S-Clarke

That would be pretty devastating if so. I'd be tempted to just throw SAA in there ahead of Sulemana.

Who do we think that was? I'm going Kaiser Soze

He also spent most of the game hugging their full back tbf.

Hopefully things turn around for you guys next season and you get some momentum. We've had some examples in England where teams have got promoted from the third division and fly straight through on that momentum to the premier league - we did it, Norwich did it recently, Ipswich are giving it a good go. If you get stuff right in the summer and have a good year next year then you may be back at the top before long. Feels a long way off now, but football can change very quickly.

Yeah, this is a bit of a nonsense approach. The only way you concentrate for the the playoffs is to win, go in with momentum - that's it. If we know auto is 100% gone and and we're safe in 3rd/4th by the last two weeks of the season, then maybe look at potentially rotating a few around so we have our best available for the playoffs. But for now, we just have to keep winning although we've forgotten how to. Football is a strange game. 36 points to play for, a very, very, very tough run-in for us in comparison with the rest for sure, but if we aspire to be a PL side we shouldn't be scared of anyone we face at this level.

Teams often mirror their manager, and he's lost all of his composure in recent weeks and has got way too emotional. Funnily enough, so has the team. He needs to get his head back on his shoulders, he's another one of these all in emotionally charged young managers who lose their heads when things go wrong. There's no problem being emotional, but you've got to learn to keep it in check and not allow it to fall out across everyone else. Even Thornton got a yellow on the bench yesterday, they're all mirroring the same. We need to regain our composure as players and manager/coaches asap. It's that sort of shit which scares the fuck out of me for the emotionally charged playoffs.

No one is saying it did help, but pack up and go home? We all moan about the players losing their heads - but christ, some of our fans. Wouldn't want some of our fans on the front line when the going gets tough. This isn't a personal dig at you by the way, just a search through the cesspit that is twitter this evening has brought a whole new meaning to fickle bad losers.

It's only interesting or 'fun' and 'exciting if you're doing well. Stoke's 7 years at this level since relegation have been horrific, it's a cesspit of a league if you turn shit. (As we know all too well!). It can happen easily as well, failure to go up in season 1 or 2 and it will become pretty miserable down here.

I've just listened to his post match interview, I assume he's referring to social media and what some of the fans are chatting. ''Some of the noise is like we're in a relegation battle'' - so he's obviously noticed some criticism on social media from the fan base. Some of the criticism has been well over the top, but that's to be expected from modern football fans. In the bigger context which I think we need to remember - we're having a good season and performing at a level which will get you auto promotion 9/10 - sadly this season it won't, we need to be perfect every week. Given that the target was auto promotion (well, winners) at the start of the season, I think fans are naturally going to be disappointed to see that slip away into the distance. But taking it into isolated games, I think as fans we have every right to be pissed off at displays like today. It was tepid and wimpy, nowhere near what we've been known as. To be fair to Martin he says as much in his interview, not happy enough with the output and movement of the players in the final third - he's right, we were static and slow as shit. Some fans do go OTT though, it's just the way with social media though. Allows nutjobs to have their platform to spout shit, of which some have been waiting months and months to have a pop.

That's it in a nutshell really, whilst Downes is a huge miss, we've made it worse because we've tried to tweak everyone else to accommodate for it. We were without Downes for a few games over Christmas if I remember right, we just stuck Charles in there and carried on the same way. Why has his latest absence triggered the coaches to redesigning the entire system? Today was a mess, no matter what Martin says about it. There was no structure and no continuity because our team has been tweaked and pissed around with to accommodate the loss of 1 player.

I think that's what disappointed me the most, not the goals we let in, but the genuine lack of drive, effort, energy in those final parts of the game. We just seemed to accept defeat and I've not seen us do that before. Against Huddersfield we just kept going, even in games which were somewhat tight at the end (Blackburn at home springs to mind) we kept going until the death and hit another 2 or 3 goals. We've got late winners at Hull and Millwall etc because we've kept going until the end. But today felt like the first time we didn't do that, there was no drive from us. Just aimless passing with no idea of where to put it. A really, really concerning 2nd half for me - if we'd peppered them and their GK had a worldie I'd probably feel a bit different, but it wasn't like that at all - yet we've got Martin coming out saying we played really well.

The goalkeeper is the very least of our problems. There's not much wrong with him, unless your expectations are that of Ederson or prime De Gea.

Not sure where the re-writing of history is coming from re: Charly. I was frustrated to see him go as I liked him, but you cannot sit there and honestly say he contributed to us this season. He was bit-part at best, certainly not one of our key players. Whether he should have been is up for debate, but he wasn't important for us because he wasn't playing.

There's one thing you can always guarantee with Stephens, and it's goals. Just not for us.

We'll probably win this, just because it's what we do. Then get beaten in the quarters by Maidstone or something.

To be fair KWP at left back, THB as right wing back and Stephens playing a roaming DC, DM, CM and AMC role today was a surprise. I didn't predict that!

The clubs coming down aren't of the level of Leeds and Leicester, but we'd still need to be pretty prepared early on to be in the conversation. We will have a bigger rebuild than last year, pretty much an entire new team will be required and we'd have to start from scratch, with a base of Smallbone, Stephens, Bree, Charles, Edozie, Manning. In some ways a new manager and new DoF (if Wilcox goes) coming in at that stage could provide a nice clean slate to mould a new side in new ideas, but let's see what happens this year first.

He's just a skate troll. Surprised this thread has got so many bites.

Left the ground on crutches, could be a bad one apparently. As if today couldn't get any worse.

Rosenior is pretty much a carbon copy of Russell in every aspect. Playing style, buzz-words, philosphy etc. Might as well keep Martin if Rosenior is the replacement.

He'll be the pin-up boy for our future Championship seasons! The spine of Stephens, Smallbone, Manning and Mara is enough to give you nightmares.

Tbf I'm sure he played there today, he played every fucking where else.

The striker situation at this club has been incompetent. Look at the options Leeds have - Bamford, Gelherdt, Piroe, Rutter. We've got Adams and Mara as 9's. Not enough. Even Ipswich went and recruited Keifer Moore as they saw a gap (they'd lost Hirst for the season). Not sure why we think we're so different. We'll probably start playing with false 9's soon.

That's a good way of putting it! They did just stand there, they didn't really do anything spectacular - but we were so, so predictable in that second half. 90% of the passes were telegraphed before they left the players foot. That's what's made today's game even worse. Credit to Hull who were very good on the night, and so were Huddersfield when they came to St Mary's, but Millwall were atrocious and we didn't have enough imagination or drive to move them around.

I don't think you can put this on Charly leaving, he wasn't a key part of the 11 that went unbeaten in 25. In and out at best, but never a regular (that's why he went). I didn't think our style really suited Charly which is a shame as he could have thrived at this level, so I do somewhat agree with what you say in terms of the reasons he's not here. But I don't think you can say we're missing Charly as he wasn't really the regular we all thought he'd be.