HarvSFC

How's he not scored? FFS.

No Fellows and Stewart weakens us significantly in terms of moving the ball up the pitch. Just hope we don't adopt the same tactics we did in the home fixture (hoof and hope for the best). At least Manning and Wood are sitting out again.

Saturday and all other recent games have been dire. Tonight was much better. We attacked with pace and intent on multiple occasions and created good chances that the forwards missed. Rather than Wood and Manning killing our attacks dead before we've even moved up the pitch and stat padding our xG with multiple pot shots against a packed defence and without much hope. Not much of the sideways and backwards shite for sideways and backwards sake tonight. We gave Sheffield United a game and we need to do the same on the weekend.

The same January we signed Onuachu and Sulemana, Bournemouth signed Outtara and Semenyo. We paid £40m for our pair. Bournemouth paid £30m for theirs. We got £24m back from their sales. Bournemouth got £104m back. Good players do move in January, we just can't identify them.

Can't add Morgan Schneiderlin to our list of ex-player staff as he's joined the Chelsea pathway.

Goztepe tried to sign him in the summer. I was interested as he could have been the one player who could have potentially developed into something worthwhile for us based on his QPR performance against us and he since caused us issues at Ashton Gate this season.

https://oatcakefanzine.proboards.com/thread/299282/waste-space-angus-gunn Get ready for the Bazunu version. Personally, I hope he does really well at Stoke so that we never have to see him again.

West Brom seem to have similar owners who are allergic to an experienced manager. Eric Ramsay appointed. Himself, Tom Cleverley and Rohl were the three most heavily linked before Still got the job. See if Ramsay is another dud like Cleverley and Still.

We stitched them up with Gunn on loan previously. Bazunu's worse.

"Portsmouth fans are elite and always cheer their team on.*" For a full house. *Other than the lower profile games they're losing in the Championship.

Can play Portsmyth bingo with Matterface. Henry, the atmosphere, the overpaid players of old that sent them down to League Two, the special club. Anything else?

"I know where this question is coming from in terms of formation, and we started in a back four. I actually think we became a lot more solid going into a back three with those changes." So predictable. A back three forever more then.

Can add Doncaster, 23rd in League One, 12 defeats in 17, 1 win in 17 to the list of underwhelming performances.

Don't think I've ever seen Downes not make a hospital pass. The two goals conceded will be Eckert's excuse to play a back five. He'll say he tried a back four, but we conceded twice against Doncaster, so will stick his five, despite conceding goals for fun every week. The two goals conceded is because we've played with no energy or effort since the first half, not the formation.

League One opposition, but seen upsets already last night and today, so it's amazing what happens when you play in the opposition's half.

Edwards is a necessary sale. Can't keep hanging onto these players in the hope that one day they will become good, as spoken about before we need to be more ruthless with our squad management and those who aren't up to the standard should be shown the door. Alongside this £4.5m adds to our funds from the summer and isn't a bad fee at this level. As we all know the summer of 2024 went wrong because we signed a load of squad players instead of improving the first eleven. Going as far as to sign two squad centre-backs in Wood and Edwards at the time. Both young, but a year and a half later and Edwards is no closer to the first team than the day he signed and has lacked any physicality and pace when played this season, which we're lacking across the team so there isn't anybody to cover up for his deficiencies here. At the end of the day, I don't think we'll ever have a good defence if Edwards is part of it and we need to be aiming higher.

Seen it discussed in here also, but Alfie House has been quite outspoken on Twitter this evening. As outspoken as a person in his role can be. Pretty much confirming what all of us on the outside looking in believed to be the case. He says there's a "rotten" culture, created by the players that needs to be reset and that there's a clique amongst the squad that needs to go for us to be successful. Doesn't outrightly name the worst offenders, but does imply that Armstrong's a part of it, while stating the only players we should look to keep this summer are Charles, Jander, Fellows, Azaz, Scienza, Robinson, Armstrong (Without the others), Quarshie, Edwards, Wood, Roerslev and Bragg (in a follow up Tweet). So, you can assume a lot of the unnamed players are a part of the damaging culture within the club. This is from someone who has a lot of access to the inner workings of the club. Goes on the pre-season tours, etc. I hate the current inflexible setup as much as the next person. But, also know we'd get beaten routinely playing any formation with the half hearted performances the players have been putting in the last month and then the management will use it as an excuse to say they tried a back four, it didn't work, so will further solidify the want for a back three. Also reiterates what we all said in the summer. The team showed no fight last season, they were very close to all being tarnished with being the worst Premier League side of all time and not even that could motivate them. They couldn't even motivate themselves to put in a performance for the Portsmouth home game earlier this season. The standards across the club are at all time low once more and Jack Stephens is not the amazing leader nor captain that the hierarchy tried to gaslight us into thinking he was and deserving of the new contract.

My issue is, is that this run of fixtures has been quite favourable. We've seemingly faced teams at the right time, out of form, like us and been outclassed and outthought each time with little to shout about. Norwich - 23rd in the league and if not for Sheffield Wednesday would have been bottom, won 1 of their previous 16 before we rocked up. They did have a new manager bounce, but they're still only 22nd now. We should be beating them, yet they saw us off comfortably, Manning's goal gave us some hope, but Norwich won deservedly. Coventry - Top of the league, yet they've suffered recently. 2 wins from their last 8 and played 40 minutes against us with 10 men. Yet, again, we didn't do enough to win the match and didn't test Rushworth or create enough chances to beat them. Oxford - Sacked their manager days before we played. Against another amateur manager in Craig Short, who hasn't had a full time managerial job since 2010. They've suffered 2 defeats from 2 games since playing us, they've lost 5 of their last 7. They've won 2 of their last 13. Really poor result. Birmingham - ANOTHER out of form side? Surely not. Today was their first win in 8 games. They've lost 4 of those 8. Yet, we went up there and gave them the run of the park. If not for Kyogo's misses they beat us comfortably. Millwall - The theme is still going. With today's results Millwall have won 2 from 7. They have an old school manager in Alex Neil and he's done Tonda twice. Can't remember us having a shot on target against them in the second half at home while Bazunu did the unthinkable. Middlesbrough - On a run of 3 losses from 4. Hadn't scored in any of those fixtures. So, up rolls the Southampton charity club. Smashed us 4-0 to reignite their season. Adding context to this run makes it a lot more bleak than it actually is. We aren't losing every week to in form Premier League side's with millions of pounds pumped into their squads anymore. We're losing comfortably to Championship side's on bad run's with a fraction of the resources we have available.

Embarrassing, and we've been heading towards a thrashing since the first half against West Brom, six games ago and nothing's improving. Portsmouth is the only thing left to play for this season and in this current state we're going to get embarrassed there too. Abysmal from top to bottom. Yet another experiment that has gone terribly wrong. Gambler's fallacy with SR, though. They'll believe they'll strike gold on the next rookie appointment.

Wish Manning would pick up a red.

Poor CV, no top club experience, no playing career. Areas where Eckert is also lacking in, so doesn't make up in that area. Another one who won't inspire or motivate the players to listen.

Fraser Forster going to Bournemouth.

How Joe Shields got picked up by Chelsea after a scattergun summer here and remains in position always astounds me.

90 minutes wasted. We tried the same move over and over again. 10 passes between our backline, Millwall aren't getting pulled out of position, so we resort to hoofing one up to no one, Millwall get the ball back with ease and start a threatening attack. Even without the ball our players just jockey slowly, not really applying any pressure or threatening to put a challenge in to win the ball back. The opposition force us into far more errors than we do the other way. Said on Monday that Birmingham are in poor form, haven't won any of their last 7, we made them look good and they got trounced by Watford today. That wasn't a good result and these performances are way below standards, again. Archer really does hate Birmingham on that note. Only turned up for two games this season, Birmingham home and away. Our best attackers are Fellows - Azaz - Scienza with Armstrong in front of them. That should be the starting front four every week. But, like with Still for whatever reason we're rarely seeing them all on the pitch together. I thought Matsuki was fine today, but no reason why Fellows shouldn't have been in that position with Jelert playing as the right wing-back. Whatever the formation anyway, we're not beating anyone with the lack of intensity that we showed today. This is starting to feel like the form an individual brilliance of Scienza and Fellows got Eckert those early points. They flagged in second halves and so did our performances. Now Scienza's off form and Fellows is returning from injury we don't have a clue. Another SR masterstroke?