Dman

What a miserable situation we find ourselves in. Go up, its going to be absolute shambles of enormous scales. Derby sort of levels. Stay down its going to be the begining of the end and before we know it, we'll be Stoke / Swansea etc. I simply cannot see a way forward for this football club with Russell Martin as manager. Idea situation is that we go up and Martin goes and we bring in someone who would be competent at the level above.

Take your own advice Pal

What an absolutley brilliant job he has done with a basket case of a club he went into.

Much like that season, we aren't / weren't ready to go up and it would have been a disaster.

Football generally runs in cycles... Its not possible for clubs like us, brighton and bournemouth to consistently get it right window after window. They'll drop just as fast as they rose, much like we have. Much like Brighton and probably Bournemouth, the issue we had is that we didn't feast when times were good. We should have won a trophy during that 4-5 year window, its poor that we didn't.

Getting his excuses in there early. The schedule, the fans basically anything other than his tactics when we get knocked out in the semi final.

When he’s got the ball, with no one trying to get it off him and he doesn’t have to put any effort in (run, show a bit of grit/determination) he’s a real talent that boy. The sooner he fucks back off to France the better. Disgraceful attitude of a player.

Winning mentality, don’t know when they’re beaten, know how to win. We’re the opposite, for sure.

Spot on. Jines was out of his depth, but he’d had done a better job this season than RM has. I’d much rather go into the play offs with a side set up under Jones than I would RM.

Apples and oranges. We’d concede 80+ in the league above playing the way in which we do. BTW, Nathan Jones was brought in to buck that trend…. Hounded out by the fans (probably the ones who can’t get far enough up RMs arse), within 2 games.

If I recall correctly, the ‘issues’ were the exact same. Wingers not good enough 1 on 1, keeper etc. Perhaps, after 2 seasons of conceding 60+ goals, with 2 different side, he should look at himself?

What was his excuse last season at Swansea?

We have a pretty fickle fan base after 3 or 4 years of players tossing it in and general shite football, so whoever came in had their work cut out. I do think, in the main, most were supportive of Martin and our home support this season has been significantly better than previous years - as much as he wants to moan about it… He’s attacked the fans a few times this season. The trouble is and I don’t mean this as a disrespect to Swansea - we will be you in 2 years time - the job was too big for him. I think hes a decent coach, but he doesn’t have anywhere near enough experience to step up to a side who are expecting to win every game. He’s way too stubborn for his own good, needs to ditch this ‘process’ nonsense and have 2 or 3 ways to win a game.. I can’t see that happening anytime soon though. He needs a massive failure (thinking a step up to the PL) to have that ‘oh shit’ moment I think

I don't think its the style (i.e possession based), I think its the way in which Martin sets it up. Far to slow to play out meaning we need to throw men forwards leaving us vunerable. For some reason, our full backs (both of them) never try and stop the cross. Martin is decent enough coach, but a poor manager imo.

great news - even if we get 20 minutes out of him between now and whever our season may end, thats 20 minutes i'd rather him than Mara.

Based on this alone, I'd say its nailed on hes here come the first game next season.

I was just pointing out its not 1 performance. I think we're kinda on the same side here. I've no issue with us wanting to be a team who plays out from the back and wants to dominate the ball. I'd love for us to have success playing that way. Russell Martin however is not the man to deliver that. You need to find the right balance. Martin is far to intent on keeping the ball and forgetting about the fact you need to stop teams from scoring the other end of the pitch. Fundimentially, we're too slow in our build up, which means we need to throw too many numbers forward leaving us vunerable at the back end of the pitch. If you want to talk about 'bigger picture' look at the stats. Disgusting amount of goals conceeded at Swansea, disgusting amount of goals conceeded here. That would suggest there is a fundimental flaw in his set up, which to date at 3 clubs he's been unable to resolve.

After the face with Jones, there is absolutely no way we'll be sacking Martin until shit really hits the fan. I.e christmas next year when we're mid-table. We're stuck with the idiot for a little while longer.

Surely after being made to look a mug time and time again, you're not still beleiving the crap they are coming out with 😂

But it has been for Leicester... So perhaps the issue is the manager?

They've won 3 PL games this calandar year... As a side note, despite having nowhere near the same relative quality at the back as us, other than a couple of drubbings, they conceed way less goals than we do.

I think its pretty clear that they are trying to copy the model of the city group. We're trying to pick the 'best' that we can feasibly get from their group and by doing so, its resulting in either just grab players from their youth team and/or copy their playing style - both because neither of Shields or Wilcox had any experience at mens level (directorship) or of other clubs - its basically the defult of what they know. Oddly both, despite spending little to no time here to actually judge the impact / success, have gone on to get senior jobs at the biggest clubs in the country - So SR would probably argue that they'r edoing something right in their appointments...? It's actually pretty mad when you think about it! but then again, United and Chelsea are more of a basket case than we are atm.

Relegated team, with a budget bigger than 99% of the leauge win more than the lose... shock horror.

Great news. I can absolutely see why RM would be annoyed / concerned that JW has gone - He's JW man and clearly JW has an unrealistic view on how football should be played successfully. So long as possession stats were good, RM would have been protected by JW, i'm sure of it. I don't see why the players would be happy with that though, unless he (JW) was dabbling in area's he really shouldn't have been.... Given JW has now gone, I think a re-set woulod be good for us. If that means RM needs to go in the process, i'm absolultely fine with that.

surely he replaces Stu Armstong as one of the 10's, rather than either downes or smallbone. In that sense, at this level, a fit AOC would be unbeliveable at this level. The trouble is, he's only play at this level because hes not fit. Avoid, imo.