Whitey Grandad

All through any of our games you will see our forwards with their arm raised starting to make a run forward yet they are ignored in favour of a sideways or backwards pass.

It doesn’t matter who plays up front if they’re playing on their own. They need support otherwise they have two defensive crowding them with others as backup.

Would having no manager be worse?

How stupid can they be? They think there’s going to be a low turnout so they make sure that there will be. Idiots. Closing our best stand. If only they knew how to run a football club.

David Prutton?

What if the good times never arise again?

All the more reason to get someone in now and let him work on the basics.

Martin would have had him sat on the bench.

Dump him now and let him have his friendly to say goodbye.

I'm not one for statistics but Ipswich scored five more goals than us with lower possession. That is shots per goal of course and not shots in total, which are highly subjective anyway.

Sadly for him Hengist Pod got there first.

Shrinkflation

I called the Ramblers Association the other day. The man on the other end just went on and on…

As Alan Hansen might say, just launch it.

No, I haven’t watched in yet. I’m in Canada at the moment on a road trip from Calgary to Vancouver. I have a ticket to watch the Whitecaps on Saturday though. I’ll try and watch it once I get back. I agree with you though.

He couldn’t be that cynically calculating. Could he?

They weren’t allowed to have a shot. It meant losing possession.

And don’t allow opponents time and space to line up a shot.

I shouldn't need to explain this again. We are playing in a different league. One in which mistakes and defensive failings will get punished clinically. One that is played at a much higher tempo. Scoring goals is not as easy as it was last season. And he's up against more experienced coaches who are more tactically aware than him. Multiple substitutions when you're one-nil up? When I'm looking at Martin's defensive record I'm going back over his entire managerial history. His teams leak goals. We can't hold a coherent back line, we pack our own box at corners leaving no threats upfield, we allow the opposition wingers acres of space to exploit, in short we're a soft touch and other teams are picking their lips in anticipation of playing us. Last season we got lucky. I doubt that we shall this time.

Good morning Gio, It’s very early Saturday morning for me. An XG of 0.04 just shows how ridiculous Such statistics are. If XG were any use the actually goals and the expected goals should be a lot closer than they are. We’ve all seen the photos of our lack of cover at that corner. Was anyone surprised that they scored? Anyway, taken overall Ipswich had many good scoring opportunities and it was no surprise that they came away from that game with a draw. You have to look at the game as a whole. For me it’s not about the here and now at all. It’s about where we are going from here and at the moment I can only see one future for us. I have no faith or expectation that Martin knows how to defend at this level.

I’m not taking these five in isolation. I can see that we are a defensive shambles and I see no evidence historically or otherwise that Martin can ever improve that.

I think you’ll find that every losing team could say this. Even the top of the Championship is a long way from the bottom of the Premier League.

An unfortunate deflection? We were fortunate to get anything on that shot.

They don't score goals in this league though. How many times must it be repeated? Last season has no bearing on this.

Martin’s teams concede goals without even thinking about it. This is evident after several seasons and not just a few bad games. They have all been consistent in this and are not going to change no matter how long he stays here.