Midfield_General

I heard an interesting thing earlier about how the evidence that heading the ball can cause dementia means that heading practice in training has been cut right back all the way up to Premier League level, with the knock-on effect that less practice basically means the classic defensive header is becoming more of a lost art. Some smart managers have picked up on this, and are capitalising on it by putting more crosses into the box, hence big, old-fashioned, physical forwards like Wood, who thrive on crosses, doing better than expected. No idea if the stats back it up, but it's an interesting possibility to consider when you're short of goals and have got a 6 foot 8 striker to call on. Maybe lumping it in to the big man will become the hip new data-driven trend, then Russ can get on board with it.

They haven't won yet but they've had an incredibly tough opening set of fixtures. Their first ten games have been Arsenal, Chelsea, Forest, Newcastle, Villa, Liverpool, Brentford, Man City, Brighton and Palace. That's all the current top six and not far off the entire top ten. Now they're through that lot they will see this as an absolute must-win, and they're at home, so the pressure is right on them to get a result. Their crowd turned on O'Neil at the weekend, giving it 'you don't know what you're doing', so we need to use that negativity against them. The first goal will be really important. If they get it, it could be a killer if it gets the crowd behind them. But if we can score first, then keep the ball, slow things down and shithouse them a bit to frustrate them, then the mood could get ugly and that can only help us.

Incredible. Given how prolific all those posters were, that must mean that at one point one person was probably responsible for about 40% of all the posts on here, arguing with themselves via their various alter-egos. What an odd way to live.

Worth an insurance bet

Heisenberg/ Glasgow Saint/ the fellow from Kenya has been marked by his absence this season. Love and Light. Unless...

Fernandes did go down like a sack of spuds and was obviously playing it up - to the extent that Armstrong lost patience with him and picked him up himself - but as we saw with the Onuachu shirt pull against Leicester where he stayed up and as a result got nothing, honesty gets you absolutely nowhere in the modern game because the refs aren’t competent enough to spot it unless you go down. Regardless of whether Fernandes went down easily, Young deliberately hit him in the face. That’s at least a yellow if not a red, and to not even book him for it, while booking Fernandes, must mean that the ref missed it and he thought Fernandes simulated all contact? In which case VAR should be spotting that mistake and telling the ref to review it at the screen. I don’t think you can appeal yellows after the fact though.

Nope. But Fernandes got booked for going down. Joke of a decision.

Exactly. He’s obviously not telling them to go out and make mistakes, but what he is telling them to do is causing them to make the mistakes because they’re not equipped to do it. So that is obviously very much still his responsibility. It’s like if someone ordered me to go out and juggle chainsaws - something which I am not equipped to do - and as a result of trying I ended up getting my hands cut off. If they then turned round and said ‘I told you to juggle the chainsaws, not get your hands cut off’, then I would still feel that my calamitous injuries were down to them, to some extent.

Where have all the pissed-up rants from last night gone? It seems he is quite the potty mouth when he’s had a few. I hope Hypo is ok after suffering such a vile verbal assault 🤣🤣🤣

Sometimes the gods are just with you. The one off the bar, the gnat's chuff offside, the Ramsdale wonder save. How many times do we get all those going for us? In truth we were poor, but a win's a win, and it was a lovely goal. Let's also not gloss over the fact that they were in decent form, unbeaten in their last five games. Now need to go and spawn another one at Wolves. I need a drink COYS

Four wingers in Dibling, Cornet, Sulemana, SAA available to call on, they have a pensioner at full back and we decide our best bets for attacking down the flanks are Ryan Manning and Adam Armstrong. Result: zero shots on target. Another tactical masterclass from the Russ Man

Radio saying that Dibling has been ill.

And just look at Man City now. It seems Russ's City obsession means he doesn't just want to copy Pep, he also wants to emulate the points total of Alan Ball, Steve Coppell and Frank Clarke. #PlayingTheLongGame

What, for what we were told was our biggest game of the season?

One thing that line-up shows is that he's still nowhere nearer knowing what his best formation, first XI or bench are. Aribo performs consistently well and gets dropped. Armstrong does nothing and gets to start. Dibling is our best player across the season and gets dropped. BBD does absolutely nothing ever but still gets a place on the bench. Taylor is left out of the squad completely. Manning is somehow now deemed a starter. How the players are supposed to find coherence and consistency when it's a different side every week is beyond me.

Manning LWB surely in a 5-3-2 / 3-5-2 Archer Armstrong Fernandes Downes Lallana Manning KWP Stephens Bednarek THB Ramsdale

Or a return to the revolutionary horseshoe attack with a centre forward on each wing 🤞

Manning and Stephens starting and Dibling dropped. Righto.

Prediction - we'll come flying out of the traps, catch them cold, play some decent stuff and go in at half-time 1-0 or 2-0 up and looking comfortable. They'll change something at half-time, we won't react to it, it'll go to 1-2 and we'll start to wobble. We'll make substitutions that make us worse, it'll go to 2-2. We'll go to panic stations, fall to bits completely and either hang on for a desperate point or lose it in the 5th minute of injury time. Probably by not marking properly for a corner.

A.k.a. 'The Carabou Cafu' (c) someone else on here

I take it all back - I didn't realise you get an orange juice and lemonade and get to see some green paint. £300 well spent!

Just back from the game. Match report: At home, with a strong side out, playing the reserves of an awful side currently 19th in the Championship, we were very lucky not to lose, even after going 2-0 up. Even with 78% possession we were one desperate goal-line clearance away from a collapse and a humiliation. We play the absolute definition of propaganda football. Even against kids and dross we can't defend for shit, and we've coached some previously decent looking players into looking completely and utterly lost. We're shit, we're going to lose against Everton and Wolves, and we are absolutely doomed. I think that just about covers it. Night all.

Hard to articulate just how bad it is to concede against a side as poor as this tbh. Breathtaking.

See, I personally haven't got to that point yet. But then I'm just about to leave for St Mary's, so ask me again in about four hours.

Regardless of what any of us might want, and regardless of results, I don't think Martin is going anywhere until there's a credible option sounded out and lined up to replace him. And given that none of the current obvious names seem to be remotely interested, it doesn't sound like we're anywhere near that. So until a new name comes onto the scene who might be an improvement and who might actually want it, I think we're stuck in limbo. Unless it gets so bad that they just panic and take a punt on someone who'd basically take anything, like Lampard, and then we might as well all pack up and go home.