coalman

I get Sky via NOWTV and had to search for it. It wasn't showing up on any of the obvious channels

Oh good. The light show. Nothing like making your football pitch look like a roller disco to set the mood. COYR. Let's keep this going!

In unrelated news an un-named Championship club is in crisis after the captain contacted the owner to express their lack of confidence in the manager.

It will be interesting to see how the team reacts now they've got what they want. All the best to him. I'm hoping he's going to put together a promotion run.

Armstrong isn't going to win anything if you play long ball. Playing it into feet with him coming short or over the top / through the middle works but he's easily nullified by a big lad that stays tight. Without space to operate in he's in trouble. I'd hope we practice playing against the press but our own press is so poor these days I doubt it's good practice.

He was lucky to get wins in his first two games. Then presided over our two best games of the season. Now he's presided over just about our worst performance. Any other teams watching yesterday will have noted that if they press and deny us an out ball to midfield that we offer no threat and will keep giving them the ball back.

With that level of application he shouldn't even be training with the first team squad. Let alone in it.

That was every bit as bad as we've been under Still, Juric, Rusk or Martin. No out ball from defence. Slow predictable sideways passing. Every cross looked threatening. Players not closed down. Lost first, second and third balls. Subs made us worse and players not seemingly bothered. We were lucky to score any. They were unlucky to score three.

2-2!

Romeu looks like he's lost all his pace.

My god. Aribo

This is proper Russball.

Can we have this ref every week?

We've scored in the second half. Somehow

He didn't even appeal for a penalty. How a yellow?

Jesus. We got away with one there.

Good save. It's coming though.

We're ponderous. Keep passing it backwards. This is a bit of a throwback.

City of rats https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/people/watch-rats-infestation-at-portsmouth-block-a-year-after-complaints-causes-anger-for-locals-5232485

The Saints-iest thing that can happen here is we sign up Tonda as full time manager and then he gets poached in either January or at the end of the season.

I think he's a midfielder trapped in a left back position. I know that midfielder was his original position and he seems to enjoy getting forwards. That's a very strong part of his game. I've also seen him go missing in the defensive aspect of his game, particularly when we're on top and applying pressure. The trouble is that a decent team is going to exploit that as happened many times during our last Championship season. If he can add that defensive part to his game he can be a really good player for us. Otherwise he's a decent player that's also periodically a liability. It's the same as with Stephens who is a great backs to the wall centre back but can switch off. Or Smallbone who is great as passing and finding pockets of space but isn't going to win any battles in the middle of the park.

Eckert becomes interim boss. Lallana drops to the U21s. We start winning. Coincidence?

I'm not used to feeling like this at the end of football matches.

Need another couple of goals before I start feeling the win is safe.

Hopefully many more than one game like this.