Holmes_and_Watson

Oh... that wasn;t far away from them. Top of the net.

Nor did the double physical presence of the Aribo/ Adams before that... Or the Direct balls over to Sule for a while the time before that... Or.... 🙂

A different injury to a Balckburn player. Shame that Joe's effort didn;t go in or bounce back off the keeper and go in.

Possession is the first priority of MartinBall. We're trying another variation of how to make that effective today. Keeping the strength in midfield with Aribo, but not up front with Che. Having a samey, but hopefully more mobile front 3 in Brooks, AA and Fraser. Losing the crisp, short passing game but hopefully allowing more direct play through Stephens and Rothwell.

Couple of decent runs form both sides. Looks like their regular goalscorer is still struggling.

Che would have.... ah... never mind 🙂

That was another one across from Brooks. AA was unmarked, so that looked like a very good chance. Tried to get too slight a touch on it to guide it in?

Decent run from Brooks. I was waiting for one of our cutbacks there to AA.

I'd have had Che in there. Either Fraser or Brooks. Hopefully Rothwe and Brooks' are better in Martin's system and don't leave our defense exposed.

Fleetwood Mac agree... Can you hear me calling Out your name? You know that I'm failing And I don't know what team to play I'll shoehorn you in Mess the line up about I'll put others in the bin My footballing genius will out Oh, I I want to play Stephens everywhere Oh, I I want to play Stephens everywhere

Pony

Motor

Conference

2 -1 to us today. But we get an early fright.

Penny

Deputy

Style

Will

Wafer

Peanut

A sad day as Toadhall Saint is gunned down at high noon, outside the saloon. Only later did they realise he was just offering a view of the upcoming fixture. 🙂

Is this the same as the move to adhere to the UEFA guidelines? That provides %of expenditure against turnover. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/feb/28/premier-league-clubs-set-to-back-uefa-style-framework-of-financial-rules

Conga

Banana

"This needs to change" 🙂 Looking forward to seeing the placard. While I'd not put it past the club for a moment to persevere with a player in the face of all evidence in the hope of a fat sale, and because their arrogance knows no bounds... Baz clearly isn't the best shot stopper. We all know that. The club know that too. However, they and successive managers see a lot of other things in his game. There are any number of other stats that could bring that out. Some examples. When we've been at our peak RussBall this season, Baz has been key to providing quick, precise, well weighted passes all across the back line, and further up when required. It's been very impressive. He's among the best at ensuring the posession based game that Martin's system depends on works. You'll see any number of our moves go through him at some stage. Yes, a lot of them would be standard for lots of keepers. But a number weren't. In practice, that peak RussBall has been mucked about with. Stephens, Brooks, Rothwell, Sule aren't at their best with it. So Baz's strengths aren't quite as needed. And there are any number of keepers who provide better all round shot stopping and support in a non RussBall set up. It's the same now as it was for Baz at the start of the season. He, like a lot of our players, are stand outs is some areas, and limited in others. Baz's limitations are pretty severe, and noticeable, because it's stopping a shot. For all the talk of ceilings and development, that might not happen, or not get to the level needed. I hope he improves, likely gradually, but enough that we get the benefit of an all round game while he's with us. With all respect to the stats sites. Those are not the level of data analysis conducted by the clubs. It's a developing field. It doesn't fully reflect anyone's all round game for context. And most importantly, it doesn't have a stat for Scowling. Baz is top ranked for Scowliness.