Saint Pete

I personally would have liked Azaz to have stayed on. He seems to be very much a confidence player and after the assist for the goal, I would have fancied him to create something else to potentially win the game. I accept he's frustrating and didn't have a great game overall, but he is a threat especially when his tail is up.

Sorry, can't agree with selling Armstrong, that's madness in my opinion. He's a proven goalscorer at this level and those are not that easy to find. Stewart looks decent and I agree with you that we certainly need one and preferably 2 central strikers on the squad that have physical presence. But as we know Stewart is very unreliable in terms of fitness. Yes, bring in another big man up front, I would hope and pray that's the plan now we have a free spot after Downs leaving on loan. But don't throw away the one player that has scored consistently at this level!! I think we should be playing him as well as Stewart/new striker in one of the wide supporting positions, not throwing away a scorer that pretty much every team in this division would want.

Well, we won and a clean sheet is encouraging I guess. Confidence clearly needed at present and remember we had a couple of scratchy unimpressive wins after Still was sacked that then resulted in a purple patch when the confidence flowed for a bit. That's what I will be clinging to anyway!

A Stewart goal soon after HT would be good though before he has to be withdrawn to protect him from injury!

Thing is though his injury record means we have to surely be very careful with him. Would think its probably not sensible to play him for more than an hour tonight. Armstrong in theory should be a useful sub against tiring legs but obviously we will lose the physical presence.

I'm not so sure about that personally, I agree we are missing power down the middle of the pitch, but I would argue we do have pace in the team, going forward at least now after the summer signings with the likes of Scienza and Fellows and also Azaz and Armstrong are no slouches, you could see the pace we had when breaking in that short-lived purple patch when Tonda came in. Attacking wise, the summer recruitment looked fairly good with the glaring exception of a decent striker, clearly they wrongly thought Downs would be adequate if Stewart got injured again, which was obviously a serious error. Our biggest issues squad wise are the continued absence of an effective striker with a physical presence (who is not injured 90% of the season) and competent centre backs. But all of that is secondary to the biggest club issue which is appalling choice of managers. Even allowing for the clear weaknesses described above, we should be getting far better results than we are with the talent we have going forward. Maybe not auto promotion but we should be in the playoff mix in my opinion. But the club have saddled us with 2 very young and inexperienced managers who clearly don't know how to structure and motivate this team to achieve the level they should be at. I firmly believe we would be in better shape if we had done the sensible thing and ignored temporary form when Tonda took over and appointed a more experienced head, like Carrick or even O'Neal. If Spors was responsible for the managerial appointment decisions, then yes he is a big issue, was he (I genuinely don't know)? Are these decisions made by one man or a wider board?

Wow, some goal from Brighton there, great overhead kick!

It's a nice dream but that's all it is unfortunately given how far we have fallen now.

You would just like to see something different tried from the start, is that so much to ask after so many without a win when we are supposed to be aiming for promotion? Or are we really now happy to keep sliding down the Championship table whilst sitting on our hands?

Piroe on loan seems like the obvious best striker choice to me if he will agree to come. Proven track record at this level and low risk option with Downs having gone out on loan freeing up a spot. Good chance that Leeds will be open to loaning him out. Fully expect us to go for an unknown "prospect" with a dubious record in a substandard league though.

They should recruit that linesman for VAR now if he's still alive, he would fit in well, exactly the right mindset!! What a team we had then, great football.

"Clearly offside, clearly interfering"? Well, that's one view I guess. Another is that VAR has broken the game if that is considered to be offside and no goal now. One thing that makes me glad we are shit enough to be in the Championship. And to add, if that occurred in the Championship, how many people do you think would have queried that the goal should be disallowed for offside? Absolutely no one and rightly so! If that's the case, VAR is far exceeding what it was intended for when it was brought in, which was to eliminate clear errors/howlers by the officials.

Always looked bang average when I've seen him and not a particularly impressive record.... So, probably a good shout for us in our current state , yes 😌

Well, he can't probably believe his luck that he has landed a manager's job at a supposedly top level Championship club! He's gonna say what his bosses wanna hear, right?!

Totally agree. These words are from a manager who is not a man who knows how to win or has enough desire to win. It's why you should employ people on the basis of evidence that they can perform the role you are employing them for, not just blind faith/hope based on players talking them up or a few games short term results. My feeling is that SR's main fault is their arrogance that they are more important than any manager/employee appointments, they think their philosophy is so good it will do the job and managers and players can come and go with no consequences!