Wes Tender

Well, I've read the whole thread through and see nothing wrong with Shurlock's comment. It seems to me that there have been some ignorant remarks made by some who reckon that Cortese is an egotistical self-publicist, which is rubbish and Shurlock said so. What grounds do you have for making this absurd comment that Cortese will have a stand named after him this Summer? Forgive me, Turkish for entering the discussion that I have not previously been involved in. I didn't realise that permission needed to be obtained first.

Spot on with both of those. But that linesman on the left first half also got a similar decision wrong in their favour, so it evened out, although the conclusion was that he was twice as crap to get it wrong again. The referee was one of the best I've seen this season. He stamped his authority on the match early, by awarding us a free kick for a push on Lambert. Good refereeing IMO for him to put down an early marker to show that he won't put up with any nonsense.

The table isn't a very good measure of dirty play at all. We might have been guilty of most fouls, but we're way down the table in terms of the yellow and red cards and penalties scored against us, which would be the far more accurate measure of dirty play

IMO the current sash kit is the best we've ever had.. Apart from Man City copying it for their away kit, we're different and original. Too many teams are indistinguishable with the red and white stripes.

At last a first half where we played well throughout and apart from the minor hiccups where a half decent team might have punished a small lapse or two, we never really looked troubled defensively. By the half time mark, Lambert was the stand out man of the match until that point. Some of his incisive passing was immaculate, worthy of a Premiership player. He's been sitting deeper this season, but pulling the strings for many of the moves that result in goals for us and he remains a very strong threat himself. There were many great cameos, some Lallana flicks and spins to bamboozle defenders, some really solid defending from Messrs. Jaidi and Fonte and Dickson and Richardson proving to be worthy understudies for Harding and Butterfield. What was noticeable and effective was the width that we had for much of the match and the resultant space in midfield suited our game down to the ground. We played a good passing game with good movement off the ball. There were patches in the match where we seemed to go off the boil a little, to lose a bit of focus and commitment, but there was always the feeling that Charlton didn't have the wherewithal to exploit it and had they done so, we might well have had the extra gear to counter it. It is not often that we have been able to think that this season, but perhaps there is now a belief in both the players and the fans that automatic promotion is there for the taking. Even when a flair player like Lallana went off, although that creativity was not so evident, the balance of the team didn't appear to suffer. Gobern looked assured and Chaplow brings some grit and a threat in the box when allowed to rampage forward. With tonight's imperious Lambert and Barnard's grit and energy up front, allied to a much better performance from Do Prado, we were always a threat up front. All in all a bit of a walk in the park tonight. Comfortable. Assured. Entertaining and rewarding. Certainly not as exciting as Saturday's match, but the football was of a much better standard, perhaps because Charlton aren't as good as MKDs, or at least lacking the confidence and spirit that they possessed.

Yes, absolutely. Just in the last match against MKDs, corner taken by us from the right corner, ball flew over everybody and out of play beyond the left post for a goal kick. Total and utter waste of possession and a goal-scoring opportunity. Had somebody been there, they would have had a free header, or at least drawn out a defender to mark them. It seems to happen more than once every match, maybe not your 50%, but certainly often enough as to be really irritating. So to recap:- We should have at least one, if not two forwards upfield when an opposition corner or free kick is taken in our half Players out wide on both sides of the pitch when we have a goal kick or free kick in our half A man beyond the far post for corners. If we put these tactics into effect, IMO over the course of a season, we could score several extra goals as a result. Why don't we do it? Is it the fault of the coaches for not implementing it, or the players for not following instructions? Or are there good reasons not to do those things?

Do the players turn out to play the game again then, doing exactly the same as they did tonight? Otherwise, it won't be a live match will it?

In the same way that leaving players up the pitch from corners so that they have to be marked by two of the opposition players, the other tactic that would reap rewards is to have players out wide on both wings when Kelvin is clearing the ball from a goal kick. We are getting better at it gradually, but so often, particularly under Pardew, you would observe that all of the players from both teams were concentrated into one half of the pitch, with nobody out wide at all. Obviously having a player out wide in all of the space necessitates him being marked, meaning that the midfield is thinned out, leaving space to reach our players more easily, allowing them to pass the ball better too. Plus it gives Kelvin more options too. It really is so simple and basic that I'm amazed that it isn't used every time by us.

This is fair comment and pretty well my view too. Sometimes he picks out passes that would be brilliant if others were on the same wavelength, but as others have said, look silly when nobody reads them. And he has to realise that it is a TEAM game. His colleagues are going to get frustrated if he doesn't share the ball a bit more. He has the skill, but often his decision making with the final ball is lacking. The fact that there has to be a thread debating whether he is good or bad speaks volumes.

How so? Nobody can tell where we might have been this season had Pardew remained. Furthermore, there have been some likeable managers who have achieved great success, such as Matt Busby and Bobby Robson and personally I would describe Wenger as likeable. Each is judged on their achievements not their personalities. Getting Scun thorpe to the position they held on the limited resources available to him is the equal or better to anything that Pardew achieved IMO. The success we crave begins with promotion out of this division and Adkins is doing a decent enough job of that. If he succeeds, then he can only be judged on how he does at the next level and then the Premiership if he gets us there. Pardew has been up there and his record is not brilliant at that level. Adkins is so far an unknown quantity at Premiership level, so it is not really possible to assess how he might do.

We flattered to deceive for the first quarter of an hour and had sufficient chances to have been two or three up. But we fluffed our lines, the principal culprit being Gully. He is often a handful around the box, but too often unleashes a weak shot either wide of the target, or straight at the keeper. After they had gone ahead, it began to seem as if we would get nothing if he remained on the pitch. Also both Chaplow and Hammond seemed out of sorts and not their usual combative selves. Hammond especially didn't seem inclined to chase down the 50/50 balls and so it looked as if MKDs might sneak a goal as they came more into the game. Just before they scored, I turned to my neighbour and commented that we really needed to score so that we would get the kick up the backside that we desperately needed and within a few seconds MKDs had obliged. But although we showed a bit more fight, the organisation still wasn't right and all credit must go to Adkins for the substitutions that changed the game. Although Jonathon Forte has not set the World on fire in his previous appearances, leading to some moans around me when he came on, Adkins knows the lad from his time at Scun thorpe and two goals with virtually his first two touches will go some way to quietening his critics and giving the lad a massive confidence boost at the same time. In fact, coming back from two down, gave the team a major psychological boost, possibly more beneficial to us than if we had just won 1-0. We proved to ourselves that we have the resilience, the self-belief and the fire-power to win from situations of adversity and have sent out a warning message to our rivals that with us the match is not lost until the final whistle. Credit is due though to MKDs, who are a good team and even to the final whistle could have equalised and that would not have been a travsty had they done so. But this team of ours wasn't going to let the three points escape without a fight and kept possession really well to run down the clock towards the end. So although for me, the only players worthy of praise in the first half were Harding and Fonte, in the second half, there were several heroes deserving praise. Hammond had lifted his game, Fonte and Jaidi continued to be rock solid against an onslaught, Barnard and Lambert gave their all and Lallana really showed some great flair and incisive passing. The substitutions though changed the game and Richardson, Forte and Stevens almost made us into a different proposition, playing fast attacking football that proved to be unstoppable. To coin the most over-used cliche in football, it was indeed a game of two halves. We have looked equally disinterested in the first half in many other games this season, but as today, thankfully we have lifted ourselves the second half. Automatic promotion is now firmly in our hands. After a performance like the second half today, the belief is increasing that we can do it. If the players also believe, they will achieve it.

No. Tina's not the sort of girl to go bleating to the tabloids. Sharon on the other hand is quite a different matter....

This. Shearer might have had the ability to put away the goals himself, but what makes him able to pass on that skill to others who do not have that ability? Who coached him when he was at the Dell or afterwards? Was it a former prolific goalscorer, or is it the case that some coaches do not necessarily have that ability themselves, but just the ability to put across the skill of the right positioning, the awareness and the technical skill?

No. More Goebbels

And we could have been in their position too had we hit the ground running at the start of the season. But things obviously weren't right when Pardew began the season, they certainly weren't right under Wilkins either. Now, I don't know what the problem was with the team at the beginning of the season, but Brighton didn't have a change of manager and the readjustment that entailed.

How eminently sensible. As you say, some cannot see how losing two players of the calibre of Lallana and Chamberlain ought to affect us and point to the lack of depth in the squad. Tha lack of depth comes from now having three key midfielders out injured, including Schneiderlin. Are they suggesting that we ought to have players of equal calibre on the bench waiting for the call-up? And if we haven't played particularly well even with Lallana and Chamberlain playing (although we have been winning) perhaps that shows how influential Schneiderlin had been with his incisive passing to them.

Why not? Several people, like me, were against him and the old board for engineering the reverse takeover. I rightly suspected that the dodgey arrangement would have the repercussions that transpired, that we would not have the investment as a PLC and that we would have to be a selling club to make ends meet. I wasn't about to change my mind on whether his arrival here was a good or a bad thing just because GS got us to the FA Cup Final.

So we lose our main play-maker, Lallana, after only 35 minutes and subsequently our £10 million rated youngster from the other wing with 30 minutes to go, replace them with a couple of rookies who have not had enough matches to gel properly with their team-mates and consequently our performance isn't there. Quel surprise. I suspect that had the N'Guessan goal been properly awarded and the three points won, then the posts on here would have been along the lines of how promotion teams grind out results regardless of how they play. Regrettably, we are not the team were without two of our most influential players and bearing in mind that Schneiderlin is also absent. Thankfully, the spurious cancellation of the Plymouth game is now a blessing in disguise, as we have time to get Lallana and Chamberlain fit again, or replace them with a loan signing. And by the time that next match arrives, hopefully more circumspect observations of this match will prevail, instead of all the wrist-slashing.

I was. And for some time before that too.

We have had goals from all over the pitch too. Did you forget the goal from Jaidi and Fonte's goals recently? They are our CBs for crissakes. We have had others from all over the pitch too. And as for the second goals to kill off a team, what were all those matches where we scored several goals and have a massive goal difference advantage over our main rivals? Anyway, even if all of those goals came from set-pieces, rival teams would be saying that Southampton were dangerous to their hopes because of our ability to score from them.

They hit the bar, but the ball didn't go in. Who cares if they hit the bar, the post, whether the ball was cleared off the line several times, etc? On the other side of that particular coin, we actually scored a match winning goal which was apparently disallowed by an inept linesman who called it offside and had a good penalty appeal dismissed also. That's the way it goes sometimes

So it couldn't be that Barnard was taken off for having been booked and Adkins didn't want to risk us being down to 10 men if he got booked again? No, of course not. He was taken off just to weaken the team by depriving it of his effort and industry, even though the pair of legs brought on to replace him would also be fresher too.

How have we made it hard for ourselves? Injuries to players are accidental, not something self-inflicted. Unless you are referring to the decision to get shot of Pardew or something else that the club or manager has done which is equally debateable.

FOUR magpies on the roof of the house behind ours! 4-0 to us?

This is one thing about him that I like. It's called having the right mental attitude and goes a long way towards being successful, provided that the target is a realistic one. As long as there is a mathematical chance of us catching Brighton, then arguably the target is realistic. Everything depends on the players believing in themselves. They will have received a boost when Posh were beaten last night and when Huddersfield dropped points at the weekend. A win tonight will put us second and although that may not last long, because of the cancelled Plymouth match, psychologically it is a great fillip. Although there will still be a 10 point gap, that only requires Brighton to stumble in a couple of matches as Posh did and for us to beat them and we will be breathing down their necks. I understand that one of their key players has just been injured and might be out for several weeks. That in itself might mean the difference between their team firing on all cylinders and starting to misfire. Pardew wouldn't commit himself to setting a target of winning the division. Granted he inherited the -10 point penalty, but he could have stated that his aim was still automatic promotion rather than the play-offs. Adkins didn't have to announce his target of going up as champions, but in my opinion it does him credit that he is aiming high.