James

To play devil’s advocate, those are reasons that justify Still not being very good so far and I agree with those. Personally I haven’t seen anything from Will Still himself that suggests he is going to be good for us based on the games he’s managed. He might be, but if he is it will be a complete departure from how he’s managed us so far.

I would seriously question the club’s sanity if they were OK to keep Still if we drop into League One. Missing out on promotion if competitive sure but relegation from the Championship would be totally unacceptable.

Out of interest, what have you seen from Still to give him that level of trust? He talks a good game for sure but he’s been average at best in our good games and abject in the bad. I am really struggling to see what he is even trying to do, everything seems panicked and ill thought out in my view.

My main issue with Still is that there is zero evidence of what he is even trying to do. We started the season playing 5 at the back as he “didn’t have players” and we were, at best, average. Since he’s “had the players” we’ve been god awful really. At least with Martin, like him or not, it was almost immediately obviously what he wanted to do. Now, we can debate how wise it was to adopt the RM style but it was at least clear what it was. With Still it’s totally confused, he wants to get crosses into the box but the half decent strikers we have are totally unsuited to that and the one we did buy that fits the profile looks, to put it politely, very raw. I don’t really buy the “massive turn over” of players. The main two players that have come into the team are Azaz and Fellows, both have Championship experience and were playing significantly better for their prior clubs. They should not be going backwards as far as they have in the first two games. The fact they’ve been poor tells me the issue is coaching. I get we can’t keep sacking managers but there isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest Still is going to change this and if we keep waiting this season is going to be gone. It’s all in all incredibly frustrating that we made this appointment in the circumstances. He might have a decent career but this job came too soon and was too big.

Why not? You can’t seriously think our only option was to appoint a 32 year old that had only managed in Belgium and France. If we’d have made a serious play for Lampard (for example) I suspect he’d have been interested. Sure, a top manager might not have been available but there were other credible options that had actually managed a game in the league we play in…

Either Carrick or Rohl would be an upgrade on Still IMO. We would make the play offs with either. We will no doubt leave it too late if we do ever make a move though.

We’ve also made some teams that are clearly quite crap look half decent.

Appointing Still was a gamble too far by SR. At least last time we appointed someone who had managed in England before. For me if we don’t win one of the next two games (not including the Cup) then we need to cut our losses and get someone else. We’ve been absolute dross this season and have made some very poor teams look half decent.

Might be alarmist to call for Still to go this early but at what point does it become too late? We can’t score and we can’t defend, we look as bad as we did last year against Championship opposition. We need to win at least one of Sheff Utd or Boro. If we don’t he has to go. It’s not really his fault but appointing him was a gamble too far.

Took Strachan quite a number of games to get his first win from memory and then we were patchy before an uptick. Not always the case that how we started with a manager was what we got longer term.

Given the occasion that was a crap performance. Pompey much the more dangerous. That said, ref was very poor. Allowed them to waste time and spoil it. Got a few early concerns re Will Still, can’t see us challenging for Top 2. Seems to set up all wrong and then throw on subs until something sticks.

Really disappointing to go ahead that late and not hold on but realistically we were always due a slow start this season. It’s taken longer than we wanted to shift players who didn’t want to be here. Am expecting to see a lot more rhythm after the end of the transfer window and the international break.

The bloke they signed from the A-League already has two in the league as well, two more than our forwards. He looks to be the product of a decent scouting set up. Who knew clubs could have those?!

In your opinion. In reality you have zero idea whether any of those targets are attainable.

So you ask folks to name some players they want, they do it and you dismiss them all as either players you don’t fancy or players you don’t think we could sign. Pretty impossible exercise in that case.

Exactly. Successful teams don’t just sign players we’ve all heard of from other teams in the same league. Brighton, Bournemouth and Brentford are all excellent examples of that.

If we sell Fernandes and only bring in Azaz and a winger or two on loan it will have been an absolutely horrific transfer window.

Not holding my breath at this point, no.

Agreed re Sanda, he looked decent in the minutes he got last season and is one of the few that likely isn’t traumatised by the shit show that was last season.

Only good for us if SR invest it will in a number 10 and/or a winger or two. Time will tell…

Fair enough. I have little confidence Bazunu is good enough for a team chasing the autos and, if Baz gets injured, no confidence that McCarthy is. That’s the difference in opinion. We can’t change what we are paying the goalkeepers we currently have but the reason we pay people like Spors is to find players that are better than what we’ve got. It can clearly be done, I doubt Johansson at Stoke is on anything like £50k/week so it’s clearly possible for other teams to improve the position without spending the earth.

Why is it dramatic to point out this guy sounds crap? I’d make McCarthy the third choice keeper. Last time in the Championship we had Lumley on the bench most weeks. As I said, we are paying McCarthy’s wages whether we like it or not. I get that demoting Alex just emphasises how bad the previous mistake was but to avoid that at the expense of potentially making the team better by getting someone actually capable of challenging Bazunu is just bad management. The way Norwich and Sheff Utd fans describe Long it sounds as though all we’ve signed is a body…

Who has already been dropped after two league games, brilliant stuff.

So the justification is that we should sign a player rival fans in our division are claiming as the worst goalkeeper they’ve ever seen because there’s no alternative? If Spors can’t find a keeper better than McCarthy for us to sign then he shouldn’t have been hired as our DoF, simple as. We are paying McC’s wages whether he plays or not, it’ll cost a lot more in the long run if we don’t go up because we are unwilling to admit previous mistakes in signing Baz and extending McCarthy.

Will Still also alluded in an interview to the fact Bazunu would be given competition. Surely he can’t have been referring to George Long..?!