Holmes_and_Watson

I'm so sure he's not going to say anything useful, that I can just shut out his noise. So, in a weird way, I don't mind him, as I'd have to learn to ignore any replacement. 🙂

I believe an alien formation, is what keeps MLT up at nights in a tin foil hat. 🙂

An away point against a promotion rival, who were better than us in the last 2 league campaigns is realistically decent (even if we did better in our head to head last season). Still will have taken lots of lessons about his team from that. Our defence were ridiculously error prone. All of them in the first half, and Quarshie in particular. Most of them in the second, with Stephens being bailed out by Baz, but making a strong covering block later on. Baz looked quick, with his usual cool ess and distribution. Fraser has a high work rate, but really is an emergency right wing back. You can see Suga clearly knows he's not first choice, and could be moving. Quarshie struggled all through the game, and needs support to get past that. He can join the support group the rest of them are in. At least he's not alone. We're in another season without a proper DM. Downes, wearing his I love Russell, T-shirt is now the closest we have. Incapable of playing a forward pass, but the most likely to harry back. Charles and Fernandes did fine, but with little impact. Robinson got his goal, which is more than anyone else looked likely to do. Dibling back with a welcome cameo at the end. But we really offer nothing up front. AA is wasted there. Archer did little and Manning had no targets. Still is rapidly going through his squad and finding flaws in quite a few of them. Ipswich were the better side today, carrying more threat. We've still got lots of resources and talent compared to lots of other teams. But we're quite a way off where we could easily be, with some decent recruitment in the next couple of weeks.

We made that difficult for ourselves. Our defence sharing in collective responsibility, by sharing our the errors. Quarshie having a poor time of it in particular. Still learnt that a back 3 isn't great, as we lack cover for it, even if it does get Cap'n Jack into the side. At least Fernandes grew into it more, and good to see Robinson off the mark. As others have said, AA wasted in the middle. Some of the line up feels like Still is pointing out to Sports where the quality is needed.

I caught the last bit of the Liverpool / Bournemouth game and, like Russell Martin emerging, blinking, into the bright lights of the PL, was surprised by what seemed like even higher levels of pace and power. I've said before I pretty much turn on and off for the match. So, I only catch the odd minute of punditry, as I'm shutting it off. In that game, the alleged racist certainly seems to identified himself while doing it. So, good it was isolated, easily picked up, if true we won't be seeing him again at a match, and there was lots of support from players and staff. One guy doing it is one too many. But I get why the minutes of presenter-with-serious-media-trained-face and her incoherent comedy pundit side-kicks seemed disproportionate in length. They had a Jota tribute to get to and, at 2-2, we're lining up, like the Beeb, a "This new guy really isn't like the Messiah Klopp, and look how much they've spent!" story. My understanding is, and not from anything they said, is that the match was stopped and the racism protocols initiated. And, although Neville and Carragher offered nothing of interest, and the tone had been delivered direct from a media workshop, there was a solid feeling of zero tolerance that came across. A strong message, well worth the focus. The rest of what I caught, other than Salah's touching tribute with the fans, which they wisely shut up over, offered no insight into anything I'd just watched. So, no change there.

Rento was sharp, quick and a finisher. He made the difference. There were few chances, in a game that wasn't slow, just lacking in final delivery. My heart sank when VA conceded such a poor equaliser, right after taking the lead. Very static defending for their corner. Let Puy had a couple of glimpses of skill, that got past the VA flanks. But they came to nothing, and VA were happy to keep them to 25 heads, defending that space and preventing Le Pay from breaking through. Rento wasn't a target man and is clearly raw talent. But nice to have an actual striker with clinical shots. A first win, of hopefully many.

Crystal

...and left. 🙂

TB's flight was quarantined, possibly impacting the flight plans of TD. 🙂

There is that section Lawrie Mcmenemy's diary of a season where he looks to the future, willing to trade in all his forwards for players with the physical centre forward presence of Adam Armstrong, the clinical poaching from 6 inches of Downs or the inspirational work rate of a BBD. 🙂

Excellent article. Thanks for linking.

People

Great news. Looking forward to it.

Duck

Yeah, could be a very late loan move, if no one's interested. Such a waste of potential.

And that's it working as intended. With the help of the opposition, whose system allows them to get moved about. Controlled, risk managed possession with a quick transition when it was right to do so. We've seen Saints knock it back and forth across the back three or four times, to get this and it can work. Martin's issue is that it's a lot tougher to move teams around who are setting themselves up to defend. In that clip you had 6, going to 5 as the ball is played forward, in the Rangers half, with the front three central and bypassed. Perfect for Martin's side to exploit, and credit to them. Against sides that aren't chasing a game, are solidly defending and won't budge moving it about doesn't work so well. It allows them to set more, and his side lose momentum and you can hear that from the fans.

Rook

As soon as there is, we'll know everything they say, thanks to SOGBot.

Je suis Spartacus!

Arrest

Pretty much everything is killed by a crossbow bolt to the back of the neck. I hope you've not being firing at visitors again, claiming there was a Sontaron invasion. 🙂

Roof

It's okay. No one knows about that. The secret war, on the other hand, is known to everyone and their gran. 🙂

Wouldn't see this level of blatant disclosure on the CoT, who know how to pass along information, while keeping it quiet.

When I said deliver on a key objective, I was meaning to the board. The rest of the post was Brand Martin. He could get sacked in October, but still come out with some pluses. The Rangers fans, on the other hand, aren't daft. They understand what he's like as well as we did. The reactions are going to be broadly the same plus all the additional expectations they have for being Rangers.