SWLondon Saint

We also look a ton better when crosses are actually getting thrown into the box. Sugawara can really cross it, it beggars belief we weren't trying to get him to fire some in before. Though on defence he still stands off far too far, thought Bree did a reasonable job on Gakpo till he went off. Someone needs to coach Suga to copy Bree's defensive positioning which is mostly solid.

Harsh but pretty fair. Nice compilation of his greatest hits there: He picked midfielder Flynn Downes as a centre-back against Liverpool and he passed the ball to Dominik Szoboszlai for the opener. His penalty taker against Manchester United was Cameron Archer, who had never scored a spot kick in his career, and not Ben Brereton Diaz, who had never missed one. Archer duly failed from the spot at 0-0 and Saints lost 3-0. Martin’s chosen captain was Jack Stephens, who was sent off for an awful lunge at Alejandro Garnacho, collected a further two-match suspension for calling the fourth official a “c***”, returned and was red-carded in the 5-1 hammering by Chelsea for pulling Marc Cucurella’s hair. A Championship-standard defender, Stephens will be banned for nine games by Christmas.

He was miles offside...

Also, why is BBD coming on at all when you could bring on Sam AA who can actually control the ball?

We should have gone to 4 at the back soon after the Archer goal, I honestly don't know what the management 'team' are thinking there, we lost so much momentum after the goal. Archer looked like he still had plenty left in the tank, they should have taken off Dibling who looked knackered frankly. But so much better after the goal.

We can't press because we have 3 CBs marking one striker and our full backs are pinned back as we're not willing to cover them with our back 3.

I just don't understand why we have 3 CBs on, there's literally no point when everything critical is happening in front of them and they can't stop the ball over the top.

Clearly didn't bother watching the press conference at which Rusk said they had 2 days off, good thorough journalism there 😂

It's absolutely unbelievable that they had 2 scheduled days off before what you could have considered one of the most important games of the season. That speaks absolute volumes about Martin's quality as a manager. You'd think with a game that important they should be right back in the next day - sure, the players that played 90 mins should be in recovery mode, but the others should be training, then everyone should be doing film sessions or planning. The situation in the club right now sounds absolutely shambolic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect "People with limited knowledge or skills may not have the metacognitive ability to recognize their deficiencies. They may also assume they are not deficient because they tend to choose what they think is the most reasonable option. " TLDR: He didn't know that he didn't know...

Think you may have missed some irony there...

As I said a few games back I actually feel nothing watching us get smashed now. When your manager is this bad, you can't expect to win any game at this level - all week to plan and a panic sub after 15 mins which makes F all difference? Give me a break, why did you send them out like that in the first place?! 🤡

Think I understated that a bit.

Too easy.

You say interesting, I say completely stupid. Our 1 player who is good running at people and RM puts him in a position where he has to have his back to goal the whole time, especially with our style of play. Also AA offers literally nothing on the wing, I've no idea how he never even threatens to run defenders on the outside. Also, great start 🤡

What I don't get is he sticks a bunch of midgets up front and then refuses to play in any way to give them a chance, which would be them playing on the shoulder of the last defender and quick balls into the channels. Instead we have this super ponderous buildup most of the time. And I have no idea what AA needs to do to get dropped as he offered absolutely sweet FA against Villa, even less than Archer which is saying something.

If we'd signed Delap as we tried to, it wouldn't have made an ounce of difference as he wouldn't see the ball ever in the positions he gets it at Ipswich.

Look at all these idiot other teams getting last minute set pieces and putting it in the mixer, haven't they seen our amazing 1-0 loss at City and figured out the way to get praise from the other manager is to pass it back to the keeper instead of trying to land it on your tallest player's head? 🤯

Well, couldn't have summed up better why he fails again and again. Football is ALSO about the 11 players on the pitch on the OTHER TEAM you absolute delusional muppet. Focusing on your own team is fine when you're a development or age group coach but the fact is he makes all his players perform worse even if they feel good so he fails at that too. But the whole point of top flight management is figuring how to counter the other 11 twats out there while figuring out how to stop them countering you. Guess he missed that memo.

Surely this can't be the case - I mean even the stats show we've been complete crap this season! Someone said Phil Parsons once played for Woking? That's a level at which he should have a pretty solid knowledge of the game at least from a playing perspective....

Agree with you that's what he's saying but he's like a pub bore in that everything for him is about 1 thing only. Somehow he misses all the hard work that teams like City and Barca do OFF the ball in defensive organisation. 🤡

That's the thing he just doesn't get - sometimes it's better to get rid, reset and then be in a better structure so when you do win it, you can take advantage of it. Even Barcelona, Man City, Real Madrid, Spain just hoof it sometimes! It's just so bloody stupid it's incredible.

One thing I'm wondering is if Martin has a relegation pay cut clause or something. So once relegation is confirmed it'll be cheaper to sack him...

Historically, no team has ever survived having had only 5 points after 14 games so the fact is, we are already relegated. Having said that, ironically I don't think this is the moment to get a new manager in as it's so hopeless, there's no point getting him covered in the shit right now - once relegation is confirmed, possibly in record-breaking time in February, you want the new guy in to build for next season. A caretaker manager would be the best solution for a few months for that reason. And there's not much point signing a striker the way we play - we don't create any chances!

Well, there'll be an even bigger rebuilding job to do next season if we carry on at this rate. You honestly expect a team who lose close to 30 games in a season to be completely fine the season after? If you remember, a significant number of the games in the unbeaten run we definitely were lucky - last minute equalisers and winners. We haven't had any of those this season except Ipswich. And the massive number of goals we shipped last season in the championship worried a lot of people even then.