Lighthouse

We’re not going to sack him now. We’re going to spend £15m on a cultured, ball playing, 5’6" CB in January, THEN sack Martin on February 12th and replace him with a lower league long ball merchant. It’s the sport republic way.

Meh. No point bringing him on at all TBH. Gives the fourth official something to do I guess.

https://x.com/WestHam/status/1865433805609205801 ‘Thoughts and prayers’ would suggest it’s not a minor dent in the bumper. Some photos are going around social media of a badly wrecked Ferrari, completely unverified at this stage, in any case we wish him all the best.

I have no idea what their respective issues are, just like both of you.

😂😂 You have absolutely no idea what is happening with ABK or Taylor... but it must definitely 100% be Martin's fault.

It’s quite simple, he’s a decent Championship player and we didn’t sign any other attacking players better than that. It’s the same reason Manning, Bree, Wood and Stephens are getting plenty of game time.

I doubt the integrity of the stadiums is in question (apart from Fratton, obviously) it’s more the danger of tens of thousands of people traveling to and from the stadium and the risk of falling trees, debris, traffic accidents etc. not to mention the likely disruption to the rail network. The Beeb aren’t predicting anything, they’re just passing on info from the met office, who’re saying it could get quite lively. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of games off.

No, I'm saying that Jones was a very obvious downgrade on what came before. Martin doesn't have a predecessor who was achieveing roughly a point per game wih this squad. I'm not saying nobody could possibly do better than Martin, I'm saying that there isn't a very clear example of him being worse, like there was with Jones. I give him some of the credit for last season and some of the blame for this.

He is hated. Why do you think he has thin skin, or even cares at all about people on the internet calling him a c**t? Jones tenure saw a massive drop in performances and results from his predecessor when he was supposed to be an improvement. If you find Martin more attractive than Nate then that's your prerogative, I doubt that's the issue here.

Incorrect. He make many, many mistakes and if there were too many games like Bournemouth and Forrest I'd want him gone. As it is I think the vitriol and hatred on here goes far beyond his share of the blame for this season.

That'll largely depend on if we sign more terrible players.

Who is guaranteed to get us promoted?

Everything everyone said last time. We've just been promoted 'in spite of' Martin, Bazunu and Stephens and I'm quite happy to be promoted in spite of them again.

Fraser Forster wearing his concrete shoes again tonight.

Sigh.... why couldn't Nigella have been a rampant sex pest. The world would have been a much happier place.

Jones got sh*t because of this. I’m not going to defend Martin on this thread but let’s not rewrite Jones, his tenure here was detestable garbage.

I wonder what his next trick is going to be. Perhaps he will give an opponent a prostate exam whilst defending a corner.

Sorry, meant the second. What do you mean by pragmatic? If you just mean going more direct with less passing, I’ve just explained why I don’t think that will yield any improvement.

Everyone will focus on the first goal and say ‘look Russball FFS!’ But the third, fourth and fifth goals were nothing to do with that. Chelsea picked up possession in their own half, scythed us open with far superior players and scored three good goals. The more we go long, the more we give the ball away and the more time the opposition have time and space to craft opportunities like. I don’t think our way of playing highlights our inadequacies, they just genuinely are inadequate. If anything I’d say we’ve given a few teams a better game than I expected.

Yep. That’s what a massive squad of Championship players will get you.

And immediately showed absolutely zero improvement at all over the rest of the rest season.

Against Liverpool and Brighton we looked like we were playing well, individual errors have just costs us time after time. I genuinely have no idea what people expected from the last three games for each one to be an affirmation that Martin is the problem. We’ve lost 5-1 against teams as good as Chelsea were tonight with far, far better players and eleven men on the pitch.

For our team captain, he doesn’t half behave like a giant man-baby sometimes.

I feared the worst when I saw the players available after the Brighton game, especially against a team as good as Chelsea. It’s a shame because we actually looked like we were playing some good stuff going forward and causing problems at the back. Unfortunately the team was just too make shift and when Stephens does something that astonishingly brainless after half an hour, the writing is on the wall. A handful of players acquitted themselves fairly well, I was pleasantly surprised by Wood, Aribo put a decent shift in and KWP had one of his better games this season.

Desperate for what? That’s genuinely what we need.