James

Out of interest, what has he done to make you think he has loads of potential? Personally haven’t seen anything that suggests that.

Every keeper makes the occasional ricket - Boruc certainly had a few in the locker but you could forgive those as he won us more points than he lost. Baz has made his fair share of rickets this season (Plymouth home, Watford away) but doesn’t counterbalance those with the ability to make saves of any consequence.

The fact we are even arguing whether Baz is or is not one of the worst GKs in the Championship makes the decision to sign him last season as our No.1 in the PL even more insane than it seemed at the time.

I was a big Martin fan earlier in the season. I thought he had learned from our rough start and tightened us up but recent form has been disastrous and some of his decisions are absolutely perplexing. Shoehorning JS into a random and unnecessary position in the team has been nothing short of suicidal but RM doesn’t seem to recognise that or show any desire to go back to what made us successful. If anything I’m worried the team selections will get even more bizarre from here to the end of the season. Can anyone recall a modern day team that successfully employs any player in a defensive free role, let alone a player as limited as JS? It’s not as if John Stones pops up in the number 10 role is it? His position is at least defined (not that we should be attempting to replicate Man City). I really struggle to see us getting out of this league whilst we are this open and easy to score against. Even if we did go up we would be absolutely murdered by better PL standard attacks.

If he can’t get us up with this team then I doubt he can. I’d move on personally.

Yup. Another game we deserved to win - didn’t provide a consolation when we almost went bust as a result.

Really? I wouldn’t. They have the kind of shithouse attitude that wins those games.

The justification was that Bree deserved to start. No mention of the bizarro shoehorning of Stephens. The three week break has killed us. Too long for Martin to brush up on now (not) to play like Man City.

You think Martin will survive the Prem?

Steve Cooper.

Think most appreciate we played well but it’s hardly new that we didn’t put the game to bed when we were all over them and then got sucker punched. Ultimately results are what matter. We won’t care if we play well in the playoffs but get done by a more street wise team. our issues have been the same all season. Martin had sort of figured them out during our unbeaten run but he’s now back to overthinking it again.

Probably because we’d have had to move Jack Beckenbauer out of the free role…

I mean our marquee signing was a crocked Ross Stewart. Getting that signing wrong will possibly cost us promotion and yet our DoF is getting a new job with one of the biggest clubs in the world. It’s absolutely unbelievable.

It’s absurd Russ is dicking about with Stephens in a free role when he can’t even coach the basics.

The playoffs are going to be horrible on this evidence. This team has no spine.

Bazunu is toilet. we won’t go up with Russ, this style of play is too brittle and not clinical enough. fuck knows what Wilcox has done to deserve being recruited by United.

Absolute bottle job. Bunch of chokers the lot of them. Can’t wait for the playoffs…

Agree. We don’t have the bottle for the big games.

It’s not Stephens, he has been pretty good, it’s the tactical gymnastics to fit him in. We didn’t play with a left back in the first half and it gave their left back space to hit an unmarked shot. Not advocating for Manning but pretending Jack Stephens is some kind of Championship John Stones is causing more issues than it solves.

What would constitute an informed assertion given that you also discount all the statistical evidence illustrating how crap he is. Presumably the only valid opinion is the one that’s consistent with yours.

You keeping count of the number of times you’ve needed to make an excuse for him?

So the argument is that every shot from inside the box is now presumed to be a goal? Jesus wept. As for him not being as bad as Forster…blimey people have short memories…he was a thousand times better for us than bloody Bazunu.

Without a doubt he’s cost us more points than he’s saved us this season and given the position we are in it’s just not good enough.

Exactly. People seem to forget that some teams have keepers that make saves rather than let in almost every shot on target.

Except that it was. Hardly in the corner was it?