Dusic

Bednarek has to be up there, especially as he is playing and thriving in a style fee thought he had the skillset to adapt to.

Leicester cooking but Birmingham pre-heated the oven for them.

New contract until 2026 with an option of another year. Great news as clearly a huge talent and his decision to extend is a good sign overall for the club and impression the leadership have given to his family/agent.

Scored 3 for Eng U16s today. Hard to get too bothered as sure all the big club academies will try to sign him on a scholarship but clearly one of the top talents in the country for his age, along with Harrison Miles who often captains that Eng age group, and was featured on the BBC prog about the academy.

Of course fine to disagree and obviously there will be tweaks based on selection and opponent but would be amazed if Martin ever setup to be intentionally passive and pedestrian as it goes against pretty much everything he says. The reality is teams don't play to the same level every week and very few, if any, managers experience having a team that is 8 or 9/10 every single week. It feels like for some the expectation of Russell Martin is to win every game by multiple goals and until then there will be a suspicion of him, which seems pretty unrealistic. This season we are very close to the 2pts per game level that ordinarily leads to nailed on promotion and are currently on a 14 game unbeaten run, all whilst having drastically changed the style of play. IMO it seems like things are going pretty well and my main frustration is that very realistically we could have the extra 7 or 8 points needed to be right up there. If we can become a little more free scoring away from home then we can definitely still get auto promotion in my opinion.

Basically you like it when we play our style well/are enabled to by the opponent, and take our chances, rather than when we don't. Which makes complete sense. We are 13 or 14 unbeaten and had people earlier this week saying he has done a 5/10 job which is frankly ridiculous.

Ridiculously awful.

What you can't argue is that the club wanted a transition to a possession style which has undoubtedly taken place, and in any normal season we would have delivered that shift whilst also showing a pts total which is good enough to be 2nd with first in our sights. Whilst there can of course be frustation that this season isnt currently followimg the ssme fashion, its hard to find realistic fault: Leicester's squad is clearly superior and Ipswich's squad is currently providing unwordly results - fair play to them...can they keep that up?

Think thats a load of rubbish to be fair. We don't play to be defensive or take up defensive positions. We just don't create enough for all the possession we have. But most games, including today, we are the team who is looking to be on top and the opposition mostly sits back and waits to break on us - exactly as Cov did.

Think that was the most frustrsting game this season because so much of it was good but we just don't make enough of our general domination and everything in the final third looks like it has to be so precise. IMO Edozie has to start because with Sulemana injured he is the only player who takes risks in the final third and actually tries to take someone on and create space.

Wouldn't be shocked if Stephens starts tonight.

Of course, but not as farfetched as some are making it seem.

Its definitely possible to make up 10 points on a team in 26 matches, including one against them. As I said we would need a run or two of winning 5 in a row which we should have done nce during this run, but its possible.

Automatic promotion is still definitely possible but we will newd to string together a couple of runs where we win 5 in a row instead of a couple of wins and then a fruatrsting draw. Playoffs I think are almost guarenteed. IMO the only positive spin if we don't manage to go up this season is that even when we lose some players, the three sides who come down won't be anything special compared to Leicester. In hindsight a particularly bad year to get relegated as proven by all 3 relegated teams being very strong and this years PL much weaker in the bottom third. Next seasons Championship will certainly be weaker.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/11618403/celtic-aberdeen-bojan-miovski-record-breaking-transfer/ We were linked in the summer.

Would take a huge drop off to not make the playoffs. We can definitely still get auto - our form so far is usually enough for that but Leicester and Ipswich have had unusually good starts. I think we can definitely reel Ipswich in if we can keep up the kind of consistency we have shown since the end of the run of 4 losses.

Doing a very good job, surely hard for anyone to argue otherwise now? Consistent results, has clearly implemented his style and changed the atmosphere at St Mary's. The next month will be critical for our auto chances but going in a good direction and still a huge amount of points to play for.

Would definitely slot Bree in as a front sweeper for this one, marauding the width of the pitch to single handedly repel Cardiff attacks.

We are unbeaten in 10 games and top of the form table over that stretch (which is over half of the season so far). Maybe he just wonders why everything is initially viewed in a negative way, considering things are currently going pretty well?

Hopefully with Stewart they just feel he would be better getting a full week of training rather than doing less for the sake of another 10min cameo.

Burnley messed up the transfer window but IMO they were right not to overpay for Tella.

That obviously isnt the strategy. He was clearly annoyed with the performance too. Please can we move on from it being his fault everytime we don't win a game?

I wouldn't necessarily say that none of the managers have rated him. Ralph gave him some gametime pretty early on in his time here. Jones said recently he was the best finisher at the club and in the last couple of weeks RM has repeatedly said he trains very well and is a good prospect in addition to bringing him on in a few quite crucial moments like Stoke & Preston away. He was also picked and scored for France U21s recently, which clearly shows he has something. Seems like maybe he struggles to replicate his talent in training onto the pitch, and easy to forget he is still fairly young. Every time he plays for us he probably puts a lot of preasure on himself as he knows he doesn't get many chances and needs to make a statement. Seeing as we paid upwards of £10m we arent going to just cut our losses. If Adams goes in Jan then I think he stays. If Adams stays then maybe a loan move to somewhere abroad would be viable but only worth it if he actually plays.

Just re-read my FA level one and feel that we have got to be considering Holgate as a front sweeper for this one.

Out of interest, how do you know about Aribo & Mara having attitude issues? Certainly at odds with Russell Martin's recent comments on Aribo in particular where he basically said the opposite.