Legod Third Coming

Having been married for 19 years, this is not really an option for me. My wife took 'em years ago. So let's just win eh!!

Pardew is one of the best managers at buying players in the football league on current form! Either he is good or has a great network - probably both. Pardew is 'well connected' in football. Does NA have the same kind of connections? Just look at the Pardew signings who are doing the job for us and Newcastle. Even Charlton fans would admit they were unlucky that his best signings got injured - although most just hate the bloke the same way we hate Redknapp... NA has plenty of time and opportunity to worry about this if and when he oversees promotion!!

Players are not daft. We miss a penalty, two minutes later they score one. We miss a chance, two minutes later they bury one... it's now 2-0 and yet we haven't really done a great deal wrong, other than two schoolboy errors. The players can try to remain confident but the opposition now have their tails up and are a yard quicker and at us... We try to get back in the game after half time and we look positive and hungry. A few minutes later the opposition has a third from another schoolboy error we would not normally make. That's sport. Some days you walk off the pitch wondering how things unfolded they way they did.

Let's not kid ourselves we're sending them down. They're going bust on April 27th!

Correct and Morgan only passes backwards and sideways when these are the ONLY options presented. I fail to see how the guy is supposed to miracle a pass to an attacker when NONE are in space and available to receive the ball? We have seen Morgan ping 40 yard cross field balls with ease when they are on. His passing is deliberate because it goes to a bloke in the same coloured shirt 99% of the time. That is the job of a midfielder who sits at the base ofa diamond ahead of the back four. Yesterday we had no width as a result of Chaplow not being a winger and Lallana coming inside the whole time where he prefers to be....

And yet, if the penalty goes in all of the above becomes purely academic because - like so much in life - the confidence needed to do what you describe would have been with us and not our opponents...

I am a Tory but to be fair to DD he sounds nothing like the cretins currently running the country. 1. He hasn't mentioned eating a pasty despite to my knowledge living in Plymouth for at least a portion of his life. 2. He has actually told you NOT TO PANIC in stark contrast to the feckwit that is Franics Maude and bigger feckwit that is David 'call me Dave' Cameron. 3. His plan of doing nothing and things working out ok (which is a Thatcher laissez faire approach and some would say more helfpul) is completely the opposite of the current government's meddlesome approach. So in short DD is actually showing all the hallmarks of successful old fashioned conservatism which served this country well in the boom of the 80s and is nothing like the Bullindgon Club Brigade who could not organise a proverbial in a brewery and but for the fact she is alive would have Maggie turning in her grave!!!!

I agree. I thought Sharp's sideways look was indicative that he wasn't 100% confident where he was going to put it. He took it way too quickly after the whistle. Penalties are not just about hard and low, or hard and high. They are also about outwitting the keeper... As for the 'we were well beaten brigade' yes we were. We were outplayed EXCATLY as we were at Millwall. The game was almost a carbon copy in the way we handed the impetus to the opposition. Momentum is key in sport and we (in three of the last four away games) have handed it to our opposition and yesterday it caught us out. If we go one up it most likely is a totally different game and result. Hence the fine margin. But we have to get back (to my original point) to the players NOT giving the impetus away. Either they're a touch too complacent or nervous, but the early season confidence simply is not there at present. And we need it back because we are the best football team in the division on our day. And we need more days between now and May - SIX to be precise!

Hahaha! Quite right DD. We can't be doing everything wrong. We've had some luck of late. We had none yesterday. In hindsight, their's was not a pen, ours was but we blew it.

I would say the margin was eight inches.

Spot on. The ball bounced off Sharp. That's not his fault. He is NOT Rickie Lambert. Sharp is a poacher, a man who needs his FRONT to goal. Lambert plays with his back to goal. If I was a betting man I would say this was why Adkins felt a Diamond would work, because that midfield should have been pushing the ball through quicker, over the top or playing it in behind. The fact we didnt' owes as much to the fact that our full backs could not get forward because they had their hands full with two brilliant wingers and we didn't have any width of our own because Lallana and Chaplow are not wide men...

Er, apart from being man of the match against Millwall?

And yet we could have scored three goals as easily as they did. If the penalty goes in, our confidence goes up, theirs goes down, different game, different result. And yet all that changed was one goal chance and we lost by three. That is why football is all about fine margins.

How is it this terrible player has scored as many goals as Lallana, I wonder... ambling around not being Lionel Messi...

Yawn. Guly was the best player on the park at Millwall and the only one who went looking for the ball and mixing it up... Time you took those blinkers in your avatar off. He was no worse yesterday than: Lallana Fonte Jos Morgan Sharp Fox Butterfield Shall I go on?

Yesterday we were poor for a good 75 minutes, but watch the game again and look at the nervousness of Blackpool playing the Champions in waiting for the first ten minutes or so. Then they play one ball in behind Butterfield and their confidence rises three notches, four, five maybe. They realise it is possible to do us, to get in behind, to play against the Champions elect as easily as they can against any other team. They're young, they remember, they have nothing to lose, most of them are the in team becuase the boss ditched the first team... Then we get the golden chance to remind them we're there for a game, and we gift it back, raising their confidence levels again... The football pitch that is most important for us right now is the one between the players' ears! Most football matches are settled by fine margins, but mostly by what goes in in the players' heads. We were no poorer yesterday than at Millwall - and that match mirrored yesterday. Ahead on points, then ahead on goal, then gifted the impetus back to the opposition. As long as the player's remember that they can outplay anyone in this league, we're home and hosed. THAT is what we need to be doing in training this week. And nothing else. (Well maybe penalties if Rickie is still out...)

Agree with that. He was poor yesterday but: 1. He's just uprooted from a home in which he had personal challenges I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. 2. He's having to play understudy for the first time in his career. 3. He's a poacher not a Lambert and we gave him no appropriate supply!

Schoolboy stuff today.

Hahahah, is there a fire drill?

One of?

Personally I think he is struggling to come to terms with playing understudy.

That didn't help but the second killed us. It was a hopeful punt badly defended by our usually reliable CBs.

It would have been a different game. We are Champions in waiting, Blackpool were nervous... we have GIFTED them a game. We have probably given them promotion. All sports rely on belief and we have boosted Blackpool's beyond... well... er belief!!

Can someone teach Billy Sharp the offside rule...

Yes, a night with a gay barmaid apparently...