S-Clarke

This month is going to change this league a lot I think, injuries starting to show - as Coventry are stretched squad wise a bit at the moment. This is where the likes of ourselves and Ipswich can certainly make up ground, and where you may start to see the likes of Stoke, PNE, Millwall and such drift off the pace slightly as the amount of games stretch their smaller squads. Be interesting to see how it looks in a month.

Jander held that midfield together today and I think he's really grown into this side, but you can't underestimate the work Leo does up and down that left. He never stops. He helps Manning out so much, which is crazy to say for such a maverick style player. He's fairly unique in that sense, skill in abundance but he works his arse off in equal measure. The team is 10x weaker without him, and it shows.

The Birmingham win was a big one for me, showing that he's been able to lift the squad after a defeat is something other managers have struggled with. Now this is his gig, his team. I want to see how he handles January and what he does with the squad, I think we're still missing 1 or 2 - but you cannot argue with what he's done since he came in. QPR - A really poor showing in terms of game management, but got the win Wednesday - Decent, not amazing, but comfortable. Charlton - totally blew them away. best we've played in many years. Leicester - again - blew them away in a short burst. Game was done. Millwall - We let it slip, poor game management in the second half. Similar to that QPR game in the end. Birmingham - Our toughest test because they played well I thought and are a good team, but we still came out comfortable winners. The two best teams, on paper, that we've played in this run have been Leicester and Birmingham - and we won both, scoring a combined 6 against them. It's a pretty impressive 6 game repertoire, you have to say. The biggest thing he's changed is by playing our best players. Getting the best out of our best players. Playing our best players to their natural strengths. Still was lost at the end and couldn't put an 11 together if it hit him in the face.

Yeah he should have scored, I don't think he's someone you can truly rely on to score goals at this level. His pace and running strength was good though. I don't think we'd score enough goals with him as the up front guy, but he could compliment the attack with his pace.

Yeah he wasn't very good, we lost the entire control of that midfield once Jander went off and he came on. He was awful. That tackle by the way - red card worthy, no idea wtf he was doing. He's so off the pace it's unreal.

Prime Oriol Romeu. I don't think many of us appreciated how much he held our midfield together in those topsy turvy PL years. I'd also probably say Tadic, he wasn't the quick/pacy player that Mane was in that team - but on his day, too good for us - as he proved at Ajax.

This is what confused Nathan Jones/Still etc - getting it forward quickly doesn't mean lumping it. It means deceive and accurate quick passes, on the ground, through the lines. That's what getting it forward quickly means in our context.

We're finally using him right. We've gone from being slow and predictable in our build up, to quickly playing through the lines. Azaz picks up space, and if you move it quickly around him then he will stand out. We're making much better use of the players we bought now, Still made a bit of a mess integrating them in it has to be said. He could never find the right match - but it was always staring him in the eyes. Jander in the middle, Leo on the left, Azaz floating around in the 10, and Fellows offering width from wide right. But it only works if you move the ball quickly, which we are now doing.

I can't stand Bazunu, but you're being incredibly harsh if you're knit picking on Gray's goal today. Just leave that one there. The goal James Beadle let in from Armstrong was 10x worse.

This was a really impressive one for me, probably our most. I have been sceptical about how we return from poor results over the last few years, but we bounced back properly today. I thought Birmingham gave us a really good game, as I felt they would - but we break so quickly now, we don't fart around with the ball, we get it and go with pace. Getting direct players like Leo and Fellows in the team makes such a difference, because it automatically pulls players around and creates space - and Armstrong thrives in space, so he's going to nick things. Leo was the best player on the pitch though, it's not just his direct running, what I really love about him is his resilience - he just keeps going, he gets kicked, pulled, pushed but he keeps going - he doesn't play for the foul, he plays to make something/score something. He's the best player we've had in fricking years, a proper game changing player - not many of those at this level. I think what we're seeing now is the new blood showing their face - Azaz, Fellows, Leo, Jander - they've stepped up and they're pulling this team along now. We're not reliant on Downes being fit, Armstrong being fit, Edozie or Aribo being available - we've evolved and you can now finally see the improvements. There are still holes in the squad that I'm sure we'll fill, but this is more like it. I think Still tried to put too much of a structure in place around players who didn't really want that, whereas the biggest difference I can see that Tonda has brought is enabling freedom - go and run if you've got space, drive forward if there's room. None of this pass back just to keep the ball nonsense, the target seems to be clear and they have clarity - get forward as soon as possible with as few passes as possible, keep the pace quick and drive forward. We have a squad of players built entirely for that, so now they're being allowed to play that way it's no surprise the results are coming.

It would be amazing if you had the ability to have a debate and articulate your points or views clearly with people, but I don't think you have the brain cells for it. You purposely miss the point with most posts, to justify throwing your voice around at the fans of the club you supposedly support. You spend more time attacking the clubs fans than you actually do talking about 'football'.

Not a surprise, fully expected. The club wanted this as soon as they shuffled him into the first team, at the expense of the incumbent Trollope/Lallana. And then when you add the continuous club fluff pieces with players blowing praise up his arse, it was always the end goal. Is it the right call? I don't think so, personally. He had a great run of 4 games, things clicked against Charlton and Leicester specifically - but we came down to that same bump against Millwall, all the old fragilities and lack of game management on and off pitch came back to bite us. The club clearly can't hang on an Interim for long, so they had to make a call - but I don't agree with the view that there is simply no one else out there other than Tonda, we'd have been attractive to a wide range of more experienced managers. But it's what it is, the club have stuck themselves on Tonda - will it be the first SR masterstroke, or yet another catastrophic misjudgement in their history of misjudgements?

I'm not writing him off? I've just not been enormously impressed by him as yet. I'm not talking about under Tonda, under Will and Juric too. Just not quite 'seeing' it yet. That's all.

You really do try to wind people up for the sake of it. This forum was a much better place when you went awol. Is Ramsdale able to play for us now? No. So therefore, do we have a single decent goalkeeper at the club today? No, we don't. If he's contracted to us or not is irrelevant because he cannot play for us today, tomorrow, next week or next month. So my point stands.

I do like your posts at times, and you are entitled to your view point - but coming out and calling people divs isn't a particularly smart move. Everything you have said above is hope casting and guesswork. ''Looks like it's coming good'' ''Looks like their decision this time has been good'' ''Looks like our recruitment has been good'' - we know none of that yet, absolutely none. We've got some good players, but the overall picture still looks like this - - We do not have a number 9 who can score goals. - We do not have a single good goalie at the club. - Spors looks like he's actively throwing his name about to get himself out of the club. And this annoying thing about ''not going up, giving it a year, then attacking the league'' is even more wishful hope casting, rathe than anything built on reality. The best time to get promoted is 'now', which is when you have the deepest squad, the most expensive squad, and the bigger pot of parachute payments to play with. A season or two in this league with SR as our owners and we aren't ever getting out of it.

I thought Wellington would be decent for us at this level, but count me totally underwhelmed by him at this point. I've just not seen anything from him yet, doesn't seem to do anything in an attacking sense nor is he very good defensively.

What on earth is that? Where is McCarthy, Ramsdale, Kelvin Davis? Why is Bazunu even in the list?

The bounce back is what I'm intrigued by. We have struggled to bounce back in the league from a bad result in the last couple of years, I'm intrigued to see if we can turn in a good performance or do we just default to the norm, of one bad result shaking the team and sticking us in a run of no wins again? If we can nail that on Saturday and jump straight back into a win and a good performance, consider me whelmed.

''The club are relaxed about the striker situation, with Ross Stewart due to return to the side shortly. The club will only move if they can find better than what they have, and they have trust in the strikers already at the club.'' Predicted media pushed line by mid-January.

The players have never dealt with pressure very well, they always wilt. When the going is good (3-0, 5-0 etc etc) or the oppo are so poor they can't block space it's great, they can enjoy themselves. But whenever there is adversity or a tight game (which they will be lots of) we can never seem to handle that professionally. Players like Jack Stephens were kept around for this very reason supposedly - vocal on the pitch, good organiser, leads the defence - but we knew how that story was going to end when he re-contracted. It was a performance which closely mirrored QPR away, we just couldn't see this one over the line.

I go with the general feeling that we were lucky to even be in the game, we were fortunate to be at 2-2 in the 95th min. We weren't in it yesterday, we couldn't gain any control nor management of that game in any minute. It was a really piss poor effort when you look at what went on before, but it also raised the alarms as to how we revert back to type when opposition press us aggressively. We didn't have that against Leicester, Charlton, Wednesday etc - and we were fine. QPR pressed us hard, but we were lucky as shit to get out of thee with a win. So this performance was more in line with the QPR away one for me, still major, major question marks over the makeup of this squad and the inexperience in and around the coaching staff to see us over the line in these 'bog standard' Championship encounters.

Yeah I imagine they've done most of the legalities already, they just wanted a full week between fixtures before announcing it.

I think the club have decided Jelert is for the bin, he'll be gone in January.

He's on course to win the worst GK in the league stat again, and he hasn't even been first choice all season. He's consistent, you've got to give him that.

I wouldn't even have fancied Quarshie today, his legs would have been going all over the place. I think we need a better CB, as I don't really rate any of ours. I like Edwards, but seemingly the club want to cash in on him. I agree with Fellows, in the last couple of games he was excellent from wing back because he was attacking - he was against 10 men mid-week, and against Charlton they didn't even attack - so he could just play as a winger. That's where we bought him for, so I agree - play him as a winger once Mads is back.