooks adn Rothwell, despite the skill haven't had the time to get fully up to speed with the control with creation. All this isn;t hgelping Charles, who has given the ball away (and hasn;t been the only one) in a flat looking midfield, and hasn;t screened teh defence terribly well. City refused to be drawn in, were quick to press in the middle, and on occassion looked to spring that wide space. Baz did really well racing out for a clearance. It could go either way in the second half. I'd take a scrappy 1-0 win happily.

Storm