qwertyell

Irrelevant. Players can only play official games for two different teams over the course of a season.

Should've scored four or five, fell to pieces in the last fifteen minutes. All the subs made us worse. Shame. Thought we were really good until Dibling and Fernandes went off.

Can't argue with the clean sheet - and well deserved; the defence knuckled down and did the basics without overcomplicating things. Wood actually looks a half decent prospect. Going forward we were atrocious, though. As bad as I can remember. There was just nothing there. It's been a bit of a running joke all season that our entire attack rests on the shoulders of an 18 year old, but it really feels that way. Armstrong and Archer were complete passengers. The midfield couldn't pass water. I'm not sure Ivan will be doing cartwheels tonight looking at the resources available to him. If he really wants to play with energy, pace, aggression and physicality there's fuck all of that about.

Our track record with Croatians isn't great... But good luck to Ivan the hopefully not terrible.

Can't tip shit out of a bucket. Burn it down.

Regardless of our shiteness, Spurs are absolutely there for the taking. Aside from playing like crap, they have one fit centre back (3rd choice), and both defensive midfielders suspended. If we can't manage a shot on goal, burn the stadium down and retire the club.

Another philosophy nonce who doesn't think he has to adhere to the basics of football because he's got a vision getting thoroughly found out. We can turn Spurs over next up. They haven't got any fit centre backs. Might have to radically alter our tactical approach to include shooting, though.

The damage will look worse because they cut him out of the car. And if it's a Ferrari it might be left hand drive. Hopefully.

Dropped into a shit show that he clearly wasn't ready for with us, but he's doing brilliantly at Reading. Kept them up last season in spite of points deductions, transfer embargoes, and a team made up of youth players and bits found in a skip. And now they're in the play off places - and above legend in his own lunchbox Nathan Jones' Charlton. Fair play. He may well be destined for better things. Nice bloke as well.

Honestly, we'll probably do okay. City have looked quite poor this season (for them) - they move the ball even slower and more predictably than we do. Wolves defended very comfortably against them the other day, before succumbing to a last gasp set piece. It'll probably be similar to the Arsenal game - we'll hang in there for a while, maybe start thinking an unlikely result is on the cards, and then lose 3-1. It won't be a cricket score.

Wasn't Clapham our set piece coach for about two months in the final throes of Hasenhuttl?

Flying V makes it sound a lot more dynamic than it was: a clogged U-bend.

Primera Liga is Portugal. Iraola managed in La Liga in Spain. First got Rayo Vallecano promoted, then finished 11th in one of the strongest leagues in the world. Also led two different teams to the Spanish Cup semi finals. It's pretty disingenuous to paint him has some random nobody plucked from obscurity. Leeds had previously tried to sign him when they were still in the Premier League.

Because he finally had surgery on the injury that the experts on this board were confidently claiming he was faking when he was with us.

Trying to make head or tail of last night's tactics. All I can imagine is that Russell had too long to think about the game - and therefore his own genius - and so came up with that fucking nonsense. He couldn't help it. It's his calling. Superpower, some might say. Him. Leaning back in his posturepedic pleather office chair on Friday, both hands behind his head, a chuckle to himself, and "you've only bloody reinvented football again, Rusty." Two midfielders as strikers were simultaneously a hindrance to our attacking threat yet offered no extra cover for our defence. It was absolutely futile. Literally pointless. "I hope they remember to thank me."

Obviously not the main issue of the day and probably wouldn't have made a jot of difference last night, but I'm going to keep banging the drum for how depressing it is that we bought in two declining journeymen wingers who haven't done shit in this league for a few years, and binned off our second brightest prospect back to the u21s.

Ever since his playing days, I can't not hear his name as John Useless. On that basis, I'm a no.

Bit of Rod Stewart perhaps? Tyler Dibling Tyler Dibling Down the right wing Or number ten Tiny shinpads He's our future Til he buggers Off again.

Oof - that feels like a defeat. But we're on the board. Baby steps and all that. I suspect we've just seen two of this season's relegated clubs.

What else are they going to post about? Wins? Goals? Points? Optimism?

What I would say to the argument that we played United off the park for the opening 35 minutes and therefore have shown we can really compete in the league, is United had 8 shots on target in that first half. Scored 2. Ramsdale made some big saves that stopped us going in 4 or 5 down. We had 4 shots on target in that period (and none thereafter). And 2 of them were the weak penalty and weak follow up header. It's hard to take much comfort from supposedly playing brilliantly for a short period yet still conceding twice as many chances as we created. If that's us dominating the play, then things look pretty bleak for the numerous times coming up when we won't be. The squad is the squad. It's incumbent on any manager to squeeze the absolute maximum out of his resources and find a way to be effective. I don't think anyone can seriously claim that he's doing that at present. Hasenhuttl was able to keep a few clean sheets with Bednarek, Stephens and Walker-Peters in the defence. Burnley kept some clean sheets with Charlie Taylor. Pochettino even won at least one game with Sam Gallagher as our starting centre forward. You can grind out results even with some pretty average players if you're properly organised and tactically astute. Does that sound like us? Style over substance might soothe Russell's fragile ego, but it's not going to do us as a club any favours I'm afraid.

You can debate until the cows come home the overall value of his football philosophy, but a major issue for all of his teams - every one of them - is they can't defend at all. An absolute organisational rabble. So, either his philosophy doesn't believe defending is particularly important - in which case he's a certified nutjob - or he's not a good enough coach to train his teams how to properly defend within his set-up. Because it's not a statistical fluke that his sides concede 60+ goals per season. It's entirely baked into being a Russell Martin team. And as we have a set of championship forwards and a couple of teenagers, there's not a lot of hope that we can compensate for our weakness at one end through a weight of goals at the other. That's not necessarily on the manager - I doubt he drew up a list this summer demanding we sign the dregs of Sheffield United's shite - but it's clear that his shortcomings aren't going to be bailed out by the quality of the squad in this division. So where do we go from here?

Even without self-destructive cocking about with the ball 10 yards from our own goal we conceded 3 and, but for Ramsdale, would've conceded 7 or 8. Even playing pretty decently for 30 minutes at the start of the game, United ended up with 8 shots on target in that half. Alarm bells should be ringing. This manager can't organise a defence. Never could. And as we've got no quality whatsoever going forward - beyond teenage cameos - there's not much in the way of solace to take from these defeats. Can't defend. No goal threat. This is not a combination that ends happily, no matter how pretty the occasional flurry of passing combinations. On a side note, I'm really disappointed that the signing of two journeymen wingers who have seen better days has resulted in Sam Amo-Ameyaw being pushed out of the squad. He was one of our few bright spots this season, and he'll probably not be seen much for the rest of the campaign now. And there's no way in the world, even at his young age, he is a worse option out wide than Brereton-Diaz, who looks like a pub player out there: a yard off the pace, heavy touch, can't beat anyone.

I'm sure the plan isn't to keep giving the ball away on the edge of our box. But that's what's happening. And keeps happening at every side he coaches. Either he's unable to coach players to successfully play to his tactical demands, or his tactical demands are unrealistic at our level and doomed to failure. Neither scenario is particularly comforting.

I've been messing around with this game for 40-odd years. I've seen hundreds of technical, passing sides. Some much better than others. But very few as incompetent as this Saints team. The teams who overpass to their detriment have tended to do so in the opposition's final third, messing up goalscoring chances with their indulgence, but ultimately causing little immediate self harm. We do all our overpassing 10 yards from our own goal. And when that breaks down, we lose a goal. It's not brave. It mostly defies logic - why are our least technically gifted players monopolising possession among themselves? If you're going to invite the press, deliberately putting your least press-resistant players under huge pressure is the mother of all hospital passes. It's not even useful - on the rare occasions we beat the press, we slowly walk the ball up the wings, turn around, and come back again. All that risk for absolutely no hint of a reward. Russell isn't reinventing football. He's not a visionary. He's just executing passing football poorly - and he hides his inability to properly set up a defence behind a shrugging "philosophy, innit?". In his four full seasons as a manager he's conceded 62, 68, 64, and 63 in the league. We're already on course for another 60+ concession orgy this season. I don't trust the process. It's not built on anything other than bollocks.