S-Clarke

The grass was never greener as was warned. I'd have always stuck with Ralph, the last manager I felt the fan base had a real connection to and someone we could get behind. He was just stitched up with the striker situation.

Feels a bit like that. After what feels like so many years I'm desperate for a team to get behind and enjoy watching again. This football club has been a chore for what feels like a ridiculous period of time now, something has to break this cycle at some point. We've changed managers, spent stacks of money on players, new owners, coaches and just get the same. I have no idea what we do next. I'm totally at a loss with this club.

This is sadly true, we seem to put dark clouds over any player who comes here. As soon as they leave they look decent again. It used to be the other way around.

He'd be decent playing more advanced, but we're trying to play him deeper and he's hopeless in that role. His best spell at Stoke came when they were winning, as they had the basis of Pearson and Laurent behind him. As soon as one of those guys got injured and he had to slot into CM they went to shit.

I thought Manning would be decent for us, but he is as bad a player as I've seen play for us for many, many years - and we've had a few. I find it hard to believe he had PL suitors.

They're not cheap choices, we've had to pay out to Luton and Swansea decent sums of money for both Jones and Martin. We had to pay out Selles contract at Kobenhaven as well when he came in as a coach. That's not forgetting the tidy pay off's we've given Ralph and Jones in the midst of all this. They're not cheap appointments, and as we've seen SR aren't scared of spending money and investing, they are just absolutely totally and utterly hopeless at doing so.

I think a more clinical side with better quality up front would have finished us off. They had way better chances than we did.

Oh yeah without doubt, more balance and more solid in the middle with Charles. But why did we have to wait an hour for that. The game was a slog fest by that point as we'd allowed Ipswich to fall right into their gameplan.

He may well work hard, but he's useless on the ball as his touch is crap, and let's not even start on his inability to strike a ball. He is of no use to a team who want to win games.

an unused substitute, or squad filler to help put the cones away in the warm-down.

Meanwhile, Romeu was playing in the Champions League in the Camp Nou tonight. So pleased for him.

We'll have too much of an upheaval in January to maintain any momentum for that. KWP, Alcaraz, Sulemana, Adams and co will all be offski and we'll be looking for the 2024 versions of Wright, Makin and Powell. Lots to look forward to. I think we're here to stay for a very, very long time.

That's exactly it. People are just in love with Pep or Klopp and think they can create a mini-pep setup for themselves, but in reality Pep and Klopp are successful because they have fucking billions of pounds to spend. That's the crux of it! Like you say, play the best players in their natural positions. If you have enough good players in their natural positions then you will win games of football, and then you can pass the ball. Build a structure and then have a little tweak if you want, but we just seem like a Man City-lite vanity project and it's rather depressing.

That table will bring back memories of 2008 after tomorrow night.

If more of our players moved there they'd score as well, something is broken at St Mary's and fuck knows what it is at this stage.

I think Edozie is decent, but Armstrong shouldn't be near a professional football team let alone a PL promotion chasing one.

Well that was predicably depressing. I think you can pretty much call off any auto promotion now, teams that finish top 2 don't lose 2 on the bounce - let alone 3. We're now 9 points adrift of the top spot, with a -6 goal difference in the Championship - let that sink in. How depressing. And at this rate I'm all for St Mary's being totally demolished and re-built somewhere else, it's just fucked. The place stinks, it's just misery and a cesspit of shit in whatever league and whatever year. But we sadly have the hallmarks of a Stoke/Swansea/Watford and it feels like we are going to be a miserable also-ran in this league, which with our budget is quite simply unacceptable.

It's all very static today, incredibly easy to defend against. We look like your typical mid-table Championship team, this isn't a competitive promotion team in any way on this showing. We're becoming Swansea/Stoke and drifting into Championship nothingness, which is the most depressing existence any football fan can have.

A CB in at CB, and a CM in midfield was the least I expected tbh.

The common sense approach was to stick Charles in midfield, and use one of our actual natural CB's - who are on the bench - to play at CB. But no, play Aribo and Smallbone. We simply have no central midfield today, this is going to be a case of hoping we score more than them. Again. Football isn't complicated, our last 3 managers have made it so complicated. Just play players in their natural positions and you'll be surprised at how well it works.

Lucky to only ship 3 v Gillingham as well tbf.

That argument would have flown if we hadn't shed who we did in the summer. This is a totally new team really, in many cases a lot of these guys have no real connection with the last few years so they shouldn't be hindered by that. Burnley changed up so much last season, both playing side and the way they played (and theirs was an extreme change from long ball, to football). We're not going from Dyche to Martin, these guys know how to play football already. The whole needing time is just an excuse really. Good players are good players at the end of the day. We've got enough good players, and we don't have time to 'build' if we want to get promoted. If we're not careful we'll be building ourselves to a playoff fight on the last day, which will be totally unacceptable in my opinion.

Let's hope we start to see things changing in that case. I'm still of the belief that good players win you games, not systems. In fact systems and philosophy's can actually hinder good players - so if we can play our good players, who are better than 90% of this league, in their natural positions then I'm sure we'll win many more. I find it hard to totally get behind the 'need to build' and 'gelling' arguments - Leicester haven't had that problem using them as an example. Burnley didn't have that issue last year and they totally transformed themselves. It's all about good players. We've got good enough players who shouldn't' need to gel, just let them do what they're good at.

I dunno, I think it's fair to have the same expectations as Leicester. By all accounts we were in a much stronger position financially than Leicester, who relied on loans and such because of FFP. I'm not of the mindset to sit back and say ''Oh well, we can never be expected to compete with Leicester, write that game off!'' They've managed to keep the likes of KDH, Ndid, Pereira, Vardy sure - but like us they lost a hell of a lot of first team players - Castange, Maddison, Barnes, Soumoure, Kristiansen, Tielemans, Perez, Evans, Armarty, Thomas, Mendy, Tete. We've done well to get the fee's we have for our guys, they lost a lot on free. We have also been able to retain KWP, Adams, Alcaraz, Sulemana. Sure, it was never a foregone conclusion that we'd beat Leicester - totally possible we'd lose - but to go down 4-1 to someone I expected to be close to isn't great.

There was quite a vociferous 'manager out' chant where I was in the Kingsland, only one person mind, but the funny thing is that the chant was ''Martins out, Martins out'' - no one bothered to correct him, leave him to his own little world. Quite funny if you're that passionate against someone, you should at least know what they're called.