S-Clarke

Rothwell did get a goal of the month, but that's all I've got.

That's for pre-season in my opinion. We've got to hit these 8 games as well as we can, see if we can get ourselves on another run to create momentum. I don't see these 8 games as a mini preseason for the playoffs, we've just got to keep going with the best 11 we can. I do believe we have a chance of winning the playoffs if we regain some momentum and we're not going to do that by playing around even more with the 11. These 8 games are still important and there are still things riding on the results - momentum.

I find it hard to get behind this reasoning, we have scored more goals than both Leeds and Leicester - we have the 2nd top scorer in the league, and the single player who has the most goal involvements across the entire league. Goal scoring isn't the problem when we're having to win games 4-2/5-3 etc. I think it's crazy to say we needed a goal scorer to make that 4-4 game a 5-4 etc. We should be winning 2-0's, 1'0's etc. The goals and way we concede has been what's killed us, if we had a relatively stable defence in the 30-40 conceded ball park then we'd be up there, probably top right now. We shouldn't be bemoaning the lack of a striker because we haven't scored enough to make up for the shit loads we let in. The other end is the problem.

You can't dissolve Martin of all blame, everyone is accountable to some point. In the PL, Bednarek struggled I'll give you, but at this level he is probably as good as you're going to get. He hasn't been shit this year, far from it. One of the best CB's in this league. It wasn't Bednarek, the board or Marie the tea lady who decided Jack Stephens had to be in the team at all costs, at the expense of the settled back 4. That was on Martin and that will always be the pivotal reason we chucked it.

I can genuinely see Charly, ABK and Perraud back in the mix - who is going to touch ABK after this season? At this stage it's probably in his and our best interests to keep hold of him next year, get him a season under his belt and see where he goes. He will still hold value as he has a long contract, so we're not losing out. I imagine takers will be low anyway, needs a season to build his value again.

You could argue he has tweaked it slightly, totally unnecessarily though and in the wrong way (the Jack Stephens floating role). He fiddled with something that wasn't broken, using Ramus's mantra right there.

Credit to you guys, you are riding that crest of a wave ourselves and Norwich did in 2010/2011 - back to back promotions is certainly on for you in my opinion, Leicester look like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders and that may well affect them further in the run-in. One thing I didn't quite understand, why were your fans shouting abuse at Downes and calling him scum? Did he leave you under a cloud when he went to Swansea? He's never struck me as the sort of player who'd kick up a fuss, so I was wondering if it was just the default ''he used to play for us, so we'll boo him'' stance

Shocker in what sense? We certainly didn't play badly or get blown away, far from it. We were miles better than Ipswich and that's my main frustration, we beat ourselves rather than Ipswich tonking us.

Maybe our analyst team had these tables upside down. It's the only sense I can make of it.

The first 2 are the ones for me. GK - To win promotion via any means you need a GK who will occasionally win you a game on his own, but he's not capable of those point winning saves sadly. Remember Leeds away back in 2011? Kelvin was ridiculously good. As a team we were so, so bad....but we needed him to stand up in goal and he did. This season that sort of performance resulted in a 5-0 at Sunderland. So for me, over the course of an entire season, you see the importance of a keeper who can make saves at crucial moments. If you don't have that then you don't achieve anything. Inconsistent team selections is the other thing - we pissed around with a settled 11 when we didn't need to, bloated out the squad with Rothwell when we didn't need to, had to find ways to fit Stephens into the team when we didn't need to. That made a huge difference to us and totally derailed us from Feb on wards and I'd say it has ultimately cost us the season. It feels as if Martin had too much choice and it has lead to him going mini-Pep on us and trying to reinvent roles and players. Idiotic.

The club don't believe there are GK issues though, so in their eyes/his eyes there was never anything to solve on that one. Anyone would take the shot at Man Utd if they were offered the chance. People call them a mess, but it's Manchester United - globally one of the biggest names in sport, who wouldn't be excited to go in there at a time when they have a chance to breathe some life into it? I'm disappointed he's off at the first shot though, and it shows a lack of loyalty, but by the same token this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity for him (and he gets to move back to where his roots are). From his personal POV I imagine he wants it and it will happen, the club will play the woe-be-me line crying about compo for a while...but that won't help us planning for his replacement. Hopefully SR have more luck with the next appointment because to have the same situation occur again, after Shields, is a bit naff.

That midfield for this level is really bad, we'd never have any control in games. We need a hell of a lot better than Smallbone if we are to see the best of Charles.

I can't buy that KWP is only on 20k, with Alex McCarthy on 50k. I just can't, makes no sense. Even with a 50% relegation clause, that would mean in the PL he was one of our poorly paid players which would be nonsense.

Not sure I buy that. THB, Bednarek, KWP, Downes are the best 4 in their respective roles in this league individually. I wouldn't pick Vestergaard, Morsey, Sam Byram, Harry Clarke etc over any of those for example. Martin is so lucky to have the individuals he has to choose from, and he's fucked it. Individually we should have enough, but we leave ourselves too exposed and have over complicated the structure with Stephens inclusion.

The logic of that reasoning fly's out of the window as he picked Adams again. You need to have a certain type of arrogance to drop your best player, and Martin certainly does have that.

I guess all we want is to occasionally hear ''What a save from Bazunu'' other than ''hmm, could he have done better there?''. If he'd have saved that third goal last night I reckon it would have been punctuated by ''what a save from Bazunu'', as it would have needed certain quality to get to it. But he doesn't seem to offer anything in that regard which is probably as harsh as I can be, as I don't think he's absolutely horrific - just incapable of making those point/game winning saves you need from a GK. The save the Ipswich keeper made at 2-1 illustrates it pretty well I think.

Hard to say yet, let's finish this season first and see what pans out. If we do stay down here then the team will be 90% new so it's impossible to say how we'd do at this stage. I'd expect us to be able to main some competitiveness at the top end should we still be in this league, financially we'll still be able to strong arm most others due to what we'd bring in transfer fee wise and the parachute payments. I think we've got one more shot at it next season if we fail this year. If we fail next year then it is curtains for god knows how long, maybe decades.

Depends on the $$$, as we saw with Tella, any of our players have a value on their head and if a club meets it then we accept. Armstrong is a depreciating asset with only 1 year left, so this summer is the last time for us to get our money back on him.

They tore Sunderland to threads in the last game, not really sure what to expect. We should beat them if we're honest, I'd put them on par with a Stoke or a Swansea style team in terms of quality. We need some wins back to back to just get some momentum, getting an away win and going into 3 home games is a good opportunity to do just that.

Thinking of players who will return after their loans - Tall Paul, ABK, Charly, Perraud. ABK and Perraud particularly haven't really flourished (ABK is made of glass), so they will come back here and have very few interested parties in my opinion. Obviously wages may dictate things, but if we gain ABK and Perraud for the season that that's a nice little boost - they're still our players at the end of the day. Charly is another one, I think the Juve chatter is just chatter - he's not doing anything there to warrant them spending any money on him, he'll be back here. I'm sure he'll still have interest but we hold the power as he has 4 years remaining. Will clubs pay what we want for Paul...? He's the one I can see generating the most interest.

Yeah Aribo was really good last night, he didn't seem to be struggling physically - but then we don't have the full info on that. We certainly went to the piss once he wasn't in midfield though. Even at 2-2 we were still in the ascendancy, but for me those 2 subs on 80ish mins effectively lost us the game. (Rothwell and Smallbone)

I really like Jay Stansfield, on loan from Fulham at Birmingham. Good presence to him, plays on the shoulder, decent turn of pace. Not sure he'll get much game time at Fulham so I'd have a look. Reminds me of Jay Rodriguez in how he plays. It'll be a mega busy summer if we stay down though, so much work to be done. We will need a new team, back to front. The scouts will earn their corn this summer (and that does scare the shit out of me given their record)

It's crazy isn't it, the one thing fans have been critical about is that he/we fart around in the back 4 and create nervousness...but the one moment he belts it up field and ''gets it away'' as so many call for, it actually costs us a goal. I wouldn't blame him for the long GK at the stage of the game, a lot should have happened to stop the ball getting back to us as easily as it did. We were so weak.

Maybe, maybe not - I personally thought Bree was pretty shit, at fault for the 1st goal (or contributed to it). Didn't get out to their LB quick enough, we were done down that side quite a lot when they had their moments. The sending off was daft as well, you could argue he had cover so it shouldn't have been a red...but he was absolutely done all ends up and just brought the player down, piss poor play to get caught out like he did.

Absolutely. I also don't want to call out JS either as like you say he's not been bad at all, it's just what he's being asked to do and how it's unsettled the 11 which is bonkers. I'm sure Martin will defend it to the hilt, but the stats speak for themselves - since he started arsing around with the 11 to fit JS into it we have conceded way too many goals to be in the mix. We went away from what got us back to 2nd and that is what will always bug the life out of me, we had it in our hands at the end of Jan - but it's a self-inflicted drop off.