S-Clarke

It wasn't even a penalty. Let alone a foul. Let alone a red fucking card! You can quite clearly see, on the number of replays I saw, that Bednarek didn't do anything to cause Martial to collapse like that. Nothing. You could argue maybe slight accidental touch, but he was pulling away from Martial to avoid that. At absolute worse that's a 'double jeopardy' situation, whereby Jan gets a yellow and they get a pen. I just cannot make any sense of the red card. The review of it was a cluster fuck. He was desperate to give them a penalty, even a commentary feed mentioned that he looked happy to be giving it. They gave him the chance to look at the screen but he's never wrong is he, they didn't even bother showing it in full motion. Shambles, needs investigating. If that isn't rescinded then I've lost all hope in football and as far as I'm concerned the game is dead.

Ex players is an interesting idea. I think whoever is controlling var needs to be away from the referees, a team external to the referee committee. What you have at the moment is a mates club and they're all looking after each other. A game is basically refereed twice, by the same people. You don't need 'referees' running VAR, you need neutral controllers of it who have a view of the game as a whole.

They should also be demoted to the sunday league, but then I wouldn't want them influencing those levels either. They should just retire. They could get a cushty job like peter walton on BT Sport, sat in the warm co-commenting on premier league games. Then we can just mute them when they come on.

She's well and truly in the 'shit owner' category for me as well. I find that hard because of what the family have done for us, but her involvement in recent years has been really poor. She couldn't wait to get out. Maybe I was naïve, but I didn't imagine KL selling us up the river to a dodgy owner. I thought she'd ensure we were in good hands. How wrong I was. A lot of blame should be at her door.

Good post, a rational view after a haunting evening. The context is certainly different to that of the Leicester one, I feel that's why our views are a little more muted than after that game. We were dealt a poor hand all evening, nothing went our way, no 50/50's. Zero. The referee single handily destroyed some of our young players. Ramsey, Tchaphat. They'll do well to come back from this one and play at this level after that. Cheers Dean you absolute cockwomble. I thought Ramsay was doing ok up until 15 mins as well! But he stood no chance and it's true that Utd kept targeting his side. I appreciated the heart showed by Armstrong, JWP and Moussa - they kept going. Moussa, whilst he didn't offer much quality, still worked his arse off in testing circumstances. He's a likeable character, just needs to start having more impact in an attacking sense. The other saving grace is our start to the season, we're not in danger of being sucked into any trouble. Let's just re-group and have a decent end to the season. I still think 40-50 points will be a decent return for us, bottom half of mid-table. What happens in the summer is anyone's guess. But let's just feel fortunate that we can relax (as fans) a little bit for this season.

No.

If we're totally honest, it's 4 goals in 8 league games. And maybe 5 if we get that pen v Villa. It wouldn't look so bad then.

He can be discounted as he's an inept fool himself.

I've not found anyone yet who has agreed with that decision. Even Utd fans!

Ralph didn't say it exactly, but I believe he also feels exactly the same. You only have to look at the stupid cunt dancing around in the Tranmere stands to realise what a tool he is. It's always had to be about him. Number 1. Focus has to be on Dean no matter what. How he's lasted so long at the top level is beyond me.

We've got a few issues at play and it's turned into a bit of a perfect shit storm. 1) We spent stupid money on the likes of Elynonoussi, Hoedt, Lemina, Carillo, Boufal to name just a few. That has hamstrung us hugely in terms of the wage bill and also available transfer funds over previous seasons, as we probably have to take into account on-going payments every year for some of those players. We're not going to be able to use that excuse for ever though. 2) COVID - no fans, no money through merch or stadium events. Every club is going to be feeling the pinch and it just highlights our issues even more. 3) A disconnected owner. We don't know anything about him, he's owned us for 3 years and he's never said a thing. We never knew his intentions from the word go, we don't know what his plan is. The whole takeover has stunk from the moment it happened. We were told by KL that it was to aid us moving forward and provide us with additional investment. All it seems to have done is hamstrung us even more than we were already. The reality is that we need investment like plenty of clubs do. It's clear that our owner has no interest in us so we can discount him allowing us any scope to grow. So we just have to hope we keep our head above water, we have a manager who keeps performing miracles, and our scouting is top notch for when we have to replace the investible starters to raise funds. In our current guise, relegation isn't ever too far away. We've had a fun year in football terms, weirdly, but it all feels like it's all on a bit of a knife edge and always has.

Minimino straight in for me. Redmond on the bench. I reckon we have a strong chance that Bedernek will have his card recinded. KWP 'should' be back and maybe Romeu. The starting 11 may not look 'too' bad on Saturday, but you just worry what this has done to the confidence. It took us a good few weeks to get over that previous 9-0.

What do you expect from this squad? Granted, losing 9-0 is shit, unacceptable and unprofessional at any level, but we're sat on 29 points. Happily comfortable in mid-table. He has got us there by improving players we thought were deadwood. If it's a results business I'd say he's got a bloody good result out of this squad over a period of time.

I reckon they will and that will just confirm what we all think of the idiots running VAR.

"Jan Bednarek does not kill him but I do not want to speak about the referee. Last week he was our VAR and made his mark in the game.

Don't disagree, there has to be ways we can improve. No professional outfit should lose 9-0. But he's dealt a tough hand...the bench full of kids, arguably some are probably non-league standard. But we don't respond well to adversity in games, partly that is our players - their make up is shit, but Ralph does need to take some responsibility on pulling back/closing up when needed. Sometimes we just carry on the same style for the fun of it. Leeds are very similar, they play the same way if they're 4-0 or 0-1. You risk getting absolutely bum fucked with that approach though, as we've seen. Twice.

We wilt under the pressure, we always have. We're a very meek outfit. When the going is good we are on it, but as soon as things turn bad in a game...heads drop, everyone loses their heads and we step off it and hide. The makeup of the squad in that sense isn't great and hasn't been for a long time.

Maybe we can claim 'COVID' and get it postponed.

Appreciate what he has done for us. No other manager could get this bunch playing as they have. He has performed miracles. This 'group' have these results in them, let's be honest. They're ok, but not amazing. The form he has had us on over the last 12 months has been incredible and he deserves absolutely no criticism in my eyes.

Blame for what? He's got a bench full of kids, and a starting kid who goes and gets himself sent off after 60 seconds. Our squad is a mess at the moment, he knows it, we know it, the club knows it. This isn't on him.

If the club put that on him then they can go to hell.

I wonder if we'll rush Vestergaard back for this one? You could even move Bertrand there, but then we have no full backs either. What a fucking mess.

Nope. I don't think he will, I don't think the club will even consider it either. But I imagine he's very frustrated. He got our squad to their absolute limits, there was no where else for them to go, and he hasn't ever been backed. Look at the state of our bench, look at the state of our full back options. There's no way he is happy with that, no way at all. How have the club not allowed him some flexibility to baulk it out a bit.

I know a lot will be made of VAR, which is right as it's absolutely fucking shit in it's current incarnation and used incredibly badly....but once again, we didn't do ourselves any favours with our defending. I will say the same as I did after the Leicester game, no professional outfit should ever lose 9-0, you do whatever it is you have to do to keep that score line under control. Not sure how we let that happen again tbh. I really, really feel for Ralph. He's worked absolute wonders here, absolute miracles. He got this lot top FFS! That deserves a medal in it's self. But the truth is that he hasn't been backed, he hasn't been provided with the tools that would ever enable him to do what he needs to do. He may well be looking at it and thinking it's best to jump before his rep gets ruined here.

He's been stitched up with the squad tbf.