Holmes_and_Watson

Ah, I'd forgotten that, and thought he was out on loan. Thanks.

A tough couple of opening games in a new system, while finding match sharpness. Improved from that. He's not likely to shift the Bernardo/ THB partnership, that's settled well. Stephens is decent and popular with Martin. Being 4th choice there isn't doing his career any favours. KWP, Manning and Bree are ahead at fullback, so he's not getting in there either. It would have taken injuries and suspensions for him to get a run. Good for us to have him available, as I'm sure he'd get some game time as cover. Not much use to him. Charles dropping in there seems the likely option. But we've a couple of previous purchases Simeu/ Awe that might get a nod. SR might have their eye on the next young talent off the City/Chelsea conveyor belt too.

Plenty

Village

Recycle

Womble

Koala

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try and catch that one. It would be interesting to see if teams who have started really well in previous seasons, have kept going or fallen away.

I posted this on the match thread earlier, If, over the last 10 years 89 points has been enough on average to get 2nd. Leicester would have to fall apart from 2.51 pts per game to 1.54 to just get that. Ipswich would have to drop from 2.4 to 1.58 to get there. And, to make it even tougher, Leeds would also have to dip from 2.05 to 1.85 per game to get that. In 4th, unbeaten in ages, and second in the form league in the last 12, we still need an improvement from 1.9 to 1.96 to get that. Not a huge amount, and reasonably what you'd expect a developing system/ side, with our resources, to be well able to do. Except that total might not be enough this year, unless there's quite a bit of dipping form elsewhere. Lots of games to go, a busy fixture list that will strain resources and squads. We went up before with 88. We're on course to get 87 (87.4). So, not much more needed to be achieving that. It just shows you how well the other teams have started.

A quick look... If, over the last 10 years 89 points has been enough on average to get 2nd. Leicester would have to fall apart from 2.51 pts per game to 1.54 to just get that. Ipswich would have to drop from 2.4 to 1.58 to get there. And, to make it even tougher, Leeds would also have to dip from 2.05 to 1.85 per game to get that. In 4th, unbeaten in ages, and second in the form league in the last 12, we still need an improvement from 1.9 to 1.96 to get that. Not a huge amount, and reasonably what you'd expect a developing system/ side, with our resources, to be well able to do. Except that total might not be enough this year, unless there's quite a bit of dipping form elsewhere. Lots of games to go, a busy fixture list that will strain resources and squads.

Eleven

My tuppence... Many commentators have been dreadful for decades. Many co-commentators, even worse. I tune in to listen to the game. Not to listen to the senior commentator moan that he would rather not be there (England friendlies for years), or for their endless promotion of their fantasy football teams or other pointless in jokes like having to drop in commentary lines based on a quiz from the week before. For the BBC, funding and other pressures, highlighted their endemic sexism, racism and elitism. That resulted in what seemed like the disproportionate arrival of various women and ethnic minorities to address that as quickly as possible. Other platforms were also looking at their own inclusion practices and recruited similarly. "woke", "tokenism" "inclusive" “equality” depending on your views. The quality of those coming in was mixed. As you'd expect from any group of new faces, not helped by the quantity arriving in a short spell. Some excellent. Some dreadful. Some in between. One that was dreadful, until she dropped the endless cliches and gave a really insightful tactical analysis of the game. That made me wonder if some of the adjustment and training was reducing the talent of the newcomers to the low bar of the people who were already there. Beyond all the new starts having to be repeatedly hit in the head to reach the low levels of their predecessors. Hypo mentions box ticking. I get the feeling that that’s what they are all trained to do, as annoying as that is. It takes out many of the insights we’d be getting from men and women of their experiences in the game. But that’s the level they want, and those are the same folk that produce clumsy, forced sounding, sometimes counter-productive marketing for the women’s game. The men are often ex-players, and I get the feeling that some of the women, even if ex-players in the women’s game, felt that they had to try extra hard to commentate in the men’s game. Which sometimes came across as too hard. We're a bit on from that. The excellent ones pretty much still are. Others have got more comfortable. Some are as painful as some of those they replaced. Few have found a brand-new voice, with their training/ workplace knocking a lot of that out of them. But there are moments. For any annoyance of any of the new faces, there’s just as many, if not more, from those they’ve replaced or from those that have held onto getting just as much air time. I’d not be surprised to find in a decade’s time I still think that many commentators are dreadful, whether it’s a more diverse group or not. As for Joey Barton, I’m guessing the glasses are not to make him look more intelligent, but to help protect him should anyone try to put a lit cigar in his eye, as he did to that youth player years ago. He did say “some of the men are bad enough.” No reason not to change that then. Shame if that limits the amount of air time an ex-manager, looking for punditry work, is able to get.

According to the beeb, we had 60% of the possession. We only managed 6 shots and 3 of those were on target. Our usual issue of not being able to put games to bed drops us points again. We simply didn't create enough to get 2 goals ahead. The passing game, off the back of our possession, had some moemnets, but we weren't really worrying them consistently. By contrast, they looked the most likely at half time as Baz was the keeper under most pressure. SR and Martin's set up means that our promotion hinges on getting more out of the possession we have. Martin has said as much. Today, we tried a number of longer, riskier through balls that didn't work, giving them possession and pressure. Our shorter passing was occassionally disjointed too. We simply didn;t have too many end products from our play. Our goal was well worked, and Fraser made an impact. But we don;t drive on from a lead. We allow teams to reset for a repeat, rahter than press an advantage. Partly, because we've one way of playing really. Should Baz have stopped it. I think so. Should Bednarek have madea better challenge for the ball? I think so? But both had really good games up until then. At this level, with our quality, Martin has to be able to get us working as a unit at the other end of the park. The more we allow teams back into games, the more we'll end up with situations like this. And the less likely our promotion will be. Unfortunately, Mara's introduction robbed us oof Adams' more phsyical abilityies. With Aribo also off, we didn;t ahve anyone to hold things up. And that didn't help us. We also missed Downes today too. There were positives today. But the big let down casts a big shadow over them

Direct down the middle. Bedders loses out on the header. The shot seems to go under Baz. Aaaarrrgh. Typical, they found his secret weakness....shot stopping.

Oh pants!!!!1

Fraser getting a booking. Good he's not hurt.

Bednarek passing out is good. Smallbone already taking up loads of spaces on the pitch. I've missed seeing that (even though CHarles and Downes have done really well) As I type, he's at the other end of the pitch winning a tackle.

8 mins!

Watford commentary team moaning aobut our players going down. When they've clearly been hit. Earlier in the game, Watford were the ones going down needlessly.

Stu gets booked for not going off at the nearest side. Watford's petulence just winds everyone up. Stu and Aribo off. Fraser gets studs on his ankle. Let's hope that's not serious. We really need him.

Ince's shot goes under our defender, but Baz is there and it's right at him. Ball sticks to Aribo like a fridge magnet to ...well, a fridge... 🙂

Manning getting treatments. Martin telling Aribo and Mara "Just remember, they have Hoedt. Don;t bring shame to your families by conceding to a team with him in it."

Our longer range direct passing hasn;t been great. Not for the first game. With a couple of midfield absences, maybe that's what we're trying to do more of. But we give possession away needlessly. KWP should really have just cleared that. Sometimes, when you've got a possession based game, you 're loathe to give the ball way under any circumstance. But sometimes, it needs clearing.

Adams off for Mara. Glad he got his goal. He did well today. 10-15 mins of Mara, in a game that will hopefully have lots of space for him.

Charles gives one away. I think Baz had that covered, but blocked anyway. Charles still very young, and developing so even with a couple of those today, there's been a load more pluses.