SambaMaverick

Fucking boring

My thoughts about yesterday is that City won without breaking a sweat, everything else is irrelevant. We defended well but can't do it when it matters. We kept hold of the ball well but didn't translate it into attacking play. Haaland was shocking, could have had 4 on another day. Fernandes is our best player and should fetch us a tidy profit when we go down. The rest, bar Dibling, won't be in demand.

We won't be doing anything apart from sell because we'll be rock bottom with 10 points at most. Can see KWP, Tall Paul, Sulemana, Bella-Kotchap, Brereton Diaz all going

About middle of the road so far, on par with Raya and Martinez. I'll take that. Last time we were in the Prem, Bazunu was dropping a clanger on average once every two games according to the stats.

Ehh. The penalty/red was pretty stonewall, but we had a good case up the other end. The referee was bad, but no other decision had that much bearing on the goals. Martin clearly put a decent game plan in place to get us 2-0 up and well in control, nullifying their threats. But time and again he has shown that he can't effectively change things in game. He can't react well enough, probably because he is still a very young manager.

The players/squad aren't great, but we'd gotten ourselves into a 2-0 lead on about 60 minutes, at which point he was given a decision to make by Cooper for the first time in the game. He then proceeded to get pretty much every decision wrong and we collapsed unexcusably. Not sure how that can be anyone else's fault.

Does anyone else think we are woefully unfit? Seems like every game we just can't sustain the tempo we're trying to play

Let Lallana take them for Man City, may as well get some value for money out of the bloke! Absolutely indefensible from Martin today, no matter how some on here will try. The bloke is out of his depth in a big way. The substitutes today were just baffling. We are not fit enough and not smart enough - in addition to having a lack of quality in key areas. We need to decide if we want to give it a go or if we want to beat Derby's record, because that is where we are heading.

Yet not good enough for automatic promotion or to finish ahead of Leeds, and the results are certainly not good enough now in the Premier League.

He's fallen upwards twice already, clearly needs to have his wings clipped a bit if he's to come back down to earth

An absolutely unhinged 40 seconds, doesn't make sense to me at all. More concerned with losing his half-baked style than losing probably 30 games this season.

Russell doing the media rounds this week - Sky Sports, Football Focus Just shut the fuck up and deliver mate! We're not interested in your come-and-get-me plea to a bigger club

I don't think Martin's player development fits in with what we're trying to do as a club. Alcaraz was the saddest example of that. All the signs pointed to us having a £40m player on our hands, but Martin couldn't coach him and wouldn't coach him. Sulemana is another, although I have slated him. You seriously expect me to believe Martin couldn't have got a tune out of him in the Championship ahead of someone like Mara, Fraser or Brooks? He just doesn't want to do it, presumably because he doesn't want to pass it around at 5mph. Charles is another one who I didn't rate but Martin didn't really try. Chucked him in at the deep end at CB and he never really got going. That is just one of the problems I have with RM. If we could have Sulemana and Alcaraz firing now we'd be a much more dangerous proposition.

Lose against Leicester and he has to go, simple as that.

He will get us less than the PL record for points... it would be a black mark on the club, as if we haven't had enough with the 9-0s. He looks beaten now, imagine what he'd look like if we get to November without a win? It's possible, playing how we are.

A decent point about the trade-offs in our system. We draw teams onto us but don't attack at any pace at all. Even last season, I'd bet the majority of our goals came from us being camped in the oppo's half with them trying to contain us. It's clear we don't have the quality to play through teams. We don't have the quality in defence for the ball to be in our half for more than 60% of the game. We may, however, have the quality to try and engage teams higher up the pitch and then try and pen them in. But whenever we actually play a striker, they are too isolated to hold the ball up. Martin has got it wrong again and again. I still don't think he's as stubborn as he says he is, he's clearly tweaked things for different opponents - but none of those tweaks have worked, and that is worrying.

Petulant fuck

He's proper lost his head with Alfie House this evening as well, his toes are to the fire for sure

Not only are we set up suicidally, we are weak and lazy. No graft in any of the squad. That can only be the manager's fault, there's no question of quality there.

That's bullshit. There are experienced gems abroad, Fernandes for one. Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford and more have done it for years. We've signed shite or RM's mates (shite)

It's deflected about five yards in front of him you dumb cunt

Bournemouth having the better possession and controlling the tempo perfectly with their press Martin getting shown up by a bloke who's chilling in the stands with a jug of sangria

Five yards away at most. The real problem is Downes and Ugochukwu turning their back like schoolboys

Desperate, second to every ball, not working hard enough and not set up well enough in either direction Shite

So much wrong with our 'recruitment' this summer How's Fraser - who wasn't even first choice in the Championship - swanned into the team with no proper pre-season? Why aren't we playing a proper number nine despite signing two? Why are there four forwards on the bench? Why isn't there a centre-half on the bench? One injury and we're playing rubix cube trying to fix it. Edwards and Wood clearly aren't good enough - why sign them? That side gets rolled over by our team from last season, let alone in the Premier League. I realise this is negative half an hour before a game, but fuck me, the state of it. COYR