S-Clarke

Wages though. Charles will be on something like 10k a week, Winks is supposedly on upwards of 60k. We would have never spent that much on wages.

I'm absolutely devastated after that one. I didn't expect that, I thought we'd react as I believed we had the mentality right this season - looks like I was wrong. Taking it back to the start, the line up confused me a little - but the players positions when we started the game just baffled me. I'm not entirely sure what we were trying to do and it didn't feel as if the players were too sure either. It feels as if we're trying to overcomplicate it and be too clever to over-compensate for other deficiencies. For me, we should have started with Charles and Smallbone with Stephens at LB - keep KWP at RB. Football is a simple game, when you start to get too clever it will more than often go tits up. I'm very confused as to why we switched KWP to the left, it made us very unbalanced and slowed us down as he was continuously having to cut back onto his right foot - but Stephens role was confusing as hell. In defence when we didn't have the ball, but playing as a DM, CM, AMC when we had it. It was stupid and confusing and the team had no structure because of it. Saying all that though, when we went 1-1 we had them on the ropes I felt - needed to get them there and then, but we didn't play with enough purpose. Now, where the fucking fuck do you start with that second half? That is as bad as we have played all season. Inept, toothless, slow, no movement, no bravery, no running - it was absolutely diabolical and the players heads have collectively dropped, you could tell through their body language. Why are they still so fragile mentally? I thought Edozie for the time he was on the pitch was bad, S.Armstrong got tired very quickly (which is a common theme) and Brooks was popping up everywhere but with no real purpose at the end of it (it feels like his inclusion has unsettled us a little bit). It does take some going to have someone like Brooks make the team look worse though. The subs in the second half made no impact at all - Adam Armstrong was unlucky with the header, but we had no real structure and couldn't get the ball to him. Rothwell struggled to control the ball and didn't seem to have a set position to play either. And Sulemana does not suit this team, much in the same way as Charly - although as a sub he does need to do a hell of a lot more. I'm not sure where we go from here. 6 points behind now, it's a tall order - we have to pretty much win every single week now. I called us mentality monsters a few weeks ago when we came back against Huddersfield, but that seems to have been a fluke. A criticism labelled at us during our PL years was that the heads drop when the going gets tough. I thought we'd got over that, but seemingly not. The going has got really tough now and they've collectively wilted. The demeanour of the players is all wrong. The unbeaten run was terrific, you can't take that away from them at all. But having that sort of run (once in a lifetime thing) and achieving nothing at the end of it is a very saints thing to do. We had very fine margins of error because of our September and we did well to bring ourselves back into the conversation - but we should have had enough to say there, not just wilt away before Spring. We'll go on another run before the end of the season for sure, but we've left ourselves with far too much to do now. Playoffs it is and for a team that has collectively wilted like they have, you worry about how they'll cope with the pressure of those 3 games. As it stands I can't see how they will.

Maybe you should go and support them then?

I've seen enough from this side over this season to have confidence in them. We've had a couple of iffy results in the last two weeks, but we've been pretty faultless up to then really. I remember the spell Leeds had during December, they didn't win in a few - shows how quickly things can change tbh. It'll flip back again, and as long as we do our job tomorrow 2 points is nothing really - no one has any margin for error, it's not just us. We all have to be perfect. (unless we all become shit at once, that would be a laugh)

''Gap down to 6 points. This side will fold under pressure now. Playoffs beckon.'' ''Whoever gets us in the playoffs will be licking their lips. We're in this division for a few years yet.'' ''ANOTHER WEEKEND RUINED!! '' ''Bottle jobs. Thats all that they are. Can cry about the decisions all you want but when the pressures on they cant handle it. Bottling the league 100 percent'' ''Get that idiot manager out. He’s got the best championship squad in history and he’s making it look difficult. There’s not a decent team in this division and he’s completely in capable of beating anyone in the top 6. Just embarrassing. It’s like watching us last season, players clearly too confident, thinking they’re better than they are. Just fed up now. ''You cannot defend Maresca now '' Just a few highlights from the Leicester fans. Some football fans cannot deal with an inch of disappointment at all, they talk about the players being bottle jobs but the fans are bottling it.

Only when they were winning though, just saying. They were pretty silent when Leicester were bossing them. That's a massive win for them, so I'm not surprised by their reaction.

fox_lard

Two frustrating games, don't think they've killed us dead....but it means we have pretty much zero margin for error. Win the next 4 though and let's see where we are. That's my target, get to 79 points by the point we go to Leicester and the picture may well be totally different. I don't think it's totally unreasonable to expect wins against Boro, Sunderland and Millwall at home with Brum away.

Oh yeah their forums are full of them. They think they're done.

Had a quick browse on Leicester forums, if anyone wants to see the emotional nonsense drivelled out by fans just take a look. ''Auto promotion is gone for us'' ''That's us done'' ''I'm done with this team after 44 years'' ''Playoffs at best for us, we won't go up now''

I hope the players don't have the defeatist attitude of our fans.

What Leicester have done in the last 15 mins here is nothing short of shambolic. So, so, so bad for a team top of the league.

Vestergaard being the Vestergaard we all remember in the closing stages of this game, truly horrific defender.

He doesn't want 2nd though, given that he classes that as a massive failure anyway from the Adkins years.

Nothing has changed though in the grand scheme, we were hoping for a bonus tonight with Leeds losing but we still have to do our job and it's back to as it was. - 2 points behind them and to play them at their place. Leeds will lose again this season, or drop points somewhere - and so will we, it's nip and tuck to the end.

Daka did score a legit goal though.

That was so inevitable, as soon as Leicester missed their chances you just knew they'd score and win it. Just need to keep it at 2-1 and not let the GD get out of hand here, it could do now. Leicester have gone.

BWP will forever be known as the 'Coca-Cola Kid'. It was a Coca-Cola Championship comp, any team could win a 'transfer' under a specific value. All the struggling L2 clubs hated us for that, given that we'd only recently been in the PL, and had just spent £2m on Rasiak prior to it. Bit embarrassing that! He wasn't too bad, but never really set the English leagues alight.

Not too hard to miss a single assist tbf. What are the shed load of chances by the way? do you know what games they were in?

Yeah, second season. We'd screwed up the first year as we stuck with Redknapp and only gave him 90k for Fuller. So that playoff season was our best crack at getting back up, but like you say we all knew what the future would hold should we fail that.

That season was under 'Let's go Wilde', we'd just splurged our immediate future on a promotion that season. Lowe came back in the season following that, when the whole club went to the shit as was expected on the back of that Derby game failure.

Exactly that - Fraser being the prime example, impacting every game he came into before eventually forcing himself into starting. Edozie has done the same as well. I'm yet to see Sulemana impact a game for us as a sub, that's a huge problem. He has a lot of pace, quickest player in the league I'm sure, but it's pretty meaningless if he doesn't know how to use it.

Sorry, I'll just keep watching the game in front of me. I know what I can see.

Glad I wasn't the only one impacted by that game! Honestly it took a week to get back to normal for me, but even a couple of years on I was still hung up over that game. Like you say the rollercoaster of emotions - Viafara 'spoiling the party', then Rasiak equalising in the last min. And of all people, the regular former penalty and free kick taker of Derby (Idiakez), to miss our crucial spot kick. And what pissed me off even more is that Derby went on the following season to be the worst ever team the PL has ever seen. What a waste of time.

He won play of the season last season, yep. (on Sky Sports, not the official one). But who cares what he did last season? All we can judge him on is what we see in front of us, and it's been pretty pitiful let's be honest. I don't need to look at stats, graphs and figures to know that he hasn't scored, maybe assisted 1 at best and has created very little. On the other hand he's created a shit load of opportunities for the opposition through his awful touch, poor positioning and lack of awareness on transition. That doesn't strike me as someone who has been decent for us and I don't think it's fair to say our expectations are too high. I just want someone who can defend and provide an outlet at full back.