The Kraken

Transfers: 4/10. Ramirez quality, Clyne good prospect, Davis decent, Mayuka great prospect, Rodriguez not impressed yet, Yoshida could come good but not seen the best of him yet. What we brought in was decent, just lopsided from what we really needed. Manager: 3/10. NA has been hampered by that lopsided squad, but has made too many mistakes of his own, both in terms of selection, tactics and substitutions. The seemingly infallible manager has been found wanting so far at times. Players: 3/10. The senior players have also largely let the manager down. Seasoned heads like Fonte, Hooiveld, Fox and K.Davis have far too often been found wanting and cuplable of numerous avoidable errors; more worryingly they've seemed incapable of learning from mistakes made and have carried on repeating them. Overall: 3/10. A tough start with fixtures, but far worse performances and results than could reasonably have been expected. At least it's only 10 games; and November throws up some winnable games, so no excuses from here on in.

My mistake, I should have put Luke Shaw in there. Or Ryan Dickson. They're obviously better options than the only senior left back at the club. Good point, Chris.

Tsk. The bottom half of the Premier League is no better than the top half of the Championship FFS.

Yep; the role of the property developer is key. I know that if I were a fan and was being asked to contribute to a fund whereby the fan's part of the Trust wouldn't have a controlling interest, where the chairman was a man who had contributed far less than the fans themselves, and where the ownership of the ground was retained by a property developer; well, alarm bells would be ringing very, very loudly. They've slipped very readily from the nice, fluffy idea of fan ownership to a financial model whereby the fans money is simply added to the whim of the HNW individuals and a man interested primarily in acquiring the Fratton Park footprint.

That's not really relevant to the original point being made; which was that us paying £1M for a player in L1 was worse for our finances that spending £12M for one in the PL.

Of course the expectation level goes down, but I'd hate to think we should be turning off any form of optimism from games against the top six. That would be complete defeatism. Take a look at the relegated teams from last season. Norwich beat top 6 Newcastle and Tottenham, and took points off Arsenal and Chelsea. Swansea beat Man City and Arsenal whilst also taking points from Chelsea, Tottenham and Newcastle. QPR had a fairly dismal season but still found time to beat Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham and take points off Liverpool, Newcastle and Everton. You may not expect much, but QPR stayed up on the back of those results, Norwich and Swansea finished mid-table because of them. Of course those games are tough; that doesn't mean we should expect to take nothing from them. We absolutely need to show how to grind out reults against top ten, top 6, top 4 clubs. Norwich have shown how already this season against Arsenal. The notion that we only need to concentrate on the teams around us is simply not correct; we need to look to score points against all of the sides in the division. As for knee-jerk reaction and giving Adkins a chance; I'm not in the camp of blaming him fully or suggesting he needs to leave. Not yet, anyway. But his time is clearly running out.

Maybe you could write us a list of topics that are acceptable then. That would be nice.

No it wouldn't. Not if Cortese is as good a businessman as so many people say he is and has put the necessary safeguards in place. Oh, hang on.....

If that's how you view it, I'm not sure if message boards are the thing for you. That's entirely what they're designed for.

Fair points, but I'm not sure I agree. To date we've had Puncheon and Lallana (or Rodriguez) wide, so pretty much no natural width there. Our width is naturally provided by the full backs, while the defensive cover has typically come from Puncheon and Lallana, who quite clearly often haven't been up to that particular task. A much stronger midfield 3 allows for extra defensive coverage when requires, and allows the full backs to give us that width that we need. It should also allow the 3 in the middle to interchange and make the runs forward that you mention are needed, to get forward quickly and support the attackers. With a dedicated "number 10" they're much more defensively minded, but with 3 of the same it gives each of them proper license to (within reason) all get forward themselves. You mention we tried 3 CMs last year to little success; we also tried it against Man United and it worked a treat until the changing around with subs; up to then and against a quality side it was perhaps the best we've played all season (and that was without Cork who I personally rate as the best of our central midfielders, though not a view common to most on here). You're right that pace is a requirement, especially away from home; but I think we're always going to play Lallana and Ramirez, so given that I don't think playing away from home we can accommodate a striker plus the pace of Mayuka, it almost becomes 4-2-4. At home, yes I think it can and would work, but not away, I just think it is too open. The Guly option you mention; I agree with his attributes but again I think its not a solid enough midfield 3 ; certainly not to give the defence and full backs the support they quite clearly need.

Pretty much all teams that have won any league have bought their way there; just to different extents.

It really isn't. Spending £12M now is spending money we really don't have (hence we've taken out a bank loan apparently to pay for it). Spending £1M, even in the lower leagues, is much more akin to spending within our own means.

How so? What do you see the weaknesses as; and what would go with instead?

I can't wait to find out where they propose the money is going to come from, and how they've plugged the £6M hole from their previous already overly-optimistic financial model.

Me too. And I don't think they should both start, its one or the other, with them playing up front. If they do both start then I'll really be left scratching my head at NA.

Probably more likely than expecting Cork to return, to be fair. But I don't think it'll happen, I think we'll have some square pegs in round holes with Lambert and Rodriguez both playing and Lallana and Ramirez shoehorned in somewhere. This is proper judgement time for NA; he's got almost all of his first choice players available to him; what will he put together?

Not for me; not away from home, at least. Its far too open; effectively playing with 4 forward-thinking players. At home, I could see time for that formation, without doubt. Away, against a decent and well organised West Brom side, I fear we'd get picked to pieces with that. We need to be tighter than that. For me its: Boruc Clyne - Yoshida - Fonte - Fox Cork - Schneiderlin - Davis Ramirez - Lallana Lambert

I was thinking this yesterday. I've long said I don't like the PL as much as the Championship as there are far fewer Saturday 3pm kick offs, and that's my main focus for going to games (although midweek games were also a good crack). Having your team not play on Saturday makes it thoroughly bland if you want to keep an eye on results. Having no game on the Sunday just compounds that. Plus its also made worse when you watch all the teams around you pick up points; its very likely we'll be bottom of the league and 5 points adrfit by the time we kick off (and, to be fair, by the time we finish playing).

Sorry, what is an "unrealistic" game? One in which we should just expect to roll over and die? Which ones of our games have been "unrealistic" so far?

My Palace supporting mates say that he's been awful for them, and has barely played for them since the start of the season. He's only played 3 league games (plus 2 cup games) and apparently looked like Bambi on ice, which is why he was deservedly dropped; a move which saw a complete turnaround in the team's perfromances. Thinking Aaron Martin is any sort of realistic solution for us right now is naive at best.

Sadly, the demented lot on POL still haven't yet grasped it. It actually beggars belief that they can STILL be this deluded.

7,560 turned up to pack the park :lol: I guess the feelgood factor of the PST being in prime position to take over has somewhat diminished. With Appy whoring himself out to all and sundry its perhaps unsurprising that the locals are starting to lose faith.

Well I still don't think it makes sense. Besides, whatever the wages, I'm pretty sure Wayne Bridge is not remotely close to being the answer to our ills.

That still doesn't make sense; why would City continue to supplement him £70K a week to allow us to pay him an extra £10K a week? In any case, I'll repeat what I wrote earlier.

So, rather than doubling his wages, Bridge would get paid exactly the same?