saintant

What are the 3 previous managers doing now? One is playing golf, the second is doing a bit of TV punditry and the third is managing Reading who currently occupy a relegation spot in Division 1. Not exactly glowing endorsements and no clubs of note have beaten a path to their door since they left us. This suggests to me that we were right to change them - the problem is that we haven't appointed replacements well for successive coaches we've fired. That's got nothing to do with the players and I'm as certain as I can be that a good appointment would make a world of difference to the way we play and our results.

Done well it draws out the opposition and then you hit the spaces created quickly in transition and break in numbers on your opponents - watch Brighton. We don't do it correctly and I'm not sure RM has the nous to coach it - he's not convinced me he has much of a clue about even the basics so I think him trying to coach us to play out from the back is too much of a stretch.

Because his team mates weren't showing for the ball. I lost count of the number of times we gave the ball away simply because there was zero movement. Pass and move, the basic foundation on which everything else is built and RM can't get his team doing it. Staggering.

Dragan is the bloke putting his hard earned on the line not anybody at SR. If I were them I'd be thinking fuck loss of pride, we'll be feeling the wrath of Dragan again if we don't sort this out quick.

Sulemana is better through the middle as he demonstrated against Liverpool. He causes few problem for the opposition as a winger not least because crosses are a waste of time.

There is no shop window - it closed recently.

Ankersen wasn't the brains behind Brentford it was the other guy whose name escapes me. He's still there but Ankersen left - no surprise there.

This! A young centre back clearly gesturing and imploring his team mates to find space and give him an option. That one moment summed up everything that is wrong with the way this football team is being coached. Considering RM's vanity project is meant to involve possession based football the fact that he doesn't seem to understand the basic concept of pass and move is frankly staggering. A football pitch is a huge area and 10 outfield players can't possibly cover it all - there will always be spaces to run into yet we have players who would rather hide and lurk in areas where they cannot receive the ball, the manager should be dealing with that. Watch Brighton who are as smooth and well-oiled a machine as you will see. Every player knows his role, his position, where to run which means they all know almost instinctively where a team mate will be at any given time. Compare that with our way of playing - it's all off the cuff, make it up as you go along without shape, cohesion or purpose. There are no partnerships, no patterns of good play and no signs that we are heading in the right direction but just need fine tuning -we are going backwards literally. Gone are the days when we'd lose the ball then hunt in packs to get it back as soon as possible. I have no faith that RM and his coaches can make this right so we're stuck with watching what we have seen in the past games. Boring football and many defeats. The fans deserve better but SR have proved themselves incapable of running things or making smart appointments/decisions.

The appointment of RM was clearly a mistake and now the fans once again have to suffer as he tries to prove that his project is going to work if we only give him time. I'm not sure how the club extracts itself from yet another mess of its own making. RM is a huge gamble because he has no track record to give him any credence so basically we have to just sit back and watch while his experiment unravels. He has just presided over 3 losses on the bounce, two of which were home games and the overall aggregate score was 1-10. Alarm bells must be ringing for SR but they are still paying Ralph and Nathan Jones. It's a pretty sticky situation and, the way we are playing, it's hard to see where the next win is coming from. Happy days.

How are you feeling?

Anyone else starting to feel really cheated? After dropping a division I had been looking forward to seeing lots of good football and wins from a well drilled team brimming with confidence. If anything we look worse than we did in the Premier League. Bad choices again I'm afraid.

He's not fit to lace Perraud's boots.

Some excellent points here.

It was marginally better but let's be honest Ipswich should have been 3-0 up at half-time. They let us off the hook.

Stuart Armstrong and KWP were the only two who looked like half decent footballers. I blame that largely on the set up and coaching because players are being made to look bad because of the system.

The best football we've seen has always been when we have an ultra fit team and press hard high up the pitch. To me that is the way we should be aiming to go. RM and his possession football is a complete waste of time and has zero chance of working.

The only tactical switch RM made was to cut out most of the inverted full backs nonsense. Sadly it didn't help him send out a side with any real shape, cohesion or sign that they knew and believed in what they were doing. I'm afraid as others have said RM is out of his depth and we've yet again made a complete mess of selecting an intelligent manager. Those expecting things to improve under his leadership are in for a disappointment from everything that I'm seeing and hearing.

It won't.

You make a very fair point. We were without shape or idea from start to finish. I'm not sure what RM and his coaches do on the training ground but whatever it is they need to be doing something different. We hardly troubled Ipswich who weren't any great shakes themselves.

Mid table is being generous from what I'm seeing.

RM hasn't got a frigging clue.

Half hearted.

Is it me or do our players only look half interested?

Adams misses his customary sitter,

Should be 3-0 if they could finish. They might not be so wasteful in the second half. Bring on Bednarek, move Charles into midfield and let's have a go at them. They are nothing special which makes it even more worrying at how poor we are.