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Which would be absolutely no use to us in this league

People seemed to be saying every year since he joined that his legs had gone, yet when he left we fell apart and he ended up at Barcelona haha, madness. He could play with one leg and he’d be good in this league.

Without being pedantic we’ve done that twice in recent times for Jones and Martin, so I don’t think it’s something the club are against if it’s necessary

SR initials 👀

Naturally some questions around his fitness/mobility but people forget, much as I think they did when he was here previously, that Romeu is a fantastic player on the ball too. A player with his intelligence, first touch and reading of the game should still have plenty of life left in him. I know we loved his blood and guts style but he is a real classy operator too.

His decline only has to have been slightly slower than our own in order to still look like a world beater

Could be considered a cynical attempt at appeasing a restless fanbase by Sport Republic. Consider me appeased.

I agree he doesn’t look very high intensity, but it doesn’t always mean someone’s not trying. I remember a few years back when Arsenal had Özil and Sanchez in their team; Sanchez was seen as all energy and effort and Özil was ‘lazy’, but would frequently dwarf Sanchez when it came to distance covered stats during the game. I also think a player low on confidence is more likely to hide and not put himself about as much as he doesn’t want to do anything wrong. Might be giving Downs more credit than he deserves but I do find it hard to believe he can’t be better than what we’ve seen.

Tbh with the physical characteristics of the squad we have, something closer to Russball is probably most likely to get results - no chance we succeed with a long ball/direct manager. Not saying it should be RM, I really can’t see it will be, but stylistically we’d be better off for sure.

I do think it’s very difficult to judge him at this point as i’m not sure there’s a single shred of confidence left in him. It’ll be interesting how a new manager utilises him, if at all. Unless it’s accepted in the club that he really is crap, I can’t see we have much to lose by starting him and seeing if he can play his way into some confidence/form. Imagine being a young lad with no confidence and getting chucked on into that mess on Saturday.

We’ve been good for about 3 different halves of football all season, it’s never worked

Like Nathan Jones and Russell Martin?

Missing chances should have us drawing games 0-0 or winning 1-0. Even our two wins this season we’ve had to come from behind because defensively we are all over the shop despite playing pretty much every defender we have at once - we also get overrun in midfield pretty much every game because we are playing so many defenders. When Graham Potter was at Brighton they struggled to score goals and it was always ‘if Potter had a good striker they’d win the league’ - he leaves for Chelsea, De Zerbi comes in, same group of players, and immediately they become one of the highest scorers in the league whilst Chelsea suddenly struggle to score goals. Who knows what we’d do with a manager who could set this team up properly, but we won’t know until we replace the current one.

I think most people agree the issue isn’t just the manager, but there’s no evidence to suggest he’s not a big part of it, and he’s without doubt the easiest part to fix

I just can’t get my head round people thinking this group of players are not good enough to be higher than 20th in the league. Underperforming with this team should probably have us just outside the play-offs. It’s a squad riddled with proven Championship quality, most of which has probably never seen the bottom half. The manager is not getting enough out of them, simple as that.

I thought Stewart was alright first half Saturday, but second half he was anonymous. For a player who likes to drop deep he has a terrible first touch (on Saturday’s showing). Having said that, he’d still be my choice to start purely for being a presence, which none of our other options are.

Stephens in the instagram video walking in with the squad, so no conspiracy

I’m pretty sure he got injured the QPR game before the 4 consecutive batterings we took, if I remember rightly.

He was giving free kicks for the fouls so clearly he thought they were being fouled, but he wasn’t showing cards which meant they could carry on and rotate who would foul all game. On the handballs, I say seemingly because there was one that no one could work out - it looked for all the world like their player handled it in their penalty area in the first half, but the ref gave them a free kick, so no idea what happened! Would love someone else’s view on that one. I can confirm 3/4 definite handballs not given, other than that.

Thought he was pretty crap myself. A good 4/5 handballs seemingly missed and allowed Azaz and Fellows to be fouled every time they got the ball without any cards until late in the game.

If you listen to the podcast, Charlie Austin doesn’t have a good word to say about most of the people he played under. He must’ve just been very unlucky to always end up in that position!

Weird how many people have decided Jack Stephens is some evil genius turning the players against the manager because he got dropped, just because they don’t think he’s a good footballer. Absolutely nothing in his entire time here to suggest he is not a good pro, whether you rate him as a player or not. The article probably isn’t about us, otherwise Alfie House etc would be all over it.

Would have serious concerns if he persisted with THB today. Even Stephens has been light years ahead of him for the past 9 months, he’s been a disaster. Happy if he drops both but if it’s only one then it has to be THB.

Personally think he’s been decent in most games i’ve seen him, if not all. I hate 3 CB’s but surely the combo last night is the right balance if you’re going to play it; two big and quick defenders who are physical (Wood and Quarshie), and one who is good on the ball (Edwards). I can’t watch another game of THB.

Unless a lack of confidence means he doesn’t really want the ball