Tommy Mulgrew

Deleted

And there is the difference between a mid-table Premiership club and a mid-table Championship club. 6:1 final score; 6:2 aggregate score.

Well, they do have our fourth-choice goalie.☺️

A while ago, I suggested that we should start a new thread for Christophe (and others) to keep us updated on VAFC. He and several others favoured the idea and, as far as I recall, nobody demurred. So, here it is, celebrating the win against Paris FC in the Coupe de France yesterday. It should enable posts about VAFC to be separate from those more generally about Sports Republic. If we get a regular contributor from our Turkish sister club, we could start a thread for Goztepe, too. Enjoy your dedicated thread, Christophe.

Agreed. We should have been out of sight at half time; we were a pleasure to watch but should have made our superiority count even more. One goal should have been disallowed, as should theirs. In the second half we created few good chances and Swansea should really have scored three times. So, strange to say, we were lucky not to lose! Against better sides, we would have done. We are riding the crest of a beautiful wave but, look more closely, and we could easily be brought crashing down. Let’s hope RM learns some lessons (aired above in this thread) from this game and keeps us on our record run.

We’ve got Che Adams (whose last two goals have come from his deft left foot!), at least while he is here.

St Jonny is hot on T’s heels at 20 and counting.

Continuing the goalie theme, Jack Bycroft to Swindon on a “permanent” deal.

Harry Lewis signed for Carlisle from Bradford City today. Good luck to him. Did well for Bradford apparently.

The last Diallo we had in midfield is a low hurdle for us to better. Let’s hope this Djalo does better than him. Or play Diallo on the wing as an attacker: He’ just got to be better than two of our injured AMs.

I agree with pretty well all Vectis said. I think Bednarek has improved his attacking and passing, long and short, immeasurably in the last few months so that he is now as good as Stephens at that. Witness his runs forward with the ball against several oppos recently and his long, over the top pass that the Smallone headed wide ten days or so ago when it was easier to score, just before Che’s goal.

Just a thought: if Christophe is serious about continuing to post on here, how about giving him his own Valenciennes thread? Then he would not potentially get lost in the middle of a lengthy SR thread. Mods?

Old news 😉

This but with “we” instead of “they”. 😉

So it’s all your fault for taking the easy option. 😉

Arsenal willing to let Reiss Nelson go on loan for the rest of the season. HCDAJFU as a quick and lethal winger. But he might get more interesting offers from EPL sides. Certainly we could not afford more than a modest fraction of his £100+k per week wages. He’s 24 apparently.

Che manages to do quite a few air-kicks; he failed to make contact a few times today right in front of goal. That flatters his stats.

IIRC, the only others to have played LB are Bree and KWP. Bree gave space only occasionally, KWP a bit more often because he ventured further forward a lot. Manning does it every game he plays. I do not like the risk calculation RM has obviously made; it seems to me that only the opposing team’s failure to score repeatedly after having had the benefit of such a large amount of frequent open space delivered on a plate to them has stopped us dropping plenty more points than we have done. Better teams will give us a deserved thrashing if we go on like this. Fortunately, not many such teams play in the Championship. But it could be a real problem for us in our remaining fixtures this season. I prefer not to call out individual players but I shall be happy if Manning does not play again. Certainly, if we gain promotion, we shall have to correct our glaring deficiency at LB. I note that Walsall scored six away from home today against Grimsby, who I seem to recall beat us comfortably the last time we played them. Fingers crossed for this coming Saturday. 🙂

Despite having a penalty saved, West Ham win 2:0 at Arsenal. JWP looks to be MOTM yet again. Rice concedes the penalty. “Wish we were West Ham.”

Woody, why the apparent personal vendetta? Calm down, dear! 🤐

I think we all know that it is a deliberate tactic; it’s just that some of us on here think that we should not employ that tactic as often during a match as we seem to do. There are certainly times when we should condense play to gain an advantage and we should do so. But at other times we should be more conventionally wide in defence to minimise the chances of us conceding a goal. In recent matches our failure to do that has not caused us to draw or lose but, as Trousers has recently pointed out in a different context, past performance is not a reliable guide for the future. In our quest for automatic promotion we need to do everything that we can to get three points in every league game.

That reminds me of a game I watched at a stadium not far from the River Itchen earlier this season. 🤫 Vestergard doing his usual stuff in injury time - not that it helps us though: I think Leicester are going to stay top even though we might run them close. And nice to see Schumacher giving Rooney a roasting in Birmingham. Shame, too, about the Skates. COYFS

Watched on SwansTV on the Swans’ app. Excellent stuff and a very fair commentary (from Lee Trundle at al); very complimentary about our performance and took the trouncing well. Funniest part was when they said how versatile Joe Allen was - fouls with one foot and then the other. A real team performance. No one played badly. Standouts for me were Aribo, Edozie and Fraser. The Pilgrims must be fearing the worst for Friday. Onwards and upwards Happy and Saintglorious. 👏 👍

IMO Swansea and Norwich pose more of a threat than Plymouth and Walsall. So I’d keep our strongest available 11 for the former two and rest a few of our more delicate petals for the latter two. And hope they keep off the slosh over Christmas and New Year. Merry Christmas and a HNY to all our readers on this forum. xxx

Whew, what a cup tie. Saints never do it the easy way. Cracking game.