coalman

Leicester and others may disagree with that

I struggle to believe that. It's not like he has to do any running

Pep is nothing but thorough in his preparations.

Christ, his body language is terrible in the press conference. Arms crossed, looking off to the side. That's before you get to the content of saying things like "we need to keep doing what we're doing", "we had no control over the sending off" and "we need consistency on the pitch". And needing to reiterate how people are just interested in who gets the sack first instead of maybe the fact that he's scored fewer points than Nathan Jones in the same number of premier league games.

Honestly, I'd be down for the utter shit housery a Mourinho appointment would bring. Better than watching spineless capitulation after capitulation every week.

No one can argue Brentford has been successful. It's arguable that their success was down to Rasmus or those who stayed behind. I would err towards the latter option.

He adapted during the playoffs to get us promoted. There was a tiny hope that he'd carry those lessons forward. He hasn't and seems only to be getting more entrenched. There's also the concern that the next manager is going to be more Rasmus left field nonsense as well. But, agree there's no future in which I see Martin succeeding here and it's not easy watching it play out.

Come on, he's only had eight games to impose his style on the league. Pundits are genuinely amazed at his tactics. Any week now he's going on the 1 game streak that briefly threatens to take us out of the relegation positions. Trust the process.

If you can't set up a side to defend when you've got 11 players in your own half you're going to have even more trouble defending against a break.

I'm not sure our current style of offering our opponents shooting practice is something we want to turn into a dynasty.

They can play their kids if they want. Turn it into a Carabao Cup game

I need more support than nappies are able to give my saggy arse.

I stopped wearing underpants in 1993.

Am I the only one regretting buying a Russell Martin duvet cover and pillowcase set at the end of last season? Since then I keep playing around in the wrong areas and find myself unable to score.

Just assume that local singles really are just waiting to chat with you...

Our best chance is to keep it 0-0 as long as possible. Score first and early and we get battered. Concede early and we get battered. Luckily we have Capn Jack back to play in his libero role which City aren't going to have an answer for. Then on 90 minutes we use our superior fitness and a series of inspired substitutions to go for the jugular. Translation. Be 5-0 down at half time, pull off our best players and then switch off in the last 10 minutes

Won't somebody think of the scar tissue this season is going to cause?

28/1. Bookies aren't feeling as confident as they should.

Magic 8 ball says no. The last 2 years rather strongly indicate they haven't got the tools to find someone. When the tools seem to be Rasmus-stumbles-on-a-statistical-outlier. That's how we got such hits as "hey Ralph meet your new assistant manager", "Nathan best stats in Europe" and "Russell possession is nine tenths of the goal".

Not having an official thread for this game isn't going to make it go away. We can't hide under the duvet. This is real and it's happening. Nathan Jones style fluke win to vindicate Russell Martin's style or record breaking drubbing. It may well depend on whether City show up but, let's face it many of us are going into the game hoping that the worst doesn't quite happen. At the very least it's the free-est of free hits. Jack Stephens is back so we can expect 3 or 4 pages of despair when the team is announced. I intend to spend the rest of the week preparing behind my sofa so I have a comfortable safe place to watch from.

Once upon a time the Saints manager job was the stepping stone to the Tottenham job. Any prospective manager is going to take one look at our revolving door and promptly run a mile. Unless they're really desperate to manage in the premier league, if only briefly. That's going to harm our candidate pool.

I'm pretty sure Vardy can't retire until he's paid off his missus legal bills

How have we been unlucky? Every team we've played has looked like they could score several against us. We've given the ball away in dangerous positions more than any other team in the league. Even on a "good" performance like Saturday Leicester could have scored 4 or 5 given the chances they had. We're easy to defend against and easy to score against. They say you make your own luck. We deserve to be bottom of the table and saying it's just bad luck is exactly the attitude our manager is showing which is why he isn't learning from this. The same can be said for Rasmus and those behind the scenes who have demonstrated poor judgement time and time again.

And yet, with no DoF, Martin would've had a lot of say in the way we spent this summer. This squad isn't something that happened to him but rather something he's played an active part in.

Except you said "defensive solidity" like that's something that Rasmus has even heard about. If he had a tendency to play attacking midfielders in a variety of defensive positions and a Jack Stephens poster on his bedroom wall then you'd be in business.