saintant

Adams should be passing that to Armstrong.

Embarrassing free kick. This is beyond a joke.

Apart from giving a ridiculous short pass in his own area when we clearly had nowhere to go!

Shambles. Bazunu with a short stupid pass and we are not set up for it in any shape or form. Suicidal. Got away with one there. This is awful/

9-0 anyone 🙂

I have doubts too. He seems to be a player who can look great when we are on top but vanishes if we're struggling. Time for him to put in a big performance to repay the faith RM has shown in him.

Not much height there - might struggle to defend corners and free kicks. Should have plenty going forward though. Another 4-4 draw maybe 🙂

Agree. If Sully is fit he should be starting tonight. We paid a lot of money for him to play in the Premier League so he should be well capable of ripping apart Championship defences. Chuck him in, give him a run of games and let's see what he's made of - the players being selected in front of him are hardly getting us off our seats so far.

Well that defence has played 5 games and let in more goals than any other side in the Championship so I fail to see what difference one more game is going to make. Clearly, to date, the goalkeeper and back line are not good enough although I appreciate they can improve - quite frankly if we are serious about promotion they are going to have to and pretty quickly.

It's all been far too predictable so far tonight.

1-1. Harry Kane taking charge and deciding to bypass the tip-tap and play an incisive longer pass into the danger zone.

I'll not bother explaining.

Strange, England have played 25 minutes of boring, slow possession football without creating a chance and Dion Dublin (what does he know) suggests we need to move it a lot quicker. Ukraine have had little possession but looked to get at England and now they are one up. Ring any bells?

To be fair even RM has admitted he's not been happy with most of our performances. I got the impression he thought the only game we played up to standard was Sheff Wed.

Play walking football between our centre backs and we invite trouble as we have already seen. Playing from the back is fine but it doesn't work if we dawdle on the ball as Sunderland proved - we were a mess and they swarmed all over us because they soon twigged we were playing too slowly when passing between our goalkeeper and defenders. It will keep happening if we don't sort it out.

I was wondering that. The lad looks a unit but would be a surprise if he's good enough for this level.

Didn't seem to have learned much from what I saw of the headed goal by Sergeant for Norwich. Stranded at his front post as the ball sailed over his head to the back post.

I'm not suggesting we have seen no good games this season. I am merely pointing out that, at times, we play the game at walking pace particularly our centre backs. This invites pressure leading to mistakes. Let's make sure everyone is playing at a decent tempo because there are times when we are not and they always seem to coincide with us getting into trouble at the back.

Man City and Brighton do not play the slow possession based style of football you describe - anything but. If we could get close to how either of those teams play then happy days.

Let's stop publishing league tables then. Football is totally results driven whether some players like it or not - those that don't are probably playing the wrong sport.

You seem to be an advocate of the type of slow, dreary football most of us detest. Walking football is played by 50 year old men. I'm sure most of us want to see the ball moved crisply and with purpose, we want to see flying wingers taking on opponents and players charging into the box to get on the end of high and low crosses. Football is not a game of chess, it's meant to generate emotions, passion and excitement. Watch all the best sides in the world and they get you off your seat - they don't stroll around tip-tapping five yard safe passes just to say they play possession football. Possession with a purpose is what I want to see.

Looks like Lumley to me.

Nothing wrong with passing the ball to your own players - if that's possession football then I'm for it. However, it has to be with a purpose and done with a quick tempo. Pass and move, get players taking up positions between the lines and we'll make the game look a lot more simple and create more chances than we are doing currently. We seem to be trying to play out from the back but without any kind of tempo or urgency then look surprised when we get picked off. If you play walking football at the back like we do you are asking for trouble because opponents will quickly latch onto this and press hard leading to panic and errors. I'd like to see us play a mix of playing out from the back and pinging longer balls down the flanks or into the channels - there's more than one way to skin a cat and it makes us less predictable and one dimensional.

I think the fact that we paid 12 million for Baz rising to a potential 15 million has a lot to do with why he continues to be our number one. I'd be inclined to give Lumley a chance - he doesn't fill me with confidence but nor do any of our keepers. Don't think he could do much worse.

Agree regarding the system. Possession football and always playing out from the back works if you are Man City. Haven't seen many other clubs make it work and certainly not in the Championship. We now have a great squad of players but the danger is we try to be too clever and the result is we don't get the best out of them. Mix it up and stop being so one dimensional because there are other systems that work as demonstrated by Sunderland's no-nonsense attitude which earned them a 5-0 victory and it should have been more.