Lighthouse

Sadly for us, just that pass against Leeds on its own would disqualify Mara from being our worst player. By virtue of scoring at least one goal, he’s not even in our top ten.

This is a weird argument, I've no idea why people are pretending not to understand it. It's very obvious why we hired Martin; Wilcox thought that his methods, coupled with our better players and higher budget than Swansea, would deliver promotion. Clubs hire managers based on what they think they could potentially achieve with the resources they have, not what they achieved in the past with another clubs players. We didn't hire Adkins so we could sack him after two years, 15th in the Championship, neither did we expect Poch to hover around 14th in the PL because that's what he did at Espanyol, nor did we expect Ralph to take us to the Champions League.

All of that is still beside the point - we hired Adkins to take us to the PL. So what if L1 promotion was the first step, we clearly hired him to do much more than languish in 15-17th in the Champ once he got there. We correctly deduced, from the way his teams played, that he’d be able to achieve far higher with better players at his disposal. Pretty much every other club out there has made a similar choice at some point, with varying degrees of success.

No we didn’t, we hired him to get to the Premier League and stay there, getting out of League 1 was just the first step. We clearly hired him to do something well beyond what he’d ever achieved before at Scunthorpe and we were right. I don’t mind the principle of trying to do the same with Martin but clearly the execution is some way lacking. It wasn’t unreasonable to expect him to achieve higher with our squad than Swansea’s.

He started the game today and showed exactly why he should be nowhere near the pitch. He’s awful, I’ve no idea what anyone sees in him other than moderately good technique with zero end product.

And yet somehow we’ve looked utterly pathetic in three of the four games since he’s been injured. None of McC’s saves today were anything special, a couple just smacked at him, waist height, another near post at a tight angle that was straight at his shins. As for the rest of our performances today. Pathetic and gutless. Edozie and KWP sort of looked alright but I can’t quite bring myself to compliment them as such. A total lack of composure all over the pitch, right from the first minute. The end of this season feels like the end of Puel’s season - on paper fourth is a decent result but watching the way things are heading on the pitch… guuueehhhhh.

ESL, it's coming back.

I'll never forget that free-flowing joy and freedom we played with against Lincoln, after he'd been sacked.

Player Of The Season: Downes Underwhelming Achievement Award (Worst POTS): Mara Best Signing Of The Season: Downes Worst Signing Of The Season: Stewart Best Match: Huddersfield H Worst Match: Blackburn A Season Rating: 7/10 Russ Rating: 6/10 Your one hope for the remainder of the season/next season: Win this year's playoff or go up next year automatically.

It was only a month ago people were saying Leeds were unstoppable and they couldn't see them losing again all season. One international break later, with promotion in their grasp, they get zero points from Blackburn and QPR. Anything can happen in the playoffs, in fact WBA could still bottle them entirely, their only win in the last six was Rotherham at home.

Just looking at the whole form thing for context, last years contenders finished the league: Luton Boro Coventry Sunderland Ranked in order of form over the last 6 games they were Sunderland - 14 points W4 D2 L0 Luton - 12 points - W3 D3 L0 Coventry - 12 points - W3 D3 L0 Boro - 8 points - W2 D2 L2

Now it’s starting to get funny.

Ageing like a fine prawn sandwich.

I would broadly speaking agree with this. For me it’s all about whether he knows the flaws in his teams and more importantly how to address them. Perhaps saying we were good for the first hour of the Leicester match was just media speak. Perhaps he is just trying to carry a positive attitude into the playoffs, knowing that it’s still all to play for and really there’s some serious work to do in training and over the summer. For everyone comparing us to Ipswich and McKenna, his first season there ended like this, sometimes patience is needed.

There could be nothing riding on our trip to Elland Road.

Punjab Kings have just completed the highest ever T20 run chase, after being set 261 to win.

We didn't hire him for his Swansea results, we hired him based on what we thought we could achieve with the players we have. Nigel Adkins was fighting Championship relegation with Scunthorpe when we hired him. He was replaced by a man who was 14th in La Liga with Espanyol. There's not a manager in football who hasn't been sacked from somewhere for a string of poor results. I've no idea what your problem is with getting management from City's academy, they're one of the best in Europe. I don't know how two people constitutes an obsession either. The point you're missing is that you can't choose results, there is no 'results' based system. Any idiot can sit here and say, "yeah we need to be one of those winning every game 3-0 type teams," but you need a good strategy, properly implemented to get there.

46/4 in reply, we’ve certainly rocked them so far. I’m sure they’ll get a partnership going eventually and probably lead by at least a hundred.

Gubbins dropped on 9, then Vince out for 5 next ball. Bit of a mare so far.

It’s absolutely no different to playing ugly, route one football and losing by the same score. The fact that we have a way of playing which doesn’t always work doesn’t mean it’s pointless or ‘propaganda football’, just that it isn’t being properly implemented. If you lose 5-0 with 30% possession it’s just as sh*t.

‘Results’ isn’t a style of football. I’ve no idea why anyone would think we prioritised a particular style over actually winning games. We thought we would succeed playing the way we did, it’s that simple. We weren’t wrong as such, it’s simply that the players and the manager who implemented that style didn’t get it right. We don’t have an obsession with City youth players either, we hired Shields and Wilcox, who both have a strong link to their academy, and went with the highest rated prospects they knew from their previous employment, with mixed results.

I’ve no idea what this is supposed to mean and people keep saying it. We’ve played a variety of different styles since Cortese left, from the old school, simple Hughes and Jones types to Ralph’s high press and Martin’s possession based game. None of these are exactly revolutionary, Martin is only playing the same philosophy that won Spain a bunch of trophies 15 years ago.

It’ll be interesting to see if JT makes the XI and for who. You’d have thought Holland.

Good Lord, no thank you on several levels.

Don’t disagree with any of that. My team was just an example of the skeleton we could realistically build around without further signings. Beyond the obvious need for a GK, CM and AM, as you say I’d ask for two better FB and another AM, ST and CB.