saintant

If Ralph had been here at the start of the season we would now have 52 points based on his average and be sat in 7th spot 5 points ahead of Leicester. I exclude Cardiff away because he had no time to influence that game. The man has worked miracles.

Someone claiming Wolves played us off the park yet we won 3-1 and missed a couple of sitters. You can play all the nicey nicey football but the only thing that counts is putting the ball in the net. Wolves may have looked prettier at times but we were by far the more effective of the two sides. Ralph is not one for possession for possessions sake and he likes to get the ball into dangerous areas rather than fannying about.

Excellent win. We are very lucky to have Ralph. 4 wins out of the last six games and the 2 defeats were an unlucky loss at Man Utd and Liverpool at home when we gave them a scare. Good wins against Spurs and Wolves. Ralph has the knack of giving even the big sides a game and getting good results against teams we expect to beat. He is a breath of fresh air after the dross from previous 3 managers.

Maybe you should take a look at Cardiff's remaining fixtures. It might help allay some of your fears.

I'm guessing your 61 year old warehouse operative from Enfield had just been pointing out to his mates that effing Hugo was only effing covering one effing side of the effing goal and therefore a well struck free kick towards his effing right hand would effing leave him effing too much effing ground to make up. And so it effing proved. Goalkeeper's positioning for free kicks from the centre of the pitch is a constant bone of contention.

Just looked at Cardiff's run in and hadn't been aware that, of their remaining 8 matches, only 3 are at home. Two of those home games are Chelsea and Liverpool whilst the other is Palace which will be tricky. Away games for them to come at both Manchester clubs, Brighton, Burnley and Fulham. Despite beating us at St Marys their away record is horrendous. I can't see them mustering many points from those fixtures. In comparison we have home games against Liverpool, Wolves, Bournemouth and Huddersfield whilst we travel to Brighton, Newcastle, West Ham and Watford. We sit two points in front of Cardiff with a vastly superior goal difference so, in conclusion, we should be confident of avoiding the drop. This assumes that Fulham and/or Huddersfield are not suddenly going to rise, Phoenix like, from the ashes.

As I stated in the after match thread yesterday I would not tend to include the Cardiff game as I don't think Ralph was really involved so he's accrued 21 points from 14 games at an average of 1.5 points. Had he been our manager for all 30 games and achieved the same average we would be sat below the big six teams in 7th position on 45 points. Considering what he's got to work with in terms of our squad I think he has performed miracles.

Amazingly, if you take Ralph's 14 games in charge (I exclude Cardiff away as he had not worked with the team) we have taken 21 points. Average 1.5pts per game so, in theory, had he been here at the start of the season and achieved that average, after 30 matches, we'd now be on 45 points and sitting in 7th spot. Food for thought and quite an achievement given the squad we have. Hats off to you Ralph.

I think two more wins should see us safe as I cannot see Cardiff getting 10 points from their last 9 fixtures which include Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City and Man Utd.

Very unlucky not to get at least a point today. Unfortunately the gutless referee decided that he would have an easy afternoon at Old Trafford by giving virtually every decision in Utd's favour and denying us two good penalty shouts. These type of referees are absolute cowards who prefer to meekly submit so as not to incur the wrath of the home crowd. It is high time such lack of moral fibre was highlighted by downgrading these biased officials who would rather appease the home fans than give fair and impartial decisions. A disgraceful performance from the referee and I hope he is hauled across the coals for it.

In reality we have one of the worst squads in the division and we delude ourselves to think otherwise. We are probably on a par with teams like Cardiff so we have no right to expect to win any games, including today's, because we do not have the class players who can do the unexpected. This is obviously Ralph's worst result but he's doing his best with what he's got to work with. If he manages to keep us ahead of 3 teams by the end of the season he will have performed a miracle. If not then why should any of us be surprised? Face it, we don't have a strong squad and relegation is a distinct possibility. Whether you blame lack of activity in the transfer window is another matter but Ralph has made us better - maybe that won't be enough but he's giving it his best shot. Today's result makes the task far harder but we must keep going.

No way. We are in a dog fight. Our squad is probably one of the worst in the Prem so even against a team like Cardiff there are no guarantees. We have poor players and did not buy in the Jan window so Ralph doesn't have a lot to work with. If he keeps us up it will be a miracle. Even games against the lower placed teams are a lottery so we'll need a huge amount of luck to keep ahead of three teams by the end of the season. We don't have the squad to be able to go into games expecting to win.

Given the state of our squad and factor in injuries plus suspensions, to get 4 points from Chelsea and Leicester away is nothing short of a miracle. Hats off to Ralph. I'm sure the Leicester fans will be even more pleased with Puel now.

Mr Puel the rotation clown does it again and this time it's the Leicester fans who suffer his foolishness. They are completely safe and not going to do anything in the league yet this dope disrespects their one remaining chance of winning a trophy. I am sure the Leicester fans are very pleased with him today particularly those who paid good money and took the trouble to go to Newport. Maybe this will teach Puel a big lesson. Arrogant idiot.

If Raiph thinks JWP is suddenly going to be harder and more aggressive then he hasn't watched him play enough - it is not going to happen.

We are giving away too many goals from deflections. Is that just bad luck? More likely we are perhaps laying off players and inviting them to shoot when we should be right in their faces.

Just checking I wasn't going mad as someone else said Ward-Prowse was great.

Was Ward-Prowse great?

I don't get the doom and gloom concerning other results this weekend. The final positions will not be determined by this weekend's results. If we are good enough we will go and get the points we need in the rest of the season. If we aren't we will get relegated. The set of results this weekend has a minimal bearing on the final table. No point in exaggerating the effect.

No disgrace losing to a team that has now won 5 out of their last 6 games and have a far stronger squad than us. Add in the fact that Ralph is trying to get our players up to the required fitness levels which is always likely to hit home during the busy Xmas fixture schedule and it is not surprising our levels dropped last night. Next two games will obviously be tough so we need to see what, if anything, we get than go again. Our first aim is to finish above 3 sides and, looking at some of the dross at the bottom of the table, we should manage that comfortably.

"Ryan Bertrand not a fan of Mark Hughes." Is anyone?

People seem not to have noticed we were without Bertrand, Cedric and Lemina. Or maybe that doesn't affect us?

Still...at least we've stopped Space from scoring tonight because we always make sure he is tightly marked.

Keep hearing that there are 3 worse teams than us. Can anyone name them?

I reckon we would win a lot more matches if defenders were allowed to mark opponents in dangerous positions. I hadn't realised this wasn't allowed and, come to think of it, maybe the rule only applies to our defenders. Strange really that you are called a defender which implies you should at least make a token attempt to defend yet our lot are quite happy marking that very dangerous opponent Space who has never scored a goal. Wonder why Mark Hughes, who has been in football a long time, can't do something about this problem which is costing us lots of points. Maybe he doesn't think we pay him enough and it should be someone else's job. I do wonder what goes on at the training ground.