S-Clarke

The club have already fed the media mouth pieces that we won't be doing much/if anything in January. We need a new GK, LB, CB and ST - just to be competitive, but the club won't see that. They're still putting their eggs in the Stewart basket, expect media driven puff pieces around him in the coming weeks.

'The club are happy with the squad, and will only act if a really strong opportunity arises. The club are not planning any major changes' Prepare for this.

Romeu didn't stop the break, as his legs are long gone tbf, but Bazunu's 'attempt' at even trying to save it was non-league. He should have got to both goals today, he cannot save shots on target. I see that with my eyes, but also the stats back it up fairly heavily. (although we have to ignore stats apparently). I actually hate the bloke. He might be a nice lad, but I despise his name when I see it on the team sheet. All he has done is bring me pure misery for 4 years every single week.

It's an ownership profile problem, let's cut to the real truth of the matter. They're the ones who have lumbered us with shite, they are the ones who keep cycling us through managers and DOF's like it's a fashionable activity. It's all on the ownership. Unless they do one, all we end up doing is re-arranging the deckchairs.

I wouldn't say Redmond was a scapegoat really, but Stephens and Bazunu are ridiculed because they are shite. End of. They are both horrific players who do not deserve to be playing at a club or our size earning what they're earning. As soon as we gave Stephens a new contract in the summer you knew it was game over as far as the season was concerned, as we still weren't making big boy decisions.

We were utter, utter shit for the entirety of that game. Did they deserve to win? Probably not. Did we deserve to win? Absolutely not. Am I surprised we lost? Playing that way, no. If we want to spend 80 mins fart arsing with the ball across the back 4 then we're not going to achieve anything at any level of football. It provides the illusion of domination when all it is is absolute wimpy football played by players who are scared of their own shadows, coached by a manager who has no idea if his mum has ironed his top for tomorrow.

He had one approach. Hope the opposition allow THB to receive the ball in space, hope they allow Armstrong to come deep without pressure. That was it. Once the opposition close down Armstrong, shut down Jander and Leo then it's all pretty much done and dusted. There is nothing else to our game under this kid pretend-manager.

He is the perfect summary of the SR era, all wrapped up in popadom wrists. Get this fucker gone.

He was appointed because he wouldn't kick up a fuss with the club selected formation, that much is clear. He won't be here next season and will probably never be seen as a manager again.

The shit against them has got to ramp up, we can't allow them to think that their propaganda nonsense has appeased us. They were out to chat to the press when we won 5 out of 6, but are silent at all other times. It shows you all you need to know about them.

A fair few called it, it's playing out exactly as we knew it would do. Appoint an inexperienced kid after a purple patch, and this is what happens. We have lost 3 or 4 on the bounce away from home, against some god-awful horrific football teams. It's not good enough. He has no idea what to do, although part of me doesn't believe he's allowed to truly put his own swing on things. Where are all the players now after all the sound bites prior appointment? ''He makes it so clear for us to play'' ''his instructions are so clear'' - are they so clear now you bunch of whining pussies? The club are the worst. Driven by propaganda that they hope the masses swallow up. I think they'll be in for a surprise, because we're still not accepting this. The only way out of this loop is new ownership, that is 100% the fact here. That can't happen though as it's so much easier said than done, there's no shareholding or way to force owners out apart from a constant barrage against them for years. That's all we can do. We will very likely slip further down the leagues, but it's the only way we can rid ourselves of this lot. They've destroyed an establish PL club to the point that a lot of us won't ever see us in the PL again in our lifetimes.

pre-season under Martin, prior to our PL season. A 2-0 or 3-0 defeat. But yeah, we have only played them a handful of times - if that - since 1975.

I would say we've had more hits in this window than we've had under SR before, I mentioned this a few weeks back. The scouting overhaul in the summer has had a benefit. Jander, Leo, Fellows, Azaz are really top picks for this level. Standout quality. The most important position was up front though, and whilst we identified the gap early on, we absolutely naffed it up with this guy. Let's forget this saga ever happened and hope they can pull out a Jander/Leo style ST signing, as our new scouts have shown they can see good players.

He's made it to the bottom of the list again then, that's some going.

I note the George Long argument has cropped up again, in that a third choice keeper isn't meant to be better than the 1st or 2nd etc etc. A bunch of you are absolutely missing the point, once again - as you did in the summer, whereby it was proclaimed that 'Bazunu is fine for the Championship'. The original point from the summer still stands. We didn't need a third choice goalkeeper, that's the whole point. We needed/still need a 1st choice keeper. Then McCarthy/Bazunu become 2nd and 3rd choice.

Don't get me wrong, he still had a decent game and is important to us - we do fall apart without him evne more, but....I just sense his wings are being clipped slightly by the more savvy managers in this league, the instruction is not to allow him to drive or be stood in space as the 'easy' out ball on a transition. If I can call our approach out after 3-4 games of the same, then I'm fairly sure every manager in the league now has this sussed and we'll be seeing a lot more sideways and backwards. It's similar to AA, who was coming deep to collect, spin and run - that's also been clipped by oppo managers now. And thus we have nothing else to our game.

Stewart is out of contract at the end of the season, so he'll be free to go at that point. I expect he'll retire, it would be for his benefit and those close to him need to be strongly advising him of that course of action. It's like flogging a dead horse. I'm not counting on him coming back, I wasn't counting on him at the start of this season either. We always needed a proper CF, as Stewart was never going to be an option for us. I was so surprised when people were calling on us to extend his contract after his Sheffield United brace. For once the club didn't make a stupid decision there.

Yeah, LB is a real issue for us IMO. Wellington just isn't up to it, and Manning is Manning. Backup at best is what he should be. Jelert was supposed to be someone who could operate at LB, but that's not gone to plan. Need to re-visit the full back positions in January on both sides IMO, it's a bit of a problem.

We've totally ruined this lad, he had a decent enough rep at Sheffield United and Boro before that - but he's now a shadow of that player, looks L1 at absolute best - maybe lower end L1. We'll do well to get rid, it will be loans until the end of his deal. Adds more criticality to the need for us to buy an actual striker though.

It was a bit square-pegs for no real benefit. We had no fluidity in those final stages due to those changes, as it ruined any shape. 5, 4 or 3 at the back is not the issue really, it was the lack of any real shape in those closing stages. You never saw us winning because we couldn't build up any momentum. More poor in-game management from him I have to say, especially with a 2nd half against 10 men.

That wasn't a great showing really. Coventry were makeshift in a number of places and they still looked better than us for most of that 1st half, much more organised and you could see an actual pattern in their approach and what they're trying to do. They play with a purpose. The red card totally changed their approach, as expected. That made the second half look more 'one sided' in terms of the context of the game as they sat back a bit more, but we didn't push them at all. We didn't have them on the ropes, we didn't pen them in, we didn't cause their CB's - who haven't played all season - any issues what so ever. It was really poor. There has been a gradual return to the pass backwards, pass sideways and around the back four in recent weeks. I don't think I'm the only one seeing that. I understand what doing it can give you, draw them on, move it quick and break the press...but you need to be very accurate and have very good players to do that regularly, of which we don't have. So it might work once every now and then, but doing it when the oppo is clearly onto it (Cov pressed heavy) seemed a bit daft. We played ourselves into 2 or 3 issues just from self inflicted pain. Their goal came from the insistence that Manning kept the ball in play rather than lofted it out of touch to settle the team down. Tonda needs more to his game, or should I say the club - as this feels more and more club directed whenever I see it. I also think teams have sussed Janders role in our side and are giving him special attention - I saw it against WBA (second half), and against Norwich. Stick players around him, don't leave him in space, don't let him burst. It often leaves Downes as the free CM available for the pass. It removes all of that fluidity in our side as it was Jander who broke the lines and enabled us to drive. Teams are safer leaving Downes free as all he will do is pass it backwards, teams know there is no danger if Downes gets the ball. A draw is a draw I guess, and in the context of all the other results, it doesn't cause us any real problems in the bigger picture. I'm still not entirely convinced by us though and I believe we just lived through a purple patch, a so-called manager bounce as they call it, and now we're settling back into our baseline. We'll be in the market for a new manager come May.

I know the game you're thinking of, Villa 4-0 winners against us at their place. Ings scored. That was the following season 21/22 In Feb time I think, and yeah our season collapsed from that point. This 1-1 mentioned here wasn't too far away from that 9-0 Man Utd away game in 20/21, our season kinda plateaued up to that and then collapsed afterwards. So we were still a basket case, even in 2020, 2021.

A new contract for Bazunu is a genuine possibility, apparently it's in the works. We'll wait and see, but I fully expect a new 4 year deal.

I think they'll get 15-20 points by the end. They're down, no doubts, they're not getting out of this - but I can't see them finishing below 12 points. They'll have a run of 3 or 4 where they pickup a couple of wins and some draws. We all felt the same last year, I didn't think we'd beat Derby's record but we did - and we were bad! They'll be fine in that sense, they put in a good shift yesterday and competed. Brentford at home next, and West Ham at home in a week or two - they could win both of those, and end up sitting on 8 points by January.

I'd never put him in the Bazunu league, Stephens has much more to his locker than Bazunu and has given us more in his time with us. He is very average though and is certainly a contributing factor as to why we concede as many goals as we do, although yesterday was on Wood's dumbness I'd say. Stephens is the sort of player you keep around, let his contract run down, and say 'thanks, good luck' and evolve the position. But we didn't and gave him a new deal, which summed everything up - happy to settle for mediocrity.