S-Clarke

This is a point I made the other day, the 'games in hand' - I hate them at this stage of the season, horrendous. Give me the points on the board now, the games in hand are shit. All it does is create a false illusion ''oh if we win those two games look at where we'll be'' - without them we're absolutely miles behind. My mind was dragged into that false illusion as well, but I've totally come to the conclusion that games in hand at this stage of the season are nothing more than a huge disadvantage.

Not at all, always one of the more positives on here - but I think there comes a point where you just need to be realistic. No point in wasting energy in hoping for the impossible, sure if we were closer then it would be pretty exciting - but we're 10 points behind with 9 games to go, it's the biggest of tall orders - it took us a 26 game unbeaten run to overhaul their last 10 point lead. Time to focus on the Play offs.

The Kalvin Philips sub killed them. He should never have left his Leeds comfort blanket, no where near good enough for anyone else.

Always been the case though isn't it, whenever they go to the screen it's a done deal. They've got people rabbiting on in their ears influencing their opinion.

As fans we complain about the shoe-horning players, square pegs etc yet suggest stuff like this. Aribo is not a striker, he is a number 10 at most in an attacking sense. We tried to play him as a striker during pre-season when he first signed for us, epic fail there. Being 'tall and strong' should not be the single prerequisite for playing up front.

One of the worst quality seasons in many years imo. Everton and Forest have both been deducted points, and both will still probably survive without breaking sweat.

Add him to the list of atrocious and unceccecary signings over the last so many windows. We really need to sort our shit out as these mistakes aren't going to be recoverable from without PL money. Our recruitment is bordering on criminal negligence. We even spent £10m at this level on an injured striker in August when we needed a striker, and he's still injured.

No chance that game will mean anything. Will be a dead rubber with everything decided before that. Leicester and Ipswich battling it out for 2nd may go down to the wire, but Leeds will have it wrapped up imo.

Cov's scouting in recent years has been absolutely faultless. Hamer, Gyökeres, Wright, Simms, Van Ewijk (someone I'd look to as a replacement for KWP), O'Hare, Sheaf etc. Absolutely epic recruitment. We can learn a lot from them.

But there's no point in looking at the games they'll drop points in if we also drop points on the same gameday. No one had Leicester and Leeds to drop points yesterday, so potentially we had some bonus ground to make up - but we fucked it and that is that. They'll probably drop a few points here and there in the run in, but inevitably so will we as we proved yesterday. We simply have too much to do, realistically we needed to win all 10 games and we've already failed at the first hurdle on that one. We can only get 100 points now I think, and the Top 2 are already on course to both hit 100+ points. It'll be interesting watching from afar to see how Leicester can recover though, how they've made that into a 3 horse race is beyond me.

They're top league professional footballers, if they let a little bit of crowd distraction throw them off course and lead them to forget how to defend then they shouldn't be playing football at this level. Not sure I buy it, as we had no control of that game in the 2nd half at all - even before all the stand stuff.

When the teams above us drop points we need to maximise how we capitalise, because we're already 10 points away from them and only have 9 games left - so gaining just 1 point is a mega fail. It's going to be near on impossible to get anywhere near the Top 2 now, this is why I hate games in hand because they create this weird limbo/illusion land where people assume we'll win the games in hand etc, then look where we'll be. I've been guilty of being drawn into that. The fact is as of this morning we are 8 points off of 3rd, 9 points off of 2nd, 10 points off of 1st. We have 9 games to go. It's not going to happen. We're finishing 4th. I've been looking forward to the final 10 games but it honestly feels like it's over before it even begun.

More frustration than anything for me, a case of 'what could have been' - these sides will wobble but not much....and when they do we need to avoid doing the same, otherwise nothing changes. But today we also slipped up so whatever they've done is pretty irrelevant really.

Not really sure I'd feel anything other than fucking frustration if we end today with both Leeds and Leicester losing their games.

Still waiting for those 5 Pledges.

Don't bother watching it back, it was a bit of a bore-fest for the most part. Yes, Che's misses were bad. He was in the 6 yard box on his own with just the keeper to beat with his first chance and missed. Armstrong also guilty of missing two efforts in a congested penalty area.

The goals and chances against have certainly flowed with Stephens back in the 11. I've always found him to be a decent last ditch defender, but the fact he's always last ditch is probably the most telling thing about his game. He recovered from that breakaway today only because their striker's touch was absolutely diabolical. I really think we blinked too soon to give him the captaincy, I think he's third choice CB - Bednarek and THB as the two is where we built our consistency, ever since we've broken that up the goals against have certainly flowed consistently. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

I don't think that's fair, you don't get to 84 points by getting loads of underserved points. They totally deserve to be where they are. We caught them back in the winter, but let them get away again through our incompetence - so full credit to them and they're in for an exciting last 6 weeks or so and we'll carry on watching afar whilst playing the ball between our back 4.

Of course the loan players are going to be better, most of the time they are proven PL players that we couldn't have afforded to buy outright anyway - so we've loaned them. THB, Downes, Fraser etc - PL players.

Not that we're in the debate anymore....but what the fuck have Leicester done??? The lead they had over Ipswich/Leeds etc was enormous, they were clear not just from 3rd but from 2nd. They're now 3rd with 7 games to go. I've never known a team at this level to bottle a gap that huge this late on. I think Leeds will now go onto win the league with games to spare, that last game against us is a nothing event now. 2nd will be a fight out between Leicester and Ipswich, at this stage it's hard to look beyond Ipswich as Leicester have just imploded at the wrong time. Norwich and WBA for 5th and 6th for me. Norwich are your typical play off winning team as they've come from no where in the 2nd half of the season to storm it. Leicester remaining in this league next year with their financial troubles is an absolute disaster for them.

It's nothing about style or tactics with Che, he's just a truly horrific finisher. Stick him in tandem with a finisher and let him do all the dirty work and it will be more fruitful, but if you're expecting him to score you the goals then you're in for a rude awakening. When we sold Ings the club hung their coat on Che, with the likes of Armstrong and Broja supporting him. It didn't even take much for Broja to out perform him and he wasn't even ours. What I want more than anything this summer is a proper number 9, a consistent finisher to play through the middle. I fully accept Adams will go (blessing) and so will Armstrong with just 1 year left, so it gives us a great opportunity to properly revamp that area. I just don't want to hear any nonsense in the summer about how Stewart is fitter than ever etc etc, we need to be aiming to replace him too - he is nothing more than a squad player in my eyes at this stage.

You can kind of predict it already. Che and Armstrong leaving in the summer, we're panicking as fans as no new number 9 seems to be coming into the door. The club remain calm and relaxed about the situation, only focused in buying better than they have, as they have confidence in Stewart who is already here etc. Come the end of the window, we don't sign a new number 9, all faith put into Stewart again and he gets injured in the first game after the window like you say. Our recruitment of strikers since the sale of Danny Ings has been an absolute disgrace. I hope I'm wrong with the above, but I've seen it all before.

But that would mean we'd have to play Leeds or Leicester in the playoffs at some stage, Ipswich in the playoffs is the better option in terms of pure 11 v 11 quality.

I don't really buy that, Fraser had a clear chance - should have scored, Armstrong had two efforts he needed a cleaner hit on - no idea how they both stayed out. Adams, I mean what can you say. You just have to score of those if you're a professional level player, 1 if you're having a bad day - but to miss both I just can't quite fathom. None of that is because of the style or patterns of play or tactics, we just never sorted out a proper number 9. The way we played enabled those opportunities for Adams, but he's just shit.

We've lost all of our momentum, they've still got some - albeit they are stuttering. Of the 3 top 3 sides we have to play I'd say they are one of the more beatable ones, but I'm sat here today and I don't think it really matters anymore. We needed a win today to go into that game on Monday with a chance to claw right back - now we're going there to just avoid them getting further away, all a bit naff and pointless now really.