coalman

Exactly. Oh wait, you're saying that as a positive.

The scary thing is he's sort of right but for the wrong reasons. It's possible to play well, create lots of chances and lose and play badly create nothing and score from your only chance. As long as you're creating lots of chances and conceding few chances you can expect to win more than you lose. With Martin he was happy as long as he was controlling the football. He didn't mind if we gave our opponents multiple clear cut chances as long as we did it his way. He himself said he was upset that Saints didn't follow his game plan in the playoff final - though I don't remember him being too cut up about it at the final whistle.

Maybe injured and shit? Sign him up!

Only over a sufficient time period. For example - you could play a game and create 30 chances to your opponents 1 and lose 1-0. Does that mean your approach to the game was wrong? Probably (though not certainly) not. The outcome alone is useful and indicative but insufficient. So for example - we got promoted from the Championship and scored lots of goals. Was our process right? What signals were there to indicate it was or wasn't working. If you purely looked on the outcome - we got promoted - you could argue our process was good. Yet, from from the number of goals we conceded you could also argue we were likely to be ruthlessly exposed at the higher level. The outcome alone isn't sufficient to say that our process for approaching football was good. As evidenced by this season. Same process very different outcome. In any endeavour you can do everything right and still lose. You can also be utterly shit and still win. It's called Outcome Bias (or Self-serving Bias) in decision making and often results in us learning the wrong thing because we focus on outcomes to the exclusion of all else. If you ask someone what was the best decision you made last year they are highly likely to share a decision that led to a good outcome for them. The same if you ask about the worst decision they made they're likely to say something with a bad outcome. If you truly want to learn you have to focus on how you made the decision to decide whether it was a good decision or not and divorce that from the outcome. If you make better decisions you should have better outcomes over a long time period. However, if you solely correlate good outcome with good decision/process you are limiting your ability to learn. Another example would be playing poker - you can play perfectly and lose on the last card due to chance. Is that a bad process or not? You get good at poker by examining everything up to the outcome because the outcome is not fully in your control. Over time you end up with more good outcomes than bad outcomes. The same is true in anything where there is an element of chance. Outcome bias excuses our bad outcomes as bad luck and makes us pat ourselves on the back for our ability when things turn out ok. It's why I roll my eyes when someone says "but Martin got us promoted" to justify his brand of football. The same could be true of us getting relegated. Knowing what was bad in your process is how you correct it. However good outcomes are not guaranteed. Another example might Nottingham Forest's gamble on signing everyone when they joined the Premier League. The outcome has been good for them but I would argue the process they took to get there was dubious at best and it could've gone south in many ways. Outcomes are still important because you want to correlate your process to the outcome but focusing on outcome to the exclusion of process is a blind spot that inhibits growth.

I'm not sure that his 2nd dad is relevant. Or that his 2nd dad built a team around his best traits. Martin had a lot of reluctance to play him at all initially from where I was sitting.

There's an easy solution to this. Simply get the chairman's daughter to film herself putting up "Free Mateus Fernandes" posters around Nottingham. Their job is to get the players they want for as little as possible. Our job is the ensure we get what we consider to be fair value for our players. Whining about that in the press is just part of the performative art of it.

I'd assume he only stays if Still thinks he's going to do the job he wants. Same with any of the players. After last season they should embrace anyone who walks through the front door with a clue. If they think they know better after the shit show we just witnessed then they should be out the door.

I choose to make of it that next season is going to be great.

The trouble is neither of those arguments is entirely right. Results do matter and process does matter. If your process is good then over a longer time horizon you can expect better results. If your results are good then it doesn't mean your process is good. And that's the trap Martin fell into. We had good results in the Championship but that doesn't mean our approach was good. We had shit results in the Premier League so he persisted with his process on the basis of his belief that his process was good. The trouble is it was apparent that elements of his process simply didn't work. And obviously didn't work. A winner's mentality, and why Martin is never going to be anything other than a Pep wannabe, is to be constantly re-evaluating your process. Your process is never perfect and always can be improved and adapted. We had a prime example of that during the playoffs that we somehow didn't learn from. Not only that but this rigid inflexibility leads to you becoming predictable and anyone capable of adapting will take you apart. At the start of the season we looked more threatening but as it became clear how we played we got easier to play against every week. Throw in the desire to be friends with everyone and you wind up with a feedback and reflection mechanism where you get worse over time. Which then becomes the cultural norm. Net result is every game you played well and were brave but unlucky. Nobody learns and you wind up in a cultural death spiral. Winners learn and adapt. Losers repeat and make excuses. The fine learn is in how you learn.

I haven't written him off at Championship level but he is tainted by having fully embraced Martin Ball. As evidenced by his ill advised statement that it was working and the problem was the fans didn't understand football enough to fully appreciate it. I prefer my centre backs to display better judgement on and off the pitch.

Don't forget his ability to develop youth talent. Without Martin, Tyler Dibling would be just another 19 year old hanging around the training ground watching YouTube videos. People talk a lot about his style of football without properly crediting his man management and ability to develop players.

He was a good loan to help us get out of the Championship and provided the kind of direct threat we needed. We shouldn't have signed him permanently during the summer. Certainly should not have played him at wing back at any juncture this or any other season. Doubt he's the player to get us out of the Championship this time around. Disruptive or not it will be good if we can get him off our books.

Just once or every game? Where are they going to find enough nit picking pedants after they've emptied the forum of all of us? 😉

Scar tissue, innit? Coupled with the sincere hope of future schadenfreude. Normally I wouldn't care but this season has felt like a particularly brutal gaslighting session.

Which is what we all said after he joined us from Swansea when Swansea fans warned us of his dogmatic approach. He's had the Lineker PR interview to rewrite the narrative so there's no chance he isn't coming back determined to do it his way.

The celebration of mediocrity is the cultural legacy of Russell Martin. Still and Spors have their work cut out the purge us of that.

Having a transfer embargo might do them a favour with Martin. They'll be forced to play their kids (who the Leicester fans seem to be excited about) instead of letting Martin fill the team with dross. On their forum the one thing they thought might be good about him was his desire to play their kids (oh how little they know)

Surely you're forgetting the information that Nathan Jones and Russell Martin brought with them concerning players in the Championship? Oh wait, I see your point.

Didn't your lot start a chant telling him to "fuck off" or some such yesterday?

On the one hand - we've never seen Bazunu playing without the Saints defence in front of him. Ramsdale has looked suspect at many points this season simply because he's had to endure a shooting gallery. On the other hand - Baz has a tendency to push shots back into the danger area and a tendency to fail to save shots he should get to. I don't think he's as bad as his harshest critics make out here but also he's got some developing to do if he's ever going to be a top keeper.

Keep Ramsdale Sugawara Edwards Taylor Wood Wellington Downes Charles Ugochokwu (another loan would be great) Stewart Dibling Edozie Also slightly sad that Sam Amo-Ameyaw was sold to Strasbourg. Could be convinced either way on Sulemana (our wingers haven't really been given a platform to show their worth over the last season and a half). While Armstrong has scored a lot of goals in the Championship I think that, at best, he's a stop gap measure because he can't compete in the Premier League and we need to be building with that in mind. The entire first choice back 5 can just do one - they may have enjoyed their season as "ball playing defenders" but their collective inability to defend isn't a platform we can build on.

Thanks for the reasoned response. My fear would be that we don't carry forward the culture from this year into future seasons and for better or worse Lallana has been a part of that. The players all stated how much Russell Martin helped them too. There's a difference between being experienced and having influence and respect from the players and being a good coach. It's why I wouldn't want Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney or even Le Tissier coaching the team.

Curious what Lallana has done this season to make you think he should be kept on as a coach?

Fully expecting Jones to knock Still over and trying to teabag him if Charlton score against us next season.

Touche