Whitey Grandad

I'll be there of course, although I'm not looking forward to it. I have two season tickets and one will probably be empty, as usual.

I have just watched the goals again and James is sertainly not a full back. He is sideways on to his man all the time and has absolutely no pace. Do we have to stick with him all season?

I vote for 'a' because most of the others had some grain of sense in them, apart from perhaps 'b'.

Immediatley on relegation, it went something like: The club will survive - all the players have clauses in their contracts that halve their pay (or words to that effect)

With one or two exceptions it has been like this for some time now. It makes me so mad, and that's not what I go to games for.

Pekhart got bags of goals for Spurs' reserves last season. You're right, though, this formation stinks.

Are you the ref?

Derry, I totally agree with you. He is not hungry enough. Maybe it's because he now has a 4-year contract.

Being realistic the best that I can see is a draw against Coventry, so 1 point if we're lucky, and that will be from a 0-0 draw.

I can't see us scoring either so the best that we can hope for in any game now is to keep a clean sheet and hope that by some fluke we can nick something at the other end. I am expecting 0-2, 1-3 at best.

You're right - it isn't - but what I don't think has been factored in is the loss of revenue from the falling attendances, and if anybody thinks that this season's crowds are poor then just wait until next season!

There's no stability in the playing squad, is there?

I have a feeling that we have been cutting the wrong costs. At the rate we are going we will get rid of any first team player who has any ounce of ability just so that we can maintain spending on everything except the first team. I think that it may be time for the academy to go. If it costs more than £2.5m a year then it is not worth the trouble. It might be another 2 or 3 years before we get another Bale or Walcott judging by what I have seen so far this season.

His body language would be unacceptable in any profession. He slouches his way through games and only puts in occasional effort when it suits him. He is never on his toes, his shoulders are drooped and he hardly moves. There is nothing unfortunate about the reults he gets, he just need to put in some real effort for a change. If we are relying on him then we really are in deep doggy-doos.

Let's see if it applies to him...

There are sometimes revenue/capital considerations where one of the clubs involved may not want a profit/loss on players' values appearing in the current financial year. I doubt that this would apply in our case though...

If it was two yellows then it's only a one-game ban (I think) unless the FA get annoyed with him for having a bad disciplinary record.

Well done lads. You can never argue against a clean sheet, it's something to build on. Now all we need to do is nick a couple at the other end. It'll be interesting to hear from those who were there.

Simultaneously could mean contemporaneously, i.e at the same time but not 'together'. How that would help the performances on the pitch is beyond me, but maybe that' why I'm not a football manager.

Can we agree that Lowe 'dismissed' him?

Form the Daily Mail this morning (so it must be true): Lee, 26, said: ‘This chance came out of the blue and I had to make the most of it. Our keeping coach Alec Chamberlain told me who their likely penalty takers would be and which way they were likely to go. Hopefully, I will now get a run in the team.’

This is what I find so frustrating, and why I get so angry when I'm watching. Defending properly is a discipline in itself and yet our club seems to think it's not important. Having said that, Jack Cork was letting the ball bounce on Saturday and it caused him problems once or twice.

I hate it too. I seem to remember it started with Merrington. I discussed this with Ivan Golac once (he used to be a neighbbour) and he said that he liked to leave three men up front so that the opposition had to put four defenders on them. If you have less people in the penalty area it makes it easier to sort out who does what and it leaves room for the keeper to come and collect the ball. If your centre-forward (if you have one) is a big six-footer then it can make sense for him to mark his counterpart and normally the pre-match briefing will detail personal responsibilities for each player but when you have a teamful of shorties I suppose it doesn't make much difference really.

I believe that we are right to expect more than that. Last season was certainly not a success and we shouldn't be satisfied with the same this time. We don't want to bumping along the bottom of the division for the foreseeable future. For a club of our history, pedigree and fanbase we can reasonably expect to be in the upper reaches of the division. Anything else is incompetent management and an insult to all loyal supporters.

These are all valid points but shouldn't it be the coaching staff and the training routines that should be sorting out these problems? They've had a two-week break but according to JVP it's all down to the players: "I left the first half XI on the field because they had to make it right and do it themselves and I told them to do that."