Lee On Solent Saint

Kerry Dixon and David Speedie

That's the stark reality for at least half the teams in the league. Just being slightly better than the bottom three.

For the money spent on Gunn at the time, we certainly could have dome a lot better if we did our homework better.

We have now conceded 49 goals, only West Brom have shipped more. That's a worrying statistic

Yes,but how many of those teams faced City after they were beaten by Man Utd? There was always going to be a reaction after that game.

Not sure there is much between either of them. It seemed to me that the back four were a little more confident with Forster though

Our heaviest defeats have all involved McCarthy. Is that a theme or just a coincidence?

Salisu - What the fuck

City will tear anyone apart, but we certainly haven't helped our cause with such shit defending

Surely Stephens is playing right back?

I remember that game. Wasn't it under Hoddle?

I agree most of it has been down to luck rather than judgement. Would we still employ it as a tactic if there was no VAR?

We absolutely have to bin that high line when defending free kicks. Sheffield are quite a big side. Need to go man for man and drop a bit deeper. We can't keep riding our luck on this and hoping VAR will bale us out with marginal offsides.

Grealish makes them tick, without him very average. Think teams are so focus on stopping him, it creates opportunities for others

If they can maintain that level of performance, we will definitely struggle to break them down

Nothing really subtle about Adams that makes him a stand out player. Lots of hard work and effort, but probably 10 goals a season is the max you will get from him. Lack of a left foot holds him back and also it seems the penchant for blasting the ball as hard as he can toward the goal.

To be honest, I would rather they went down than Fulham

Have we had a decent winger since Rod Wallace?

Agree that Reed had too much power by the end, I think he started to believe his own hype. Instead of quietly getting on with things in the background, he wanted the accolades and the fame that our system at the time was producing at the time. That's fine, as long as you don't take your eye of the collective, which is what happened in the end.

Not that confident, just clinging to that fact that Sheffield United are just as shit as we are up top

I'm neither a Reed lover or a Reed basher. I can recognise the good and the bad of his tenure. I think the divining issues were the recruitment of the managers. In Poch and Koeman we had strong characters, they knew the types of player they wanted. When Koeman left, this club started it go down the slide. We didn't get the right manager to replace him. In my mind, that was Reed's biggest mistake. I don't know if Puell, Pellegrino and Hughes had players they didn't want or rated forced upon them, but they must have had some input into the recruitment of the players that we brought. Fast forward to Ralph and in many respects he is the one paying for the previous mistakes in player and staff recruitment. That's obviously not to say that he hasn't made mistakes, far from it. When he first came into the club, it was clear that he was passionate and charismatic, more so than the three previous incumbents put together. We all wanted him to be successful, because like us fans, he really seemed to care. I believe he still can turn this around, but he needs support. Not only from the board in terms of actual money available, of which I know we haven't got, but also on the sidelines. Other managers seem to bounce ideas off coaches and assistants all throughout the game. When Ralph needs help, who does he turn too? Maybe that's not how he works, but if so, what's the point of them being here?

Get your point but we still played nearly twenty minutes against 9 and still couldn't score

If ever there was a banker for a nil nil draw this is it. Both teams are struggling for goals, they are probably marginally more shit up front then we are at the moment. Not sure how the best way to approach this game is. Our usual all or nothing first half, hope to score a couple to get a decent cushion for the second half. Or just be as conservative as we have been lately, concentrating on keeping the ball.

And Gunn probably another 30k on top of that

I was referring to the game at St Marys. The one that saw us top the league