Midfield_General

Bernard was absolutely appalling. I don’t think I ever saw him not out of position. Just used to stand around in random places looking confused while a game of football went on around him.

Jesus, someone get him a sandwich and shut him up. Interested to see if he actually is any good as a CB, as I hardly remember him playing when he was with us, and when he did it was out of position at RB.

Another positive of Welington looking decent is that it means KWP can move back onto the right for the rest of the season, where he should be and where he’s much more effective. Should make us much more balanced down the flanks.

Welington was a pleasant surprise. Very attack minded, worked hard, got up and down all day and doesn’t mind a tackle. Early days of course but on today’s showing he could do very well in the championship.

Spot on. We still can’t defend, but at least now when we get the ball in their half our players look to go forward and actually attack their box. We’re much more direct and we’re actually running at people, getting them backpedalling and at least making them have to defend, rather than that ridiculous bullshit of letting them sit comfortably back in their banks of four while we slowly and pointlessly knock it from side to side in front of them achieving absolutely nothing. It’s obviously too little too late for this season, but we actually resembled a sensible football team for spells today, rather than just lurching between the soporific and the suicidal like we did before.

That's my point - I'm not sure why either, because he looked to be putting himself about, winning his duels and doing fine, as well as winning the game for us with his goal, but look back through the match thread and he's getting all sorts of shit

Onuachu was getting stick on here, and my stream was terrible so it was hard to properly see what was going on, but in between bouts of buffering and hot grannies in my area it looked like he won more than his fair share of headers when it was lumped up to him, and just needed someone closer to him picking up the second ball a bit more. Plus of course he reacted well to knock in the winner. Looked like he did alright, all told.

Oh and fuck you Morsy

Well done lads

I went to that game too. That match made me realise I didn’t want to go to any more England games.

I thought I saw the legendary former captain of Bayern Munich’s treble winning side out the other day. He was done up to the nines, but in a style suited to a much younger person. Closer inspection revealed that it wasn’t him at all, it was actually a volatile former Saints and Forest midfielder in disguise. Turns out it was Prutton, dressed as Lahm.

Me too. One of those where the second it left his boot you just instantly thought 'that's in'. Then bam, hits the top corner while still rising. Beautiful.

Eastleigh?

Last I heard, Shipperley was certainly still knocking them in out

Another baffling, pointless signing. A bang average player, who had been in and out of a relegated side, who was completely unsuited to the manager's playing style, and who at 30 had little or no sell-on value or potential for increase in value. Signings like that are a perfect example of why our squad is so bloated with sub-standard dross. Utterly bizarre.

Plus absolutely spoiling to sell anyone half decent as soon as it becomes apparent another club is willing to pay a decent fee. All clubs of our size face the reality that the vultures will circle as soon as we have a prospect, but it always feels like we can't get them out the door quick enough as soon as we get a sniff of cash.

Wilson is a permanent crock. He’s 32 and missed 28 games last season and 26 so far this season through injury. We’d be mad to sign another player with that sort of record.

KWP, Ramsdale, Dibling and Fernandes would be the only ones I'd be even slightly sorry to see go, and at this point I don't even care that much about them. Never felt less connected to the squad of players or the club in general. Fuck 'em all. Think it might time to hibernate until the summer, then maybe I'll wake up and it will all have been an unpleasant dream.

Sports Republic literally have no idea of the concept of a strategy, do they? Each manager they hire has a completely different style to the last. They buy shit players to support that style, then when it doesn't work they sack the manager, bring in someone who plays a completely different way, need different players for that style, rinse and repeat. For a club like ours where using what money we have is paramount, it's so inefficient as to be suicidal. Dragan should be cleaning house right now of all the jokers who have advised him so badly and wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of his money. He's clearly not a stupid man, so surely he must be able to see that?

To be fair, they largely did that because a lot of the squad that got them promoted were loans who had to go back to their parent clubs, so they didn't have a lot of choice. What they didn't do though was replace them with cheap, sub-standard squad fillers. They had no choice but to replace them, but they spent PL money on the replacements and look at them now.

And we were 5-0 down to them, by half-time, at home. You have to laugh really

I look at that Leicester side and think are we really that much worse than them that they can go and give a very average Spurs side a game, and at least have a go at staying up, whereas we're just a hopeless laughing stock who expect to lose every single game? Our squad is crap but is it that much worse?

Leicester I think will go, as they don't have a lot of quality and made a poor appointment in Van Nistelrooy. Then I think it might depend how stable Wolves are. Given the manager's public criticism of Cunha, the player obviously wants out so they'll either have to let him go, or they'll have to block it and keep an unhappy player which would be likely to create other issues. Plus of course there's the wonderful influence, reliability and commitment of club captain Mario 'Roll Your Sleeves Up' Lemina, who's already been dropped because once again he hasn't got the bollocks for a fight and wants to run away. Overall it doesn't sound like a very happy ship. Ipswich are limited, but at least seem to be in the fight together and have strong team spirit under a good manager. I think a unified Ipswich fighting it out against a Wolves either without Cunha or with him and Lemina sulking and disuniting them in the background could be a close-run thing.

Was she the one throwing it?

Moyes predictably steering Everton to safety, so who's coming down with us? Looks like 2 from 3 now - Leicester, Ipswich and Wolves. I think it will be Leicester and Wolves, personally. I like McKenna and I actually hope he keeps Ipswich up just so it's not as dull as the three promoted teams going straight back down.