Galway saint

i have some difficulty seeing anyone from the premiership is seriously scouting him. since Huddersfield they would be reporting back that saints have only conceded 4 goals but of those two were his fault and one was arguably where he should have done better. mistakes like last night happen to the best keepers so we move on from that but again anyone scouting him over the past 18 months would need their heads examining if they reported back that the club should be signing him. i don’t see we are very fortunate to have him. the converse really. He’s very fortunate to have a club who have stuck by him and continue to do so. we’re doing great at the moment and we are far superior to most teams we play so he doesn’t have much to do but if we do go up Baz would be back centre stage with the ball flying at him from all angles and i have my doubts it would be much different to last time

THB is very very good

these things happen. doesn’t alter my concerns but we move on as he’s earned that by virtue of the way he’s asked to play

great finish

get fraser and stu on too slow

it would be churlish to say he’s not improving( but that’s from a pretty low base last season) but overall the defence is much better. it’s incomparable to those games at sunderland and middlesbrough and so he’s doesn’t have a great deal to do comparatively. he still has that technical deficiency down to his left hand side and before we anyone gets concerned about his leaving he needs to sort that out. if we don’t go up i’d be far more concerned about replacing downes and THB than the keeper. you look at the guy at rotherham and see what you can pick up for say 5 or 6 million. personally if we ever get an offer for more than we paid we will have done well but he certainly seems a more confident presence but so he should as we’ve not lost for 16 games.

still seems a very long time for a hamstring injury but i can’t see what they gain by lying about it

never heard of anyone being out for five/six months with a hamstring injury to be fair you don’t miss what you never had but the lack of a real focal point up front could cost us seemed a real gamble at the time and it hasn’t paid off. see what we do in January but if we don’t properly address it then that will be two years without a decent number 9.

don’t see it personally - we have finally got some resilience at the back so would be daft to tinker with it out of loyalty to the captain

blackmore said on solent they were reset

Watched this in the Coventry end as went with a Coventry fan. Despite being in the ‘executive seats’ there was some bloke shouting fuk and cnt every other word during the match. This followed the Huddersfield game where someone was shouting ‘soft cnt’ the entire game. Who says football isn’t a family sport. Thought the game was ok. Our passing at the back is now a lot more proficient but still ineffective and dull. It’s difficult to know what it’s supposed to achieve. Perhaps grind the opposition down but that doesn’t seem to work as they just let us have the ball whilst we pass it around boring the pants off everyone. It’s so dreary to watch. We were again very reluctant to play the channels. The forward play has to be so intricate to create a chance that it’s no surprise we don’t score more. I can only imagine we don’t play the channels more because we might lose the ball. We are happy to take risks in defence but not in attack. Teams clearly have figured out just to sit back and invite us to play through them and we still remain vulnerable to the counter attack. A better side than Coventry would have punished us. I’m not a fan of this football but we are now a solid side that will likely make the play offs. RM is having to contend with not having a recognised number 9 who can lead the line and that’s down to SR. It beggars belief we still don’t have a recognised centre forward after all this time.

hopefully teams will hit them to his right hand side

it’s a long shot and a routine save down to his left. its his achilles heel. he was winning me round but its a glaring technical deficiency.

we’re not sunderland bad but we are not good. really dire football

you could at a push add it to the list of ‘could have done better’ but I struggle to blame him for that one the keeper always look bad when those go in but they happen

think we have the squad to do well but play off games tend to be up and down and you generally see the winner building momentum and making the most of their periods of dominance. we don’t do ‘Momentum’ football and certainly don’t go for the jugular at the moment.

I thought the defence looked good to be fair. it looked less assured once we brought edozie and manning on given the shit show at sunderland that’s significant progress. you will always concede goals but the problem was more at the other end today

Just got back from this : 1. had terrible seats so couldn’t really make out much in the other half. 2. first half the possession was far too slow and ponderous. the bloke next to me said at 30 mins we were ‘sleep walking into half time’. It’s was very low risk football and frankly dull to watch. there were so many times when fraser in particular checked his run and we seem reluctant to put it in the box unless it’s part of some very intricate passing movement. We never built up any momentum and our goal was a bit of a surprise to me when it came. 3. thought the defence looked very solid in the first half from my vantage point. never really in trouble. couldn’t really speak for the second half given my seat position. 4. the second half was a bit of a mess really. edozie didn’t add much and not sure why Bree was taken off. They kept throwing in crosses and in the end one came off. the edozie and manning substitutions seemed like change for changes sake to me but perhaps there was some injury. 4. You can’t win every game but that was a game where particularly in the first half had we gone for it I think we would have won it. We were so ponderous/ boring. 5. Finally i don’t know if anyone was sat in the seats towards the bottom next to the huddersfield fans. there was a teenage lad who for the last hour continually shouted ‘soft c*nt’ at some saints fans. the adjacent stewards did nothing to check his behaviour and they were then surprised when it all kicked off at the end. at least this provided some distraction…..

Thought Rotherham had the better second half. They looked ok. The lad nombe looks decent

just watched the highlights and from what i can see he make three saves all of which you’d expect a competent keeper to save. that’s not a criticism of the lad just I didn’t see it as a brilliant performance from the highlights. perhaps there was more to see in the full game for those that watched the whole thing

Got my ticket for this and looks like a sell out. Team is looking settled for the first time in 18 months or so. No more change for the sake of change. It’s finally starting to look like a team that is the sum of its parts but can’t help thinking this will be our best chance to go back up, albeit the absence of VAR is a powerful disincentive as well as getting hammered most weeks….

that final paragraph has to be one of the more absurd to appear on these boards.

who do you think he has replaced as the best ever keeper at distribution?

as a distraction from the statistical debate, who thinks Baz would have kept out the shot from sulemana that bialkowski saved low down to his left ? i think if baz is in goal for milwall we take the lead there

good to see a settled team