Holmes_and_Watson

Coventry shot. Baz had it covered. Since that doesn't mean it won't go in, it was wide too. 🙂

Aribo has a weird super power to make the ball stick to his foot. 2ctacles there, he wasn't favourite for.

A move of a thousand passes. Over the bar from AA. Patience is our watchword.

Smallbone in like a tackling rocket! 🙂

Like that corner, AA felt he needed a touch. And that allowed them to stop him after a nice through ball. Manning involved a lot tonight. Interesting to see how it balances with KWP

Crumbs! 2 good corners in a row. We've been getting some practice in. We blocked an effort there. But we do look very organised at the back (kiss of death)

I normally hate short corners. But we did really well there. AA's touch alerting their keeper.

Bedders making sure the ref knew that was a foul, stopping any danger. They had a shot well over, from range and a direct, through ball we dealt fine with. They are currently targeting our full back gap. We've had Charles put it in, although whistle had gone. KWP burning his opponent, some good work from Stu and Aribo.

Couple of jumps on skygo, but been fine since.

As, above on Sky Go

Congrats! You can use it to improve your anti virus software. 🙂

Browse Sports A few mins before kickoff, it will magically appear. Just when you're about to worry it's not working.

That's what crossed my mind. Looking to see how many weak links from our slump were in there. 🙂 There was a short spell in our last game, where the play stretched. It was perfect for Alcaraz, but he was off by then. He may be able to come on and use his energy to make a real difference tonight. I hope so, anyway.

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.