Galway saint

you could at a push add it to the list of ‘could have done better’ but I struggle to blame him for that one the keeper always look bad when those go in but they happen

think we have the squad to do well but play off games tend to be up and down and you generally see the winner building momentum and making the most of their periods of dominance. we don’t do ‘Momentum’ football and certainly don’t go for the jugular at the moment.

I thought the defence looked good to be fair. it looked less assured once we brought edozie and manning on given the shit show at sunderland that’s significant progress. you will always concede goals but the problem was more at the other end today

Just got back from this : 1. had terrible seats so couldn’t really make out much in the other half. 2. first half the possession was far too slow and ponderous. the bloke next to me said at 30 mins we were ‘sleep walking into half time’. It’s was very low risk football and frankly dull to watch. there were so many times when fraser in particular checked his run and we seem reluctant to put it in the box unless it’s part of some very intricate passing movement. We never built up any momentum and our goal was a bit of a surprise to me when it came. 3. thought the defence looked very solid in the first half from my vantage point. never really in trouble. couldn’t really speak for the second half given my seat position. 4. the second half was a bit of a mess really. edozie didn’t add much and not sure why Bree was taken off. They kept throwing in crosses and in the end one came off. the edozie and manning substitutions seemed like change for changes sake to me but perhaps there was some injury. 4. You can’t win every game but that was a game where particularly in the first half had we gone for it I think we would have won it. We were so ponderous/ boring. 5. Finally i don’t know if anyone was sat in the seats towards the bottom next to the huddersfield fans. there was a teenage lad who for the last hour continually shouted ‘soft c*nt’ at some saints fans. the adjacent stewards did nothing to check his behaviour and they were then surprised when it all kicked off at the end. at least this provided some distraction…..

Thought Rotherham had the better second half. They looked ok. The lad nombe looks decent

just watched the highlights and from what i can see he make three saves all of which you’d expect a competent keeper to save. that’s not a criticism of the lad just I didn’t see it as a brilliant performance from the highlights. perhaps there was more to see in the full game for those that watched the whole thing

Got my ticket for this and looks like a sell out. Team is looking settled for the first time in 18 months or so. No more change for the sake of change. It’s finally starting to look like a team that is the sum of its parts but can’t help thinking this will be our best chance to go back up, albeit the absence of VAR is a powerful disincentive as well as getting hammered most weeks….

that final paragraph has to be one of the more absurd to appear on these boards.

who do you think he has replaced as the best ever keeper at distribution?

as a distraction from the statistical debate, who thinks Baz would have kept out the shot from sulemana that bialkowski saved low down to his left ? i think if baz is in goal for milwall we take the lead there

good to see a settled team

There was an article in the paper over the weekend about the Rotherham keeper who played a blinder against us and others this season. He’s just been capped by Sweden and is coming into his prime at 25. They picked him up on a free and whilst the Millers are struggling, he has shone. It does away with the notion that you can’t be a good keeper and have a great season playing behind a struggling team. That’s the sort of keeper we should be looking for; someone who can keep us in games and win us points and and I think we would be more open to that, were it not for the fact we spent £12 million on Bazanu. It’s the sunken cost fallacy and it is incredible we spent that much on a young reserve keeper who being kind is still learning his trade whilst we try and get promoted.

great half hope he doesn’t tinker at sixty minutes as there’s no need to do so

flip it round and they had one third the possession and the number of passes but the same number of goals and shots. ordinarily, you would look at those statistics and say the Home team fluked a draw, but in reality, we were the lucky ones to get away with a draw. it’s bizarre that you can have that much possession and many passes, but still looks so disjointed and incoherent.

We had approx 75% possession but still conceded two goals. When we didn’t have the ball we looked fragile and when we did have it (which was most of the time) we looked ponderous. it’s a weird style of play that means you have the ball most of the time but you still concede a lot of goals. i just don’t get what the point is in wanting to have so much possession but then being so unambitious with how you use it. i don’t get what he wants to achieve

RM says it will take time for the players to learn his style but he’s had over 200 games in his career and produced as many wins as defeats with a very poor defensive record. I’m not sure where this is all heading really. Last night we had 75% possession (!) yet played really badly and still conceded two goals. Does he want even more possession or less ? Does he even know ? We seem to have no idea what to do with possession other than keep possession. The main issue for me is the fact that we concede far too many goals but his teams have always done, so there’s no logical reason to think it will be different for the rest of the season

Thought that was pretty dire. RM said it will take time but i don’t really see any progression as a team and last night was really disjointed. he can’t help the defensive changes but offensively we were poor and created little. i also thought charles had a poor game. seems very nervous on the ball and tentative. as someone said at that price tag he should be dominating this division. however ultimately we are performing as all RM teams have performed. we have better players than he had at swansea and MK Dons but he’s never going to achieve much as his teams concede too many goals and still do as we have the worst defensive record in the division. i don’t see that frailty changing given his style of play. the obvious worry is that if we don’t go up we will lose the better players next season and we then gradually morph into Stoke, Sunderland etc. as the money dries up

He made a good save ( perhaps his best for us?) but again he should be doing better with the first goal. He struggles with shots from outside the box at pace where he needs to get down to his left. See Sunderland and Middlesbrough. The second was more marginal but if you were being critical he should have been more advanced and narrowed the angle. Not sure why he turned away from the shot either. Again he doesn’t make howlers and neither was but he doesn’t make enough saves for me. Did well at the end though but with a decent keeper tonight we steal three undeserved points. They said at the beginning on the commentary he’s only had 5 or 6 clean sheets in 50 or so games ! The way we defend under Martin by the end of the season it will be nearer 5 or 6 in 80 or so games.

low down to his left is his weakspot

great goal

dreadful game we look disjointed at the moment with all the changes. need to move it quicker ( as always )

Have just left kings x after waiting hours to get a train. there was a train to Hull that left 90 mins ago but anyone trying to get to the game on the train from london will really struggle to make it or will have gone home. it’s chaos

He does speak well, but did he give an indication of how much time he needed to get the players playing how he wants to play and how will we know when he’s achieved that ? The reason I ask is that in his managerial career totalling nearly 200 games he has produced broadly as many wins and losses so it looks like the way he wants to play typically delivers as many wins as losses which means we aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

ordered my tickets a week ago but have yet to arrive. have others received theirs ?

Martin’s sides self evidently concede too many goals to be successful so unless you have some really good goal scorers ( which we don't) to offset that, promotion will be a challenge. makes the decision to sell teller an odd one but perhaps he wanted to leave