Holmes_and_Watson

Charles has done some good stuff tonight. Gave that away a bit cheaply. WBA getting in a good spell of possession.

Quoted spell. Could really have done with that second, when they were rattled. WBA have passed the ball out a couple of times. But no team looks more composed, or visible doing it, than us.

AA way wide there. But really quick for Stephens to shut them down, and get an attack going.

That's a couple into Mara. Touch just not there for that one. When Stephens first came into the side, his directness went past Smallbone. Will's playing that deeper role tonight, so that's suiting us and getting us forward quickly.

Crumbs! Two balls right across their goal in a minute. Mara and Stu just not able to get on the end of them. In Stu's case out for a corner

Lovely ball in, and composed finish. Nice.

Frassssserrrr!!!!

That would made for a nice opener. Sharp from Mara.

Nice touches by Mara, Stephens (although a poor pass in there) I've seen our movement sharper and with some quicker options for a pass available.

Stats on our wins Vs top teams, their home record against top teams and our iffy looking midfield. All concerns I'm ignoring... COYR!

Surely part of the car journey? #timemanagement

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.