S-Clarke

To be totally honest with you, this is probably the worst time to be looking at building your own gaming PC (you may have already done it though!). RAM/SSD/GPU shortages have ramped the prices up, RAM its's self has gone up 150% in some cases compared to last year. Pre-builds are better value as some of those companies have residual stock, but these are still creeping up in price compared to a year ago. I'd say give it a few months and check the market, maybe late spring/early summer. Avoid any PC World nonsense, look at places like PC Specialist or overlockers. I've used PC Specialist in the past and they're very good. Depends what you're looking for gaming wise/what games you play when it comes to the spec, but budget for 1.5-2.5k for something that will last 5-10 years. As long as your PC can keep ahead of the consoles (future proof when you spec it) then they'll have no issues with the latest games for years.

I hate playing Stoke, always the same. Crappy, scrappy games we often lose. Home or away. One of those genuine teams we never seem to win against.

He was probably on a 'list', I don't truly believe we interviewed him though. The club were live interviewing Tonda for weeks, so any other links were just tabloid filler as the club had already made their choice. It was probably made in the summer tbh, but acted on sooner than they envisaged - but Tonda's trajectory was decided the moment he was made U21 manager.

I'd say it's mainly due to this season being done, so there's very little point in spending anything at this juncture. It's one of the few times I'd agree with this approach, what would we gain from a splurge at this point? A late, but ultimately failed attempt at the playoffs? And then a pretty bleak financial picture (if it isn't bleak enough already) to broach in the summer. Clever loans are the way to go at this point, then re-asses in the summer. My genuine concern (and likelihood tbh) is that they'll reassess in the summer with the wrong people in charge (again), so it'll just be like groundhog day.

A good battling effort, can't fault the commitment - but I still feel pretty frustrated. We were brought down to their level in that 2nd half, and we didn't get going. I don't think we ever had total control and we let the long-ball, scrappy game take over - which is exactly what they wanted in the 2nd half. Once again I have serious concerns about Tondas ability (or lack of) to influence a game with substitutes, we conspired to get so much worse when he made those changes. In contrast, the skate changes actually improved them and their tactical shift changed their grip on the game. We didn't really do anything to regain any control after that, and those final 15 mins were pretty horrific from us. We shouldn't be 'holding out' against that lot. Good effort and all, but once again we've come up against a depleted (and already poor quality) Championship side, and are scrapping around trying not to lose. I just want this season to end now, not that it ever truly started.

It's not true, it's a thigh injury. Interesting he gets an injury as soon as he gets there, is it our conditioning? They might train a bit harder there, no idea. I notice Smallbone has been out for ages at Milwall too.

In terms of Armstrong, I think we should have moved him on in the summer and gone out and bought a proper number 9 in that void. That would have been my call. Not because he's not effective at this level, he clearly is, but I think his time has run out here. It can't have been easy mentally to come up with us to PL, fail again, and get dumped in January back to the Championship to WBA. I think it would have been healthier to have a clean break in the summer at this point. He won't be here next season either way.

It's still early days, but I think he's got signs of being a good reactionary shot stopper (any part of his body). I think he's flappy though, at corners, free kicks etc, he flaps about a fair bit. I think that's a genuine thing in his game that I've noticed so far. And not being a play out keeper is good for me, as long as we don't try to force him to play that way (Like we did with McCarthy). Let him be a GK.

It was actually weirdly similar to the game at their place, a fairly ugly game but we came out the other side with a scrappy win. That's what this was, let's not beat around the bush - a proper scrappy 1-0. The clean sheet is a huge plus from tonight in my eyes, it feels like it's been forever but it was only as far back as that Millwall 0-0 a few weeks back. Defensively fairly solid for that first half, I didn't think Sheff U carried much threat. The first half for me demonstrated why the 4 works, because it forced us to move through the lines quicker - and Leo and Fellows kept the width, we stretched the game and moved it a bit quicker - not so obsessed with passing around 3 CB's, we had less 'backwards options' - and it showed. I thought Wellington did well, full of effort and energy. I've not been convinced but he's not Manning, so I'd give him the birth now. Stewart gives us what we don't have, a centre forward who provides a physical presence in the sense of hold up, and disruption of a backline. You can't rely on him to stay fit though, so it would be daft to expect that - we still need a new one of 'his type'. Not much happened in the 2nd half really, bit scrappy. Sheff U came into it with Bamford adding a bit more for them up top, but we held out. Good to get a win to go into the weekend, but it was very scrappy - but you'd take them in our state.

Nah, they always wanted to give it to Tonda. There was no one else. You don't skip the current first team coaches and give the U21 the interim role unless he's not high on their wish list. Let's be clear, we weren't stuck with a choice of a 32 year old kid whose never managed and no one else. They didn't even bother looking.

I gave them a tiny bit of rope in the summer when we got rid of Rusk and brought Still in early doors. We had a new scouting setup, new DoF, we seemed to have a direction. I was somewhat optimistic and maybe curious about how the summer would pan out. I'd say my optimism was totally erased the moment they gave Stephens the new contract, because that demonstrated that even these new people don't get it. That contract renewal in isolation wasn't a problem, it was more of what it signified - happy with mediocrity and carry on with what didn't work before. That decision kind of told me nothing would change, and we were heading into the same groundhog cycle.

I think this is a bit of an emotional stretch to be critical of. This is just normal business/normal corporate life. Most big orgs and event orgs are taking bookings for next Christmas now. This is totally separate from football and fan discontent. This is a corporate business trying to make money from corporate events. Completely separate element.

We don't play against high level defenders anymore, and won't do for many many years - so he'd be a good fit! I'm really pleased for Dom personally, he's had a horrible time with injuries. His goal scoring record in the under age groups was always epic, proper fox in the box type striker. I hope he's over those because I did doubt if he'd be able to contribute, but this season for him has been epic. Were we wrong to sell him? I'd have probably renewed his deal and loaned him to Leyton Orient, but we probably looked at it financially and took the money. Hindsight and everything though, but given that the club happily renewed Stephens and didn't bother with Ballard certainly shows their skewed way of working.

I don't think Lallana was ever in the equation to be honest, he wasn't 'Spors' man. It was only ever going to be Tonda. When Still was sacked, the usual logical approach is that the existing first team coach/assistant assume interim control - which would have been Tisdale and Lallana. But the fact they went straight to Tonda told me that he's our new manager, he was never interim no matter what bollocks the club put out.

These fan advisory boards, or fan on the board nonsense are just that. They're never going to be people who push back, question, critique - they're nodding dogs. Yes men, in the same way as the coaching staff and management are. It's a club of nodding dogs. Apparently they had a meeting with Spors when Tonda was interim, and during that meeting he explicitly told them that Tonda was remaining interim. So...logic dictates that the FAB should be pushing back massively at this point, demanding another meeting, and asking why they were blatantly lied to. But they won't, because they're still nodding.

Not at all, I think the fact it's happening across both clubs is pretty glaring on SR's ability to run professional sports outfits. You've got protests happening against them your side, much more vigorous to be fair. If we ramp it up, then maybe we can get them to sod off and just keep their hands on Gotzepe.

He made a good save in the early part of the game, really good. That's the one you refer to above. The second goal, the header, I thought he flapped a bit on his line. He started to come out, then retreated, and the ball sort of bobbled over his head. Not a calamitous error by any means, but it wasn't a tidy bit of goalkeeping.

We won't. He'll end up at Burnley or somewhere like that, he'll stay in the PL - just. He's too expensive for us.

I think Pep will quit in the summer, so we should hold out for him. Ditto Thomas Frank, worth holding out for him. Have I dreamt the last 4 years and we're actually still a mid-table PL club? I'm sure some fans still see us as one of those, managerial expectations are well skewed.

I wouldn't say it's just based on a single game, it's just that the future is pretty clear in my eyes with SR at the helm. Nothing changes, bad decisions continue and we'll end up sinking out of this league. That's our current trajectory unless something rather big changes.

I don't really know what Still was trying to do, but I still believe he saw the same things and same issues as us, the players just struggled to execute or follow anything. He had a bit more about him I think, albeit still inexperienced. This team needs a really, really, really strong voice and genuine authority - but will the club, and the first team players allow that to happen? Doesn't look like it. Tonda just does the worst thing any manager can do, and it's when they lose any credit with me. It's when they start seeing an entirely different game than those who watch it. And that's Tonda.

If you're looking at the bigger picture, then no, Tonda isn't exclusively the problem. The problem is much larger than Tonda, just like it was much larger than Will Still. Tonda is just another example in SR's crusade to try to be clever fuckers. He has been thrown in well ahead of his time, he knows it, but who is going to turn that down? So whilst Tonda is going to bear a lot of frustration from the fans, and rightly so in some aspects, the bigger issue are the people who thought it was OK to put this 32 year old into this position in the first place.

Another two of the clubs in that list - Sheffield United and Norwich have spent a lot. They both have silly bollocks approaches too. Sheffield United went all data analyst driven in the summer with the Ruben Selles appointment. That worked well. Norwich went all clever bollocks shit with German scouts and data analysts etc and spent loads on shite, that also worked well. The common theme is - proper football people, proper football management, spend some money and let football people manage them = decent outcome. Anything else is clever bollocks shit which does not have any place in football. The argument that these data morons have is that it gives us the 'extra % to compete' - we've spent £55-59m and we can't compete, so the data bollocks approach has made us worse off.

I've never liked him, I know some said he was probably our 'best CB' so far this season in earlier weeks - but what a low fricking bar that was. He's awful on the ball, and whilst he may have some physical attributes, he's thick as shit so he doesn't know how to use him. Is he our thickest ever CB? I think he's awful, and he's now at the level he's always been at. Bottom half, low end Championship CB. And what happens when you sign lots of those players? You end up there.

There are still people who have a tiny bit of hope that SR will realise, or Dragan at least. But surley that news puts paid to that? We're 16th in the league, haven't won in 7, just lost to Hull, have a team full of awful characters and a kid manager with kid coaches. So they appoint a Data Analyst. They're not changing, it won't ever change. They need to go, it's the only way we see change.