VectisSaint

Ran into a kitchen table. Sums him up, head down, never looking up. Skilful footballer but no end product. He does seem to have developed since he left us.

I don't think they are stuttering as such, bear in mind the Bristol game was a cup match, not in the League. In the League we are unbeaten in the last 5 (at least), the issue they have it seems (from not watching the games in detail) is that we can't score enough goals. We seem to be very good defensively, but if you can't score 2 or more goals in a match you are going to struggle to get 3 points. The whole league has become very low scoring, having an effective strike force is the difference (now where have I heard that before). 2 points off the leaders after 10 games is really an excellent performance given where we came from.

Don't suppose we could bring Oriol back on a loan.

Not all ambulance workers are taking action on Wednesday, it depends on the ambulance trust, 9 are affected in total. Newcastle v Bournemouth has also been switched and Man U are in talks about the same. I suspect Charlton is not affected, it looks like London is not an affected Trust. I too thought that changing to Tuesday would bring its own problems but the nurses action does not affect life threatening services, which I would imagine means A&E, so is probably not such an issue. I believe that professional football matches are not allowed to take place without ambulance cover in situ (I could be wrong) so preponing the match was a given.

Benchwarmers, Bednarek has made just 3 PL starts for Villa, and was subbed off early in two of them.

True, forgot the Bristol City friendly

Don't think it was seen as much of a risk at the time we signed him, Everton were well pissed off that we nabbed him, he was seen by many, not just Saints, as a star in the making. But he seems to have lost his way, goodness knows what happened at Vale, played as a makeshift striker when he did play, then played for our B team while still on loan, and finally the loan terminated. Now he's back, appearing sporadically (not in either of the games this weekend). Something seems to have gone seriously wrong, still time to put it right of course.

Not sure this actually counts as B Team. Anyone any idea what has happened to Thierry Small? Recalled from his loan and was playing for us before that, but doesn't seem to be featuring now. Perhaps he is ineligible for this game, but he does seem a bit of a mystery considering how highly he was rated when he joined us from Everton. Anyway good luckntonthe lads today, should be enough talent there to overcome Coventry.

More likely ready for the FA Youth Cup tomorrow. Very strange to have 2 fixtures for the youngsters on successive nights.

Salisu as well

But if you play them in with first teamers (lets be clear here we could field our first team while still keeping to the rules) it will give a good idea of how they perform alongside the "established" players. The only down side is the quality of the opposition, we saw that against Boro, and most of the games coming up are PL Cup, which is against even lower quality opposition (e.g. Colchester).

We have 5 B Team games scheduled between now and the end of the WC, why not just watch them, especially if we use them to give our first team players a run out.

Arguably the biggest mistake of them all. There was no need, we could have let him go on agree end of season having got a replacement.

Surprised if no friendlies are set up between PL and Championship sides during Nov/Dec, Champ team especially are not overly impacted by the WC, seems sensible to keep teams ticking over until Christmas. There are also B team matches scheduled that could be used for run outs, especially with our very young team, although it must be said PL2 Div 2 standard seems low, as demonstrated last week with Boro.

You forgot the bit about him going to the club that wants to sign probably the best of the "nippers" he brought in from us in the next window.

Jack Stephens has played 2 minutes of PL football for Bournemouth so far (2 * 1 minute appearances). You have to wonder sometimes why clubs take players on loan, especially when they have manager changes. Wouldn't surprise me if his loan gets cancelled by Jones (if that is allowable, it may not be in the PL). If I were Jones I would get all the loan players back if possible, Tella, Smallbone, Synek...

I wouldn't have thought it was Jones related given he has been playing in our B team a couple of times while still on loan at Vale. Can we cancel Smallbone's loan at Stoke as well?

He was used as a striker in some games apparently and has been playing in our team games recently. Considering the fuss when he joined us from Everton, things don't seem to have developed too well, though it is worth remembering that he is only just 18.

Except his name is not Nathaniel. It is Nathan. Good luck to the guy, seriously underwhelmed, but he has my support. How does Ruben Sellers fit in with Jones bringingnhisncoachingbteam?

Carillo is now in China, signed for Henan Songshan.

Seems odd to me in the current climate that they think they can find better rates now.

That would be an Stoke fan with an over inflated opinion of his club.

Young Nathan, aged 49. What planet are some people on.

You may be in a minority but it's larger than you think. We played some good stuff today at times, S Armstrong and AMN and Perraud made some decent chances but they were squandered. We made a big mistake when Larios went off and really never recovered. Centre mid and centre defence was our downfall, oddly where we consider our best players. Having to move AMN to RB was a blow, Lavia was rusty and probably shouldn't have played, Salisu was a bit of a liability, it would probably have been better to start Caleta Carr today. The game didn't seem like 4-1, but we will get nowhere while our forwards continue to miss sitters. JWP is a shadow of his former self, I blame that squarely on the loss of his midfield partner. Think that the time is right for Ralph to be shown the door.

Nonsense, we lost Romeu.