S-Clarke

The goals and chances against have certainly flowed with Stephens back in the 11. I've always found him to be a decent last ditch defender, but the fact he's always last ditch is probably the most telling thing about his game. He recovered from that breakaway today only because their striker's touch was absolutely diabolical. I really think we blinked too soon to give him the captaincy, I think he's third choice CB - Bednarek and THB as the two is where we built our consistency, ever since we've broken that up the goals against have certainly flowed consistently. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

I don't think that's fair, you don't get to 84 points by getting loads of underserved points. They totally deserve to be where they are. We caught them back in the winter, but let them get away again through our incompetence - so full credit to them and they're in for an exciting last 6 weeks or so and we'll carry on watching afar whilst playing the ball between our back 4.

Of course the loan players are going to be better, most of the time they are proven PL players that we couldn't have afforded to buy outright anyway - so we've loaned them. THB, Downes, Fraser etc - PL players.

Not that we're in the debate anymore....but what the fuck have Leicester done??? The lead they had over Ipswich/Leeds etc was enormous, they were clear not just from 3rd but from 2nd. They're now 3rd with 7 games to go. I've never known a team at this level to bottle a gap that huge this late on. I think Leeds will now go onto win the league with games to spare, that last game against us is a nothing event now. 2nd will be a fight out between Leicester and Ipswich, at this stage it's hard to look beyond Ipswich as Leicester have just imploded at the wrong time. Norwich and WBA for 5th and 6th for me. Norwich are your typical play off winning team as they've come from no where in the 2nd half of the season to storm it. Leicester remaining in this league next year with their financial troubles is an absolute disaster for them.

It's nothing about style or tactics with Che, he's just a truly horrific finisher. Stick him in tandem with a finisher and let him do all the dirty work and it will be more fruitful, but if you're expecting him to score you the goals then you're in for a rude awakening. When we sold Ings the club hung their coat on Che, with the likes of Armstrong and Broja supporting him. It didn't even take much for Broja to out perform him and he wasn't even ours. What I want more than anything this summer is a proper number 9, a consistent finisher to play through the middle. I fully accept Adams will go (blessing) and so will Armstrong with just 1 year left, so it gives us a great opportunity to properly revamp that area. I just don't want to hear any nonsense in the summer about how Stewart is fitter than ever etc etc, we need to be aiming to replace him too - he is nothing more than a squad player in my eyes at this stage.

You can kind of predict it already. Che and Armstrong leaving in the summer, we're panicking as fans as no new number 9 seems to be coming into the door. The club remain calm and relaxed about the situation, only focused in buying better than they have, as they have confidence in Stewart who is already here etc. Come the end of the window, we don't sign a new number 9, all faith put into Stewart again and he gets injured in the first game after the window like you say. Our recruitment of strikers since the sale of Danny Ings has been an absolute disgrace. I hope I'm wrong with the above, but I've seen it all before.

But that would mean we'd have to play Leeds or Leicester in the playoffs at some stage, Ipswich in the playoffs is the better option in terms of pure 11 v 11 quality.

I don't really buy that, Fraser had a clear chance - should have scored, Armstrong had two efforts he needed a cleaner hit on - no idea how they both stayed out. Adams, I mean what can you say. You just have to score of those if you're a professional level player, 1 if you're having a bad day - but to miss both I just can't quite fathom. None of that is because of the style or patterns of play or tactics, we just never sorted out a proper number 9. The way we played enabled those opportunities for Adams, but he's just shit.

We've lost all of our momentum, they've still got some - albeit they are stuttering. Of the 3 top 3 sides we have to play I'd say they are one of the more beatable ones, but I'm sat here today and I don't think it really matters anymore. We needed a win today to go into that game on Monday with a chance to claw right back - now we're going there to just avoid them getting further away, all a bit naff and pointless now really.

It really is a crazy Top 3 this year, their form has set a bar. What's really, really frustrated me though is that we caught them (Ipswich especially), hunted them down all winter and hauled them in. We went on this 26 game unbeaten historical, never seen before run, which will now ultimately mean diddly squat and will be one of those pointless records we hold. ''How to go unbeaten for half a season and not achieve anything''. It seems as if we were fine playing catchup, but as soon as we were in the position of being chased we completely died a death. Our form since Feb has been atrocious and it's made that unbeaten run entirely null and void.

That's stretching it I don't know how I'd feel if Ipswich and Leeds drop points later, probably frustration more than anything because it won't mean anything given what we just did. Need to mentally prepare myself for the playoffs.

Definitely should have won it, but we were pretty sloppy I thought. Let them back into it so many times, very open on the break (as we have been all season tbf). We've won lots of games this season in the death, it feels like the inventible reverse is going to bite us in the arse in the coming weeks. Not that it really matters now!

It was how I feared, returned from a long break sluggish, slow and one-paced. We played within ourselves for most of that game. The subs made us worse, Brooks especially. Might be controversial as he is a good player and I like him individually, but I think he's made us so much worse as a team for some reason. He just doesn't fit, there was an example of him jumping with KWP at the same time etc. He's just totally unsettled the entire side. That one is on Adams though in the main. I still cannot fathom why PL clubs want him, he can't finish. He's a 2-5 goal a season PL player, 10-15 at best in the Champ. Today his finishing was just off the negative scale though. A really shit and depressing start to this 10 game run, in fact it's probably already over before it even began. I guess it's now just about preparing to get into the playoffs with the best form possible and watch Ipswich, Leicester and Leeds battle it out from afar. I think we'll end up stranded in 4th. Felt shit today so didn't go, seemingly made the right call.

If Leicester lose this then god knows where they go from here. I've never seen a team implode like they have.

They're a funny side are Boro. Capable of beating anyone on their day, but can quite as easily lose to Rotherham or Huddersfield. They have never really been in a position to get to the playoffs. They are what I fear we could be next year if we fail to make it this season. Boro were one of the leading sides last season, but were cherry picked in the summer and lost all their goals. (Archer/Akpom)

In a way the prolonged break we have had aided us in this sense. I'm intrigued to see how we are tomorrow, we often come off of long breaks very, very sluggish and slow. We can't afford that or it's curtains before the run in has even started.

It's been a bit of a disaster for him. He got an injury in pre-season, got fit and started a game in December - like you say, lasted 32 mins in that game before picking up a new injury. I reckon he'll end up on loan at a slower paced league next season. I think we lucked out on his transfer in terms of the fee, he's always been a bit fragile physically tbh. Loved him as a player though, has so much potential. (or had, depends if he can recover)

I would say the bare minimum requirement for this season is promotion, simple as that really. We've not added PL wages in THB/Downes/Fraser/Brooks to just 'finish top half'. We're doing ok though - we're well in it, the requirement hasn't been met yet but we are on course to meet it. At the end of the day 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc - doesn't matter, if it equals promotion then we've done our job. The 3 relegated teams this year have set a very high bar, to Ipswich's credit they've stuck around it. No one else can get near us points wise though.

Never really got the hype around Dan James, seems to be a lot of pace but very little technical refinement to his game. A poor mans Shane Long you could say. A very sad indictment of Man Utd's transfer policy of the last 10 years! The fact he cost Leeds £35m makes me cringe.

Exactly that, more so Chelsea - look at the spend they've had, they're not even in Europe nor will they be this year. How can they cover their losses? You'd think there will be a mega deduction coming their way, but you know there won't be. It's this sort of shit which kind of makes me want a breakaway league - let those fuckers piss off and play with their fat cheque books, let the proper clubs go about it like we always used to.

They'll start the season on minus points, nothing to see here really. All of this points deduction shit is getting on my tits though when you have the likes of Man City under investigation for over 100 more breaches, yet they're still swimming their way to another treble. FA/EPL need to grow a pair of bollocks quickly, putting 'smaller' clubs to the sword is such a pathetic way of proving FFP or whatever they call it. I look forward to Chelsea's million point deduction next year.

Going back as far as match day 30, Reading were 6th, 10 points off the top - WHU were four points clear at the top at that stage WHU were always up there, if anything it was them who collapsed to let Reading in.

Just as well that Selles and Jones were able to get so much more out of the team he kept mid-table.

Wish him all the best, glad to see him back in football. I think we drained the fuck out of him in the Gao years, he got us somewhat stable in the PL. Typically once we had some money to spend under him, we got it all wrong. I still think we'd have made much more of a fight if we'd kept him though, we totally wasted that world cup period and the January transfer window. That's what killed our season.

Such a ''quickly looked at the table without context'' view on things. We're not miles behind, don't make that up. We have two games in hand, 6 points to play for. That will place us on 79 points, which would mean we're exactly 3 points behind Leeds - not miles behind. I know games in hand are games in hand, not points on the board etc etc, but the reality is that it's somewhat kind of still in our hands. We've got the games against the teams we're chasing, such a big opportunity to not only gain points for ourselves but put a massive dent into them as well. I see the fact we have all 3 to play as a massive positive rather than a 'bad run in'. I'm not paying much attention to the points gap as of now as it's not a true reflection of how the situation stands, if it was equal games and we were this far behind then fair-do's - but it's not, we have games in hand and we have to play all 3 above us. Puts our destiny somewhat in our hands in my opinion. Yes, we'll likely need to win most of our remaining games - but who is to say we won't? Who predicted we'd not lose for 26 games after we'd been done by Middlesborough? Not many I'd have thought. Have faith in the team, they've done a lot of good things this year and we have some real quality. I think it's totally unfair to say we are miles behind and it's 'not good enough' - say that at the end of the season if that's the case, but not now.