Lighthouse

I can't even get my head around yesterday. He must have known his job was on a knife edge and he still put that team out. Whatever you think of Martin, at least with that Spurs game he made a desperate attempt to do something different. It was a disaster but he tried to do something. Still? Nope, five at the back and Armstrong as the lone striker. Stick with the same bullsh*t plan that's failed him in every game up until now, is very obviously not going to work again and every fan in the ground can see is hopeless.

Gone. Thanks for errr.... well, absolutely f**k all, let's be honest.

Keep refreshing X waiting for news. Nothing yet but apparently Charles Leclerc just got engaged, so that's nice.

Those are two completely separate things. He had the all clear, he literally came to us to regain match sharpness and fitness. Bournemouth didn't just give us a fully fit, PL quality player for fun; there was a reason he got loaned out to the Championship in the first place. If you're interested, he was mostly playing 10 min sub appearances in the months before he came to us. https://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=87759&season_id=156

I disagree. People who are suffering from mental disorders, hearing voices or whatever are far less likely to inspire or recruit others to do similar in the future. I'd feel better knowing that some looney had just flipped his lid, than knowing there was a terrorist cell out there with a clear agenda to harm as many people as possible on a repeat basis.

So it wasn't the 18 months of cancer treatment that maybe affected his performances?

I'm not sure you've been using doors correctly.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read! But since you asked, Port Vale.

Who remembers Ajax' tribute to Stefan Postma a few years back? (I'm NOT suggesting we do it.)

Did he? I didn't see anything from either of them. That's not a criticism either TBH, they were both thrown on hopelessly at the end of a game in which we were completely rudderless and could have played until midnight without scoring. Downs wasn't brought on as part of sublime tactical masterstroke, that was basically a 'stick a striker on and just hope for something' sub by a man who probably knows he's losing his job.

Still, by far, and that’s not just recency bias. Rusk, Selles, Bassett, Gorman, Wilkins and Wigley were basically caretakers when plan A (and sometimes B) failed. They were never really proper managers and just filling a gap out of necessity. Wotte, Portaloo, Juric, and Martin all got sacked after basically doing all that an awful squad was capable of. That 2009 team was never going to do anything other than get relegated, we were broke and last season we were doomed to finish bottom from the day the transfer window closed. Jones was a massive downgrade on Ralph and clearly an absurd appointment but even his harshest critic would accept that squad was pretty damn dreadful. Sturrock actually had an alright record here and was also shafted by poor recruitment (what’s Aledine Yahia up to these days?) That leaves Still. The man who had a squad tailored to his own style of football, spending money in the Championship that Ralph could only dream of in the PL, and has managed to put out a team which is so utterly abysmal on so many levels.

Well f*ck me, here we go again. I reckon we’d probably lose to a team of actual park rangers from Sandringham Estate, so not holding out much hope of anything.

The most telling thing about this team is that they win the ball back in our own third and just look like they haven’t a clue what to do next. Zero dangerous movement in front of them, zero presence up front, they just look clueless and abject. The worst thing is that we play such a negative form and attitude and we don’t even f**king defend well. We’re setting up to not get beat, against teams like Blackburn and Preston, and we’re conceding two or three goals per game.

You guys are being way too harsh on Still. He had no way of knowing before the game that five at the back with Armstrong as the lone striker wasn’t going to work.

Will they have to change the name on his Pizza Express loyalty card?

They're from Preston, this is like a trip to Dubai for them. Hot weather, beautiful women and expensive beer.

I never went to parties with under 12s but to each their own.

Nobody who’s ever been to a party where all the girls are dressed as slutty witch, slutty cat, slutty nurse, slutty cheerleader, slutty demon or slutty slut would ever post that.

So his comic timing and delivery weren’t to everyone’s taste in an interview he did 18 months ago. I don’t personally find that upsetting to the point that he should have been ‘finished with the club’ because of it.

Good grief, get over yourself. Blackmore was winding him up in front of the crowd, who were singing, "sign him up!" He shouted ‘irons!’ Once into the mic and then laughed when everyone booed him. It was a light-hearted moment when a journalist put him on the spot on stage. Nothing more.

I’m not bothered about that so much, the last thing we want is Leo getting injured. It’s the fact that he brought on Stephens when Robinson was the very obvious like for like replacement. Even Downs would have been a better option, having already taken a striker off for Fellows.

He was. We need another Sharp/Lee/Barnard/Saganowski.

I’m all for dropping a CB and having another attacking player on the pitch but Matsuki should be third in the queue, behind Robinson and Fellows, for a starting place.

Is it? Our problem against Hull was defending against basic, route one football. We also failed to do the basics right against Bristol City. We’ve had multiple games where we’ve played well, taken the lead and then completely lost our way. Pompey was just dreadful overall, we didn’t miss many decent chances in that, and Wrexham was also laboured for 89 minutes. We’ve made awful subs and our formation has been so completely at odds with the players we’ve signed that two superb Championship AMs are sat on the bench in favour of a third CB. Missing chances is just one of our problems and even then, one of the worst examples was Jander. Signing prime Rickie Lambert wouldn’t have prevented his ‘mare.

A half decent manager should be able to get goals out of the forwards we have, even with Stewart's injury. Armstrong has consistently scored goals at this level for multiple seasons, Archer had 11 in half a season and Downs I'm sure is better than what we've got out of him so far. Put it this way, there's a team in the top six who took us to school bringing on Sinclair Armstrong, who scored three goals last year.