Hodgey

It would be a shame to lose our promising youngsters, but I don’t really see them being ready for a promotion push at that level next year, they need to fill out a bit. If they want regular football they need to accept that or leave on loan / transfer. PL reserve division 2 isn’t the highest of bars. On cbs - again I’m not convinced on any of them and they all have clear issues. We’ve got far too many average players so losing a few to create space for players Martin will want is a necessity.

Yep this is an old trick we’ve fallen for many a time, it’s normally Italian sides who entice you with a good fee at the end of a loan deal, a fee they never intend to keep to… it would be better to agree a deal for £3m outright.

Amazing fielding from Sussex won that game but again horrible stuff from the Hampshire specialist batsmen….

The declaration has really split opinion, but I like it, after Oz putting players on the boundary it doubles down on us being aggressive and sets a marker for what to expect. 400 is plenty and with changing conditions could give us the extra pressure we need. Even if it all goes wrong for me this is right attitude

We have a batting issue in all formats. Just look at the table bonus points and it’s the same story - bowlers getting us out of trouble. It’s no good amassing a decent score in the 2nd innings if your first is woeful (plus no bonus points for 2nd innings). So far only Middleton and Vince with maybe Gubbins have been convincing. Also what has happened to Prest and Organ - I had hopes for both. The return of Weatherly reminds me of Long for saints, you know he’s not good enough but never find a competent replacement. We’re going to be in trouble next year if we are not careful, our ‘evergreen’ ageing bowlers are on the decline.

I think we should go all out to keep him unless he becomes disruptive. He’ll suit a passing style and I think will score plenty. He can hit the ball well, gets into positions well, and is good at holding the ball up and linking play. Now the caveats - he can only hit the ball well with his right foot, he can’t / won’t use his left, I’ve lost count of the amount of chances gone in the Prem when he tries to run around the ball rather than use his left. He does hit the ball well with his right, but can’t really place it with any accuracy, it’s on target but if a defender or gk are in the way that’s that. He’s also not great in the air. Thing is, in the championship he’ll get more time to run round the ball, and the gks and def are less good at positioning themselves. So hitting it hard with one foot will yield many more goals. in the greater scheme of things, losing c £15m but getting a goalscorer for a season who will fit the system and knows the club / team mates is something we should be happy with. Plus our last efforts signing players upfront were Armstrong, Mara and Tall Paul….so odds of a better replacement are not in our favour.

Looks like they were right about the extra spinner, but very strange that Dawson and Crane didn’t get much joy. And now batsmen looking relatively comfortable, what an odd side we are. odds still heavily in Lancs favour, we’ll need our other batsmen to build good totals and not play any silly shots.

Yep amazing to see our top 7 batsmen combined to score 1 more than bowlers Crane and Barker. On which note - they must think this is a spinners wicket given they have picked 3, that’s being undone somewhat as ideally you would have them bowling last, and with something to defend. All out under 150 - and no real hope for some North West rain to save us.

Just read the Athletics alternative awards. Aside from us getting a surprising bronze for variety of goals scored they rehashed the best and worst goal stopper. Baz conceded 52 and was expected to concede 16 less, just pipping Messier (12) both miles ahead of the rest who were generally between 1 and 5 either better or worse. I’m not sure I believe that if he was average he would only have conceded 36 goals, but it’s interesting that whatever metric they used has Meslier and Bazuna as worst by a country mile. Mc Carthy stats not there for some reason but can’t imagine they were much better. On the plus side he was 8th in sweeping (defending outside the box) highlighting his ballplaying ability / confidence to leave his box. JWP only other player to figure, 9th best in outperforming expected goals (Kane top)

Could be a Raziak type poacher, but the concerns over his fitness are even higher in the Championship. You don’t really want to have to sub someone after 60m unless they are something special. Depends on what we end up being, if we are a team who creates loads of chances it might work as he can clearly finish looking at his record,

Was odd playing Fuller - we already had 5 bowlers so guess confidence wasn’t high on one of them being pummelled. Suppose the thinking was that Fuller can also bat, but he was totally out of sorts and we should have played an extra batsman (but we’re not confident enough with the them I don’t think). Whitely is having an awful season, which when you only play t20 isn’t great it’s going to be close now - that result counteracts the Somerset one and we are where I would expect us to be. Presume a loss Vs Surrey for 4 defeats and I think we could probably get away with losing one more and still qualify. on that paywall fiasco - that really annoyed me - was looking fwd to watching on YT and couldn’t find it anywhere. I wouldn’t have paid £6 for it anyway, but I want to watch on the big TV and there’s no obvious app so unless people could be bothered to cast it or watch on a device with easy browser it’s just not worth the effort. I do wonder if they made anything at all given higher production cost / payment system etc required than sticking it on YT.

What an amazing game ! You called it windows. Turner looks a real find, Currie was punished today but just about held it together, good learning curve. Good to see Weatherly score a few. After the break we should have Howells. Fuller and Prest back so looking good.

Think you missed my point Windows. We could win yes (although not looking great at the moment) but it’s much harder playing twice against a team who have hammered everyone so far (including us by a landslide). We won’t beat Surrey - massive bogey side for us even discounting the ridiculous talent they have. Put it this way - if you had the choice of one team to swerve at home and one away - I reckon Surrey and Somerset would be those teams. Like you say - can still qualify with those defeats.

The problem we have is that this year we play Somerset and Surrey twice. We’ll obviously lose to Surrey as long as the day ends in a y, so if we lose to Somerset again tomorrow we have very little wiggle room. It really is a bit mad that the teams don’t all play each other twice but there you go. We also appear to be one injury away from Gubbins making the team, I’d have thought Middleton a better bet.. Haven’t mentioned Turners impressive debut either - like Currie (who came back after being slapped around a bit today) I like the cut of his jib. Now if we can just find some batsmen outside the top two who can slap it around a bit…it comes to something when Wood is seen as a more explosive option.

So this is what I was talking about - if the openers don’t fire it looks weak. And this looks really weak….

I agree with the problem you’ve rightly pointed out that, but not the players. That’s not the job of KWP (well slightly) nor JWP (ignoring the fact he has the most assists for this argument). If you want to point the finger I’ll give you 8 better players to do that with, whose job it actually is - Elynoussi, Walcott, Edozie, Sulimana, Djenepo, Osric, Armstrong, Armstrong. How many goals and assists did these attacking midfielders get between them?. In theory the two def mid should be giving them the ball and they should be carrying it / making assists and being ‘mobile’. Apart from they didn’t, because they are not good enough.

So we’re now blaming our genuinely proven Prem players for our terrible season. JWP is ‘immobile’ (please look that word up in the dictionary) and KWP has no end product. Dear oh dear. I’ll give you neither have reached previous highs but they were still the better players this year (and in my opinion managed badly)

Reminds me of last year a lot. If our openers fire we are extremely hard to beat as our experienced bowlers have enough about them, but on paper the rest of the batting looks decidedly average if they don’t, and not particularly explosive (eg Somerset). Then again last year was the same but more often than not the openers did fire and the others tended to do just enough between them to get over the line. Crane is an odd one, he does get wickets but is very expensive and can’t bat. I guess we thought we’d have Howells playing instead. I continue to like what I see of Currie, he seems to have replaced the injured Wheal well. I think we’ll have just enough to sneak into the next round and then as we’ve seen it’s anyone’s.

If any of our talented players are off, I don’t want any loan dealings with Italian sides - they’ve got our number. Has happened so many times ‘we’ll loan them for a season and then pay £50m to buy’ only to then send them back after barely playing or only offer £10m. Cash deal only please. All that said the jury is still out on Sulimana, he had a decent amount of game time and only occasionally showed any real attacking talent, he probably needs a season in the championship for his own development although not sure he’ll suit a possession based game. Juventus won’t tolerate many poor performances that’s for sure.

Batting wise they are just a class apart, we were a good 15 runs short of what we needed to put real pressure on them. We need a player with variety for the bowling - ironically we signed one but looks like he’s going to be out injured for most of it ! like last year, if we’re going to win it we’ll need someone else to knock them out…

Load of excuses really, I’d rather not hear from them about football at all - just ‘we made mistakes - now we will let people who understand football make football decisions and we’ll make life easy for them through funding’. I don’t really want to hear their opinions on football as I’ve seen for myself what happens when they get involved - I’m actually slightly worried hearing things like they will get closer. Good that they are still committed and I guess at least they are talking to the press about mistakes, but it’s odd timing to say the least when everyone is expecting a manager announcement.

They varied the bowling in the last 6 overs and pulled it back - I thought they lost the plot a bit when they had Whiteley bowling but then started varying the length. If our openers get in we look like a good batting team - the issue is when they get our cheaply. Was good to see Fuller back.

This looks like another defeat for me - too many players off form. Middlesex on for 180 plus

Is it ? Isn’t this most of the team that won it last year. Don’t forget we were utterly useless the first 5 games last year. We are truly dreadful starters.

Don’t forget Lavia’s fee will be 20pc less as that goes to City. Realistically those two will be c £70-80m. Even with the 40pc cut our bloated squad will carry a huge wage bill. Then there is the c £7m interest on that £75m loan we’re still carrying, and how much are we still paying off Ralph/Jones/staff ?. Add all that to the £250m net spend from Dragon. I would have thought the transfer budget will be anything made above £100m to service some of that, certainly that would be the sensible move. You’d hope we would find another £75m from Salisu / ABK / Osric / Adams / Perraud / Tella giving a budget of c £50m to rebuild what would be a weak squad once all those left. As you say SR will realise the need to invest to mount a promotion challenge but if we do this right we can remove debt, invest, and have a squad that aligns to Martins needs. (*doing it right hasn’t been SR strong point so far)