VectisSaint

Given he is supposedly retiring at end of season it would be career-ending.

Not sure if you are joking. Their best player (Ng) out for the season, 12 or more injured or ill, maybe up to 5 from the u21s to fill the squad according to their manager. I think it is safe to say they will no be putting out a full strength team, but probably not as bad as they are making out.

Experience in a difficult situation. That is all. I think Martin made a good decision. Lumley will be OK when he has prepared to play from the start. Will be interesting to see what Martin does tomorrow, McCarthy got a clean sheet (admittedly with very little to actually do) so might feel aggrieved to be dropped, but if he hadn't done that I feel pretty sure that Lumley would be selected to start.

Not surprised its been mooted for years. Thought the winter break was brought in by the big clubs, so not sure how scrapping that benefits them, though the way it was brought in was a nonsense, in any case other leagues that do have a winter break use it to arrange friendlies so it was always totally meaningless. I don't know why you are having a go at the EFL. Can't see this is anything to do with them, all down to the FA and the PL. The EFL looks to benefit as a whole, though individual teams will lose out, the EFL have no say on the FA Cup.

I believe it happened right at the end just before the 3rd goal went in. The Watford manager and players were complaining about it post match saying there should have been a red card and that Downes handled the ball, so were doubly incensed. Can't say I saw exactly what happened but a Watford player was flat out in the pen area. Some of our so called supporters are more than a bit odd, Mara hasn't been great recently but he was brought on to do a job (at set pieces, defensively) and we won the game after he came on so who is to say that was a mistake.

Who said anything about the 2nd half? We went 2 up after 20 minutes which is when Watford started playing and exposing us down the flanks. We actually had 2 on target 2nd half, 4 off.

Really not sure why improving our goal difference needs to be a target. Unlikely we are going to get better than Leeds or Leicester, the two teams we can actually do something about (because we have to play them). Winning 1-0 is just as good as winning 4-0. Seems to me that it was because we continued to look for goals after we went 2 up Saturday gave Watford the opportunity (once their defenders woke up) to get at us and get the panic stations going when they attacked. We should to.some extent have shut up shop and consolidated rather than go for goals.

Made one glaring mistake, but made amends immediately which launched an attack (may have been the Fraser one but not sure). Not his greatest fan but he did actually make a difference when he came on and of course his corner did lead to the goal. Surprised Stephens stayed on when Bednarek came on, Doddsy called it on the commentary, Stephens had been struggling with what looked like cramp just before the substitution, maybe they thought he would be less damaging in MF rather than CB.

Not when the ball was kicked, he had come back from an offside position (or at least slowed his run so that the defenders went passed him) and looked from the replays that he had got it right, but it was close.

Predictable shoehorn twaddle from the usual suspects, ignoring the bigger issues of leaving out Stuey and playing Brookes.

Thought Larios was closer than that

Maybe top, but we were 2nd back in January

Given the ref gave a free kick for it you would expect that to be the case. But we will never know.

Never did Georgie Best (or Frank Worthington) any harm 😉 To be frank I don't think the 'length' of Mara's hair is the problem, hence the references to Valderama.

To be fair if he was 'watching' on Sky, he may well have missed it, I did plus about 20 minutes more. What I couldn't fathom was that through their break the score and time were updating. Then when the visuals came back the sound went (which was a mixed blessing given the commentator kept mixing up Aribo and KWP (How?) and liked playing the game of 'name the last player to have the ball instead of the current player' (which is actually quite difficult to do). Perhaps they watch the game on a delayed feed. Never any apology or mention of the technical difficulties, Sky made themselves look rank amateurs last night. KWP spent a lot of time in midfield last night (at least the bits I saw), playing the role Manning played earlier in the season and Stephens has done quite effectively too, KWP was certainly not playing the standard LB role (and once or twice briefly swapped sides with Bree).

Beds wasn't concussed but he was in serious strife v Ipswich, possibly hangover from that (yes I know he played at Blackburn). Anyway Stephens and Bednarek are pretty much interchangeable. Only real issues tonight are no Stuey and Brooks on right presumably meaning AA on left

We had no right to expect anything better than a distant 3rd, based on where we were at the start of the season. Leeds and Leicester were much better than us in the PL (9 and 6 points better respectively). At the moment they have widened that gap a little, but not a huge amount. The problem for us is that Ipswich "came from nowhere" and have proved that it is no fluke, they built a good Championship side last season in League One. Yet we still have the chance to beat them (in the play-offs) assuming they finish 3rd. But we will only win the play-offs if we rediscover some form in the last 7 games, unlike today's dismal display.

So that's a no to Manning then.

What a dreadful performance. Russball was not the problem today, just a complete lack of effort or ambition or energy from several of our players. Looked like they had given up before we started. Brooks in particular was absolute shite, which is unusual, KWP wasn't great (again), THB was off the boil. Rothwell was a waste of space, Aribo looked asleep. Downes was doing so much work, but a lot of it wasn't coming off with passes getting cut out. Our passing was sloppy, lethargic. We badly missed Stuey today with his driving runs. There was still so much to play for, especially with results going out way, we should be going all out to get as.many points as possible to build confidence for the playoffs, and even to ensure 4th place (because it is not ensured at the moment, though WBA dropping 2 points has helped). Only the second game this season we haven't scored, still we kept a clean sheet so at least we won't get the 'we concede too many' trope trotted out here (although I wouldn't be surprised to see it trotted out anyway). What a waste of an afternoon enduring that.

I know, I got that wrong, realised when I watched the highlights, but didn't have any posts to correct it. I don't think I really need to explain about their first, if you don't understand then that's your problem not mine.

He was clearly talking about play-off semi finals. If you want to bring other competitions into it then history says we won semi-finals of the FA Cup in 1899, 1901, 1976 and 2003, League Cup in 1979 and 2017, Full Members Cup (ZDS) in 1992, Tin Pot Trophy in 2010. We lost in the play-off semis under George F***ing Burley, nothing more needs to be said about that.

The 3rd goal, which was the one that caused us to lose the game (as opposed to drawing) was due to defensive disorganisation following Bree's sending off, including being a man (defender) short. The root cause of that goal was actually piss poor play by our attackers who only needed to hold the ball up, you know play a little Russball but gave it away needlessly and cheaply and allowed Ipswich to break. The first goal was clearly Bree's (and Bazunu) fault, no argument from me there but it didn't contribute to us losing the game, indeed it can be argued it galvanised or shocked us into equalising and later taking the lead.

The defensive problems started not with unsettling the back 4, but losing Flynn Downes to injury. So many people think 'defence' means the back 4, it doesn't, at the very least you have to consider the DM. When Downes went off injured against Huddersfield it was 0-0 (and we were playing with our so called settled back 4). Within minutes we conceded and then a second. We went 3-1 down in the 2nd half before we made an excellent recovery tom win 5-3. The damage was done though. Teams saw that we were very fragile at the back without the shield of Downes.and that was exploited over the next few games. In the end Downes came back of course, but our confidence had been destroyed and oppositions could see our weaknesses. Coupled with that we have had other injuries (KWP) and Manning has been exposed as a poor defender and Martin/Calderwood have found it hard to get that consistency back. It is nothing to do with shoehorning Stephens in (we beat WBA 2-0 when he was in, probably one of our best defensive displays). To be honest the loss to Ipswich was not a problem defensively, we coped very well against the best attacking side in the Division, it was down to a stinking performance by our keeper and getting Bree harshly sent off.

Presumably Sam Gallagher will score.

No, it was the one he most should have saved. His positioning was all wrong, much too far to his right, which made his (hopeless) dive to his left hopeless. Don't think many would have saved the first. The 2nd was definitely stoppable, but it wasn't as bad a blunder as #3, just that he can't dive.