Football Special

Been going for years ever since my Dad first took me down the Antelope Ground, miss the old days

Yes, he had whole pre season, but with all the departures and arrivals that was heavily disrupted. Lots of games coming up and need to see improvements, he also have Liverpool away in the fixed cup to experiment a bit, surely we'll see Aribo and Edozie given some minutes, particularly think Aribo could offer us some more strength in midfield

I wonder how many players Sheffield United lost and recruited in the period between Wilders sacking and his return. If the core of the team is the same then he'll just carry on where he left, might need some time to assess the new players and I think Selles had started implementing a different system but not for long enough to have any lasting impact

Purely based on resources (budget) anything outside of top 4 would have to be filed as another big failure for Sports Republic and their recruitment strategy

Never mind scoring more than Che Adams I'd be surprised if they score more than Sekou Mara

Just as an update tickets currently available for any season ticket holder/:members for: Liverpool Sheffield United Derby (members tomorrow, allocation increased to 3100). It seems away tickets are actually quite easy to get at the moment

Surely we can also claim half of the isle of Wight

Still doesn't seem the type of personality to do rockets up the arse , he might delegate that to Trollope

I think he'd seen Vincent Company relegate Burnley and then get rewarded with the Bayern Munich job and expected something similar to happen to him, perhaps even Man City if Pep had moved on

Will he score more goals for us than Sekou Mara did in the last championship season? Unlikely I think. Archer and Armstrong our best natural goal scorers but need a more physical player alongside them to create space, hold the ball up , Stewart might be able to do that if he gets involved more

No improvement, perhaps we've even gone further backwards, some of us tried to have a reasonable discussion on that but the 8/10 transfer window brigade were having none of it. I've seen points like "we were a Premier league team , the gulf in class to the championship is massive, we're still better than the rest" , laughable and irrelevant, our 12 point embarrassment of a season probably the equivalent of dropping a mid table championship side into the Prem for a year, no indication of quality. "Our players cost X amount, or we've spent £X more than them" , again irrelevant until they've shown they can actually perform for us as part of a cohesive team fans need to pack away that complacent arrogant mentality that I believe also exists within the club. Still does need time but should be getting the basics right. Transfer window for me did not address our most glaring weaknesses, I'd say games so far show more streetwise managers know just how to play us. Easy to defend against, playing short lads as lone strikers with little support. Missing a ball winning disruptive midfielder and GK has proven in past seasons to be insufficient so we're relying on a big improvement there. The pieces of the puzzle just don't seem to fit together. Hopefully Sports Republic sell up soon as that's probably the one change that will improve the direction of the club

Good appointment for Sheffield United, I think he could do well there

Clearly Fellows was trying to win the ball that he was entitled to go for!

This is the CV for Pompeys reserve keeper who played most of the game, absolutely criminal that we didn't even test him

That Martin side of 23/24 managed to score loads of goals whilst also missing loads of chances, Armstrong definitely benefited from having Adams alongside him , perhaps Aribo, Stuart Armstrong and Brooks were better at unpicking defences, just need to find some balance to the team