Lighthouse

It’s a freak season. Even including our awful September we’ve averaged enough points per game to finish on 87, which last season would have put us 3rd and 4 points behind Sheff United. Ipswich and Leicester are on course for 111 and 113 points respectively, both comfortably a record total for this league.

0.75 goals conceded per game would literally have been the best defence in the league last season. It’s utterly laughable that people talk about this as ‘costing us points’.

Myra Hindley’s mum or Idi Amin’s landscape gardner?

It was a very good save, some people just need to talk down everything Bazunu does. He could have done better with the goal, as with a couple of the Sunderland goals and one against Boro. On the flip side his shot stopping is generally sound, he communicates very well with his defence, comes out and deals with stuff (the Cardiff header) and his district excellent. Since getting our act together in September we’ve conceded 1-0-1-1-2-1-0-1-1-0-0-1. That’s 9 goals in 12 games, which should be good enough to win any league.

You've missed the point entirely. We're only 1-0 up because the rest of the team has spent the last 95 minutes missing passes and shots which weren't overly difficult, which would have put us comfortably ahead. So once again, because of a substandard effort by our forward line, we're in a sudden death position, where any mistake from the keeper costs us two points. He hasn't done it plenty of times, he's made a reasonable, average number of mistakes which I'd expect from any keeper.

I think you probably need a different AA.

If you can’t get into our crap forward line because you’re even crapper, that’s really not much of a statement about your contribution to the squad. Besides, with the exception of Edozie those players all get onto the pitch at some point most game and seem to do very little. If we’re 3-0 today, Watford pretty much give up after 80 minutes and the game dies out. Being on a knife edge every week on 90+6 is going to cost us as often as not. Doesn’t matter if it’s Baz’s mistake, THB or someone giving it away in midfield.

Amazing just how much stick Baz gets for basically being the MotM, keeping us in it and making an excellent save just before we score, but making a mistake which is ultimately punished because yet again we’re only one goal ahead. Why does the Alcaraz thread never get bumped, even though he consistently churns in sub-par performances and has one goal this season? Along with Mara, Edozie, Adams and Sully he is far more deserving of the flak aimed at Baz.

The goal difference of the top 5 +26 +18 +16 +4 +10 I think that probably illustrates our problem better than anything else. We’re marginally better than most of the teams we play, but just not good enough to win convincingly. That’s Huddersfield and today where we’ve been mugged off at the end. You can blame individual mistakes if you like but if we’d been 3-0 up that goal wouldn’t have mattered.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/67663582 Because Russians are obviously going to pretend that all their athletes are suddenly ‘neutral’.

New contracts for Prest, Albert, Middleton and Turner; great news.

I believe it used to be a Londis.

As well as AA is doing this season, he was crap for two years in the PL and if anything he is a metaphor for the huge job we would face just surviving, if we were to make it back into the top league. It’s not like he was keeping the bench warm for Pelle and Lambert either, if you can’t force your way into a team which can’t score for love nor money, that’s a pretty poor reflection of your own abilities, not the managers selection policy. Put simply, he’s the Geordie Vydra.

In the League 1 promotion season, it was a 2-0 defeat at Rochdale which stopped us going 15 games unbeaten. The last 21 games of that season were W17, D2, L2, just ridiculous form compared to anything we’ve done since. After the Rochdale game, we won our last 6, followed by the first 4 of the Championship season, so 10 consecutive wins, followed by a 5-2 defeat at Leicester. I think you’re referring to our unbeaten home run, which basically stretched the whole of 2011 until we lost against Bristol City three days before new year.

He’s the Parisian Juanmi; there’s a player in there somewhere but I don’t think it’s one we’re going to see performing in this country, even at second division level.

Not another game as such but even amongst footballers this guy seems like an absolute helmet. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-67612757

My two memories are rather better. I wasn’t at either game but: 2012 when Lambert scored a hat trick, I was on holiday and kept checking the scores. 2017 under Puel, when we won 4-3. That and a 4-0 win at hopeless Sunderland a couple of weeks before somehow built a myth that Puel’s teams were a free-flowing goal machine away from home.

It was a pretty much bog standard third round draw, where three all PL ties got drawn. The rest of what you’ve just said is a hypothetical based on nothing. I’ve no idea what your point is RE: Leeds, Leicester and Ipswich, they’re decent Championship teams, nothing more. They’d most likely all be sent packing by the likes of West Ham, Brighton or Everton if it came to it.

I'm racist and so's my wife!

I never suggested you were but three PL clubs drawing each other in R3 is nothing out of the ordinary.

Really looked like he was going through the motions to me. One of those players who can look busy by chasing around but the intent and endeavour just never seemed to be there. I hope he's off in January and I'll laugh my arse off if he ends up back in the PL.

Yep. Fully looking forward to another Chelsea - Man City final.

Why in the name of Jesus would you blow up then!?

I was hoping to see one of them take the magical happy slide, all the way to the bottom.

Never say never, but I’m 100 times happier with L2 at home, compared to another trip to Crystal f**king Palace.