Stud mark of doom

Yeah, baby.

I read it as if we perform as well as last season (ie while he was manager) then we would finish 10th. Would be odd to say the very best we could do is 10th, given there’s Generally not much between 7th and 10th.

How far away can you hear SMS? I’ll get things started - Obelisk Road Woolston (with a good performance, and the wind in the right direction).

....

My 125 anniversary/red sash top is still going fine.

Anyone know how this turned out?

Let’s keep things in perspective - we seem to have signed a record sponsorship deal - if it doesn’t work out, we’ll need to find another sponsor. It’s not like we have been subject to a reverse takeover by a company that looks after old people.

Much prefer this to a betting company. Not sure what people are getting so upset about. If they are paying us a record amount, as reported, what’s the problem that they aren’t (yet) an established name. Complete overreaction.

I still think we should have gone for Hoddle rather than sturrock.

Would we have stayed up without Ings? I doubt it.

Another downside is it is about 60 seconds behind so if you have goal alerts on your phone you’ll know if there’s a goal coming up... or not.

Surely up, to some extent. Much much better football on offer than for a few years. Prices down a bit. What’s not to like?

Ralph has done a truly amazing job, with minimal resources. He has made me enjoy football again. Really looking forward to next season. Thanks Ralph - don’t leave us too soon!

Pelligrino was awful. Hughes was ok - goodish then pretty poor. Ralph is phenomenal.

I assumed it was a tactic associated with the high press game. Not so much “not showing” but more not rushing, so a bit more recovery time - so we can press more effectively with the energy saved? That’s why the yellow card was incredibly harsh. I think we can safely assume at premiership level it’s not some sort of “schoolboy error” if it is static used repeatedly.

This “evens itself out over the season” mantra doesn’t hold water. It might be true if clubs were subject to hundreds of errors but typically you might have quite a small number of crucial grade A reffing balls ups a season (eg Watford handball for us last year) maybe 5 or 6 for a given side say? Those numbers are too small to even out - chances are a team where most have gone against them will end up lower in the table than they should be. Could easily be the difference between relegation and safety.

I think the answer is to pay them to leave - less than we’d pay them to stay of course, so we’d still “win”.

Also, 6 of those games have been top 6 sides - so 2 more difficult games than you might expect in a run of 14. (And we’ve taken 7points from those 6 games - so even our form against the top six is good enough to stay up!)

Not a fan of Lowe at all but - A) wasn’t the timing down to Barclays B) surely he wound have got more from Sisu than from the subsequent admin outcome

Compared to the majority of clubs, we don’t really have any “difficulties”. Certainly Coventry put things into perspective. A close shave for sure.

If we hadn’t brought in RaHa, the relegation spots would have been done and dusted in the premiership now.

In the last game I noticed Ralf gesticulating to the crowd, quite animatedly, to “calm down, ffs”, as the atmosphere became rather frustrated at a sideways pass or two. I’ve never seen that before - quite a thing for a manager to challenge the home crowd. I think we scored about 20 seconds later.

He’s probably feeling a little flat now.

Maybe it was a tribute to Peter Crouch?

Ole must win it. Amazing if that’s not the case. I’m sure Ralph will turn out to be the better manager longer term but over the last month surely there’s only one winner?