S-Clarke

Yeah these sorts of comments don't really hold truth anymore. It's like saying ''at least we're dying better than those guys''. It's the same process. The ownership is killing us in the same way the ownership at Blackburn or Wednesday is killing them.

We wouldn't win it though, we'd probably end up going down again under these morons.

There are a lot of similarities playing out to our season in 05/06 when we came down. The club gambles on a striker in Ricardo Fuller, never scored enough goals, drew shit loads of games, languished in the bottom half. A CM in Quarshie who didn't want to be here, and an exciting teenage winger making a breakthrough, sold in January. Changed manager in December, had a revival in the second half to build some momentum and go into the following season with some positivity. We then spent spent any remaining 'fortune' that following summer on our ill-fated playoff push - and then the house of cards came tumbling down. It all feels eerily similar. We need to be careful.

He seems to jump for the ball either too late, or too early. Look at the difference Sinclair Armstrong made, he's an absolute trash player by the way - nothing 'elite' at all, but he used pace/power and bullied us. Downs is incapable of doing anything like that, nor touching, nor controlling, nor scoring. As I said above, I cannot for the life of me tell you confidently that he is a footballer. I wonder if the real Downs is still at FC Koln?

Charles is clearly offski at some point in the next 6-10 months. He's had a contract offer on the table for a while now. He'll probably get us 15-20m - but that will be less as Man City will take a cut, so that's a nominal sale really. The cupboard is starting to look bare now for Sports Republic, their devalue and deterioration of the squad is continuing at pace. We'll have L1 quality players before you know it.

Bazunu is a club pick, the club pushes him on whoever manages. Same as Stephens. Those two decisions in the summer showed me that nothing had really changed. The Stephens new deal was truly a signal of intent for the season.

I think the squad is a mess. Quality, yes, not denying that - but it's totally unbalanced and bloated. We've got Edozie and Aribo not even making the squads, we've got 5 Centre backs, 3 horrific goal keepers and no centre forward. We have a good 10, and some good wingers for this level - but we already had Edozie and Aribo, so you've got to think if it was more prudent to spend that Fellows/Azaz money on a GK and a ST, and give Edozie and Aribo the game time.

The GK situation is another massive SR masterstroke. The guy Bristol City had was signed on loan from Man Utd, but pushed himself into contention which goes to prove that there are PL GK's out there who are happy to come in as backup, and then take their chance. But we decided to go and get Norwich's worst keeper on a loan. Truly mind boggling.

Blackburn are due a win, so we know what will happen here.

Should have sold him in the summer really, we don't need his type. We need a powerful CM who can come in and disrupt things, not another sideways man. Jander/Charles can do his role - we need power alongside those.

I gave 7/10, again too generous really. I think I assumed we'd still lose Edozie and Aribo which would balance the squad out a bit, but when you look at it you have to say it's a bloated mess right now - and it cannot be good for morale or mood when you've got ''professionals'' like Aribo and Edozie not even making the squads. With Downes on the bench all the time too, I think there are some genuine bad eggs floating around that training ground. If we weren't going to lose Edozie/Aribo, we could have saved the £15-16m we spent on Azaz and Fellows and spent it on a proper centre forward. But alas, here we are.

I get the have patience line, but as a fan base we're sat here with what - 4 wins in 18 months? or something like that. I'm literally all out of patience at this stage. I don't sit here and put this all on the manager, as like you say this is a repeating cycle and if we get locked into it, we become Watford/Norwich/Stoke/Swansea etc etc - in fact, I think we're already there to be honest. My feeling is that we went too big in the summer with additions, too many new faces all over the place, left the squad too bloated in the areas we added to - but we negated the two most critical areas of the team, and that will just totally undo anything we're trying to do. It kind of makes the Azaz/Fellows signings entirely null and void from the outset. Everyone is accountable for this situation - coaches, manager, players etc etc - but my pure anger sits solely with SR, the recruitment and the utter shambles they are taking us thorough time and time again. That's where my energy is, not on 'getting another manager out' - because we'll be here again in March.

Oh yeah I wouldn't just pin tonight on him, not at all. Least of our problems tonight. Fraser horrendous, THB an absolute mess, Manning was pathetic when he came on, and Charles does not control the game.

To be fair, it's an absolute complete abomination of a squad. It's a bloated, disjointed complete and utter mess. Good players mean nothing when the structure of the squad is as horrific as ours.

We're not focusing on 10 mins though. I've yet to see this guy control or pass a football. We're almost in November. I honestly cannot tell you if he can play football at this stage, I have no idea. My instinct says no.

You missed another bit - Our annual 'court an unrealistic target all summer, but miss out at the end' shenanigans. You could see the end of that Eduard story playing out from a mile off. They're so predictable.

Mentally this team is shot to pieces, completely shot. We go a goal up, don't control the game, concede almost immediately - and from that moment, we didn't really get another sniff. We lost all control and the game was gone. We have a load of new players out there, but they're catching this same meek and weak as piss mentality which has eroded any team we've had for many years now. The club is rotten to the core. Only new ownership changes it, anything else is just re-arranging the deck chairs.

It'll be that Eric Ramsay bloke if we switch it up, and thus what's the point.

We can sack him if we want, but the same argument applies when we sacked Juric - what's the point? We've totally destroyed Stills upward trajectory too, he was quite a positive up and coming manager, but he's damaged goods for his career now. What a mess.

It should have been yesterday, the week before that, the month before that. They need to GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CLUB. Have some dignity Dragan and rip it up, sell and walk away - go back and play golf. Rasmus can play with his toys in Turkey, and we can try to recover and stabilise at this level before they do even more damage, because believe me they will put us in L1/L2. I know it's not as easy as that to get owners out, but as a fan base we cannot continue to be as passive as we are about them. Something big needs to be shown, they need to know that their time is up and we're out of patience.

Up front is the conundrum, the more I look at the squad the more horrendous it looks. Not in terms of 'quality', but the balance of it is all over the shop. You can't pick a balanced side. But I'll give it a go. McCarthy Mads - Wood - Quarshie - Jelert Charles Jander Fellows Azaz Leo Armstrong The obvious issue is there's no focal point to play off and Armstrong can't play through the middle really, but neither can Archer and our only other focal point is Downs and let's not go there. What a total mess we've made of that central position, it's almost made every other signing null and void.

Don't be a tool, you're totally missing the point to flap your arms around and shout down at others. I'd say the overall feeling in the summer was frustration because we didn't sign an experienced goal scorer, it wasn't because we'd signed Downs personally per-say, it was because he wasn't backed up with a more seasoned option. That was the stance. We should have never bought Downs to be our single option. Just like we shouldn't have bought George Long to be our backup keeper, as look at the mess we are in now. So it's not about hindsight, people called this as it was at the time. Stop trying to play the 'I'm better than you' card, as it is the most ugly card you can play.

I forgot about Matsuki, seems as if the coaches have too. He didn't just impress me in pre-season, he had some stand outs in actual season games for us as well. I look at the squad and I think it's too big though, there's too much choice in certain areas and not enough in other areas. For all the spending of £40m or whatever it was, the squad for me looks an absolute unbalanced and bloated mess.

He wasn't afraid to have some punt shots either, just take a chance every now and then - you never know. Dribbles around the pitch well, same as Fellows. Surely it has to be Fellows right, Leo left, Azaz in the middle? That should be potent creatively at this level, but it all boils down to who the heck puts the ball into the net in the 6 yard box. We have zilch.

I kind of feel a bit sorry for Downs really, in the same way as I felt sorry for Bazunu/Larios/Edozie etc when we threw them in and expected them to compete from day 1 at the highest level. We destroyed Bazunu/Larios and Edozies careers at the highest level, and we've probably done the same to Downs. We are really making a mockery of our 'development' tag in recent years. Genuinely decent young players in the Lavia/Tino mould will run a mile from us in the future. Our entire model is broken.