Midfield_General

Boro 2-0 up. Coventry set to slip into 2nd after blowing a 10 point lead. See you in the play-offs Frank, you great big twat.

Awesome. Spent eight weeks in Buenos Aires a few years ago. It's my favourite city in the world and that looks absolutely amazing. Have a brilliant time.

Chatted about it on another thread - Clarke got a hat-trick on his debut in a 5-1 win at home against QPR on the opening day of the season.

Yeah Rideout got two

To be fair today was a cup game against bottom of the Scottish Championship. They could well win the league now though. Only three points off it now as you say, and Hearts have lost Shankland, their main goalscorer, for two months. Rangers are probably just about favourites, which considering the absolute catastrophe that Rohl inherited from Rusty, is an amazing achievement and entirely down to much, much better management of the same group of players.

Picture the scene: Coventry choke and drop into the play-offs in 3rd place. We mount a late surge and steal 6th place. We get Cov in the play-offs. That would actually be incredibly entertaining and would probably generate a great atmosphere for the home leg after Lampard behaving like such a weapon when we played them.

Let's enjoy Larin contributing more in 3 minutes than Downs did in 5 months: Not just a great header but did really well to shake off and lose his man before that too. Get in, big man

Armstrong starts for Wolves. According to the BBC graphic they're playing him in the 10 role behind the striker in a 4-2-3-1. Interesting to see how he gets on playing deeper if so.

Matsuki 3 weeks ago against Doncaster

Paul Daniels went one better than that years ago. He was quite* ahead of his time. (* not a lot)

Yeah the PL guy was in the VIP bogs, banging up lines with Pep and laughing about how Man City still haven't been found guilty of anything and offering to change the rules for the Carabao Cup so Guehi can play in the final

The rumour is that after the verdict the guy from the independent commission saw the guy from the EFL and bottled him. Claret everywhere. Nasty business. He’s appealing (though not to me).

They accepted that they were down ages ago and that they’re planning for next season in the Championship. Generally seen as a pretty solid buy for that level at a decent age and a lowish price, and it’s hard to argue with that. More generally though, anger and disappointment that their team and forward line in particular has been allowed to be generally downgraded over time from the quality of players like Neto, Jimenez and Cunha to the dross they’ve got today.

100%. The trajectories of Rangers and Celtic this season, and the way their form has mapped directly onto who was managing them at the time, getting wildly different runs of results with the same groups of players depending on how they managed them and what systems/ formations they used, should put to bed once and for all the nonsense that was being spouted on here about how managers and formations don't make any difference and it's all just about what players you've got. O'Neill and Rohl have done fantastic jobs and won lots of games, Martin and Nancy did terrible jobs and lost lots of games. It's a direct correlation.

I’ve got quite into the Scottish league this year. Started watching Rangers games to rubberneck the absolute car crash of Martin’s short-lived stay, but have kept watching it. Proper three horse race now with Celtic and Rangers not quite as good as they usually are and Hearts significantly better. Feels like a league where everyone can beat everyone and the old school blood and thunder approach is great. Plus they’ve got that system where the league splits in half towards the end of the season and technically a team could finish the season on more points than the team above them but still finish below them in the final table, which is enjoyably mental. It’s good fun.

I was 10 so I probably wasn’t analysing it very deeply but I loved him. Retrospectively I think he was probably quite an old fashioned, proper 80s centre forward. A bit uncultured by today’s standards but put himself about, gave central defenders problems and could score with his head or his feet. And I think you’re right that he probably missed a few, but in the top division he scored 20 in his first season with us and 16 in his second, which is pretty damn good by anyone’s standards. Clarke, Rideout, Shearer, Ostenstadt, Davies, Beatts, Pahars, Lambert, Pelle, Ings… we really have had some quality no 9s over the time I’ve been a fan. Maybe Larin will bang in a brace on Saturday and go on to join the list

Have you ever seen someone come into your place of work at a senior level, fail to achieve anything personally, leave, and then try and take the credit for all the good things that happened during the time they were there, even though all the successes they dine out on were all other people's work? I have. That's Rasmus, that is.

Surprise, surpriiiiiiiise Rasmus' shitness hits you between the eyyyyyes (one of the kids there)

So were we before these fucking jokers took over

That last paragraph could have been written about pretty much any of our signings over the last three years, with the exception of Ramsdale.

Colin Clarke. Hat-trick on his debut. Opening match of the 1986/7 season at the Dell. Smashed QPR 5-1, who had a very young David Seaman in goal. My first ever Saints game. I was hooked and thought it would be like that every week. Spoiler: it isn't

Him and the lady next to him just look delighted to have been allowed out for a day out, bless them Orange jacket fella looks pretty happy too, reckon there's a few covert scummers in there

Got to be Leo. Make him penalty taker, captain, manager and give him the keys to Cortese's private shitter.

Stewart’s hair’s all right on its own but when he pairs it with that Father Abraham Amish chinstrap beard someone needs to have a word

Been a useful championship level addition while we’ve been down here, and will have a place in our history for the play-off final goal, but physical attributes and lack of composure mean he’ll simply never be a premier league player, and especially not playing down the middle. Can’t blame him at all for wanting a fresh start somewhere else, but it’s going to be out of the frying pan and into the fire. Wolves are shite and the dressing room he’s joining will be as much of a demoralised mess as ours was when we were getting beaten week in week out. Then they’ll have to have a rebuild in the Championship, same as we have, which as we are witnessing can be a messy business and there’s no guarantee of bouncing straight back up. It will be interesting to see if their fans take to him, because if they’re putting him at no 9 at PL level we all know it’s pretty likely he’ll struggle, which won’t be a great start for him, regardless of whether he was bought for next season or not. For us, it’s not so much letting him go that’s the issue, especially given his contract situation, it’s much more about what we’ve replaced him with. Let’s hope it works out.