stfrancisofbenali

As I said, we only see a fraction of the evidence.

We only see a fraction of evidence of course but to my mind he was far more talented than Wood and more accomplished than Quarshie. I think we will regret this.

Hope he's got a big gob and some personality. Now for a big striker, left back and gnarly old centre half.

They gave us Keegan, we give them Downs.

He’s powderpuff and horribly inconsistent and would be found out in an instant in the Prem. Nowhere near that level.

His lack of communication and chat is one of his biggest faults. No coincidence that he doesn’t assert himself vocally or physically.

Bazunu is very poor but let’s not pretend he isn’t playing behind a shambolic, disorganised and paper-thin defensive unit. Donnaruma would struggle behind that lot.

None of those (the majority) singing ‘Tonda’s at the wheel’ a few weeks ago.

What an absolutely abysmal Christmas. Two points from five games is relegation form. All very well TE saying that a point against Birmingham and Millwall are good results if we go and win the next, but we haven’t! We look toothless in attack and a shambles at the back. Blackmore needs to give him a proper grilling in the post match…but he won’t.

Why has it become so turgid and conservative compared to his first 7 games? No one has given a good explanation for this yet.

Jelert was also good.

The first time a CB attempted a penetrative through-ball to break the lines was THB in injury time in the second half which immediately created a chance. Why do they feel that they can only try this at the death?

7 games where we glimpsed a brave new dawn. Then the lights went out again.

Fellows didn’t come on for Scienza today and he has played them together. The biggest issue for me is TE not playing Fellows as an out and out attacker.

This is why his line about always trying to win games doesn’t add up. To go for three points today, in a drab deadlock game, you have to try something different and get Fellows attacking rather than defending. Me and my Northam cohort were all saying at half time that we couldn’t see how we would score. If we can see it, why can’t TE and get our best attacking player up the pitch asking questions?

Tin hat on but Tom Fellows is far and away our most potent attacking threat and a better team player than Scienza. He has to start…as an attacker!

We played a lot of Russball at The Valley and no one was complaining. Agreed he needs to find another way of playing (Plan B) but loving him one minute and then calling for his head when we lose a few is utter madness and unsustainable.

It was only moments ago that people like you were singing ‘Tonda at the wheel’. What a pathetically fickle lot we are.

Any team that ups the intensity against us has a chance. Azaz and Wood awful. Playoffs at the very best but not sure we have the fight.

Carragher wasn’t taking about us specifically but it was an interesting point in the context of an away performance in which the defensive side of our game meant that we would need to score three (again) to have any chance of winning. True that defence AND attack needs to be at the top of our game to get a result on Saturday. The wider point is that (home or away) our defence is not providing a solid base for us to grind out results with only one clean sheet in eight.

Jamie Carragher just made an interesting point on Super Sunday about defending away from home. He said that as a defender that’s where you knew you could win the game for your team, whereas at home is when the attackers win the game for you. On the evidence of yesterday, our defensive unit don’t have this ingrained into them. They were all over the place and Coventry will rip us apart if we don’t tighten up and show some positional nous.

Too many players below par today, Jander in particular who has generally been magnificent. Norwich were the first team to work out how to nullify Scienza and were simply hungrier and more aggressive than us. We had 30 mins after they scored their second and didn’t even try and lay a glove on them which is worrying.

Rolls Royce of a player. Scienza deservedly gets the headlines but Jander is the beating heart.

A young Tony Kroos. A very classy player.