revolution saint

Lawrie Mac is 89 now, might not have started out a Saints fan but I reckon he's earnt the right to be classed as one now.

Downs might be a long term answer, hard to say as we've barely seen much of him. I think he would have struggled yesterday though because the service was so poor and i thought Archer did a decent job of putting himself about. Whoever we play up front, we need to get more bodies in the box when we cross - striker near post, Azaz arriving late on around the penalty spot and the opposite winger at the back stick. Even decent strikers are going to struggle if you pit them up against three or more defenders.

How else are we going to keep score?

I thought he did OK and showed a few nice touches but mostly played it safe as you'd probably expect of a young lad making his debut. I'd probably give him a start over Downes but that's more because Downes deserves to be dropped atm.

Such a shame, loved watching his fights and he seemed like a decent genuine bloke too. RIP Ricky

Definitely got his limitations - no real physical side to his game so he's not going to impose himself on games and he doesn't seem like he can dribble either so I don't expect him to cope that well when he's being tightly marked. What he can do is pick a pass and his finishing looks decent from clips and his record at both Plymouth and 'Boro. He was our third choice and in an ideal world we'd have had either Spertsyan or Rudoni but we're here now and the team will need to work on finding him with accurate passes rather than just lumping the ball aimlessly forward. I think it can work out for him but we're going to have to do a lot of work on the training pitch.

There was some talk at the time that Wilder and the owners clashed over transfer strategy - owners were going down the data driven route and Wilder wanted more of a say. Not sure how true that is but Wilder leaving hasn't done them any favours.

For all this talk of formations, I think it'll come down to determination, passion, guts, hard work and skill. Whatever team or formation we put out - we're better than Pompey in every department. Yeah, tactics play a part but the squad we have is miles better than theirs - what did we spend 48M compared to their 2M? Everything I've seen, their fans are bricking it that they might get thrashed so let's give them that nightmare.

Got a bet on Ipswich to win. Should I cash out?

They’ve got no cutting edge whatsoever and leaving Hamer on the bench is a massive call when your main problem is creating chances and taking them.

I don’t know enough about him so I’m not going to give an ill informed opinion on that. I do agree with him that these kind of tragedies along with high school shootings are the price America has to pay for lax gun control laws though.

That’s quite subjective. Can’t pretend to be an expert on Kirk but I watched a clip of him a few months ago and didn’t think he did that good a job of debating and fell into the old whataboutery arguments that are fairly typical. All subjective though. Just for the avoidance of doubt, he didn’t deserve to be murdered for his views though and I’ll happily condemn that.

To be fair he’s been pretty clear that he didn’t want to play with a four at the back until he had genuine wingers in. You can disagree with it obviously but that’s why he’s said he’s been playing that formation. He’s got wingers now so you’d expect us to go to something closer to the kind of formation he would rather play now.

I think: Jelert - Elly Wood - Woody Unconfirmed: Jander - Jandy Pandy

Yep, that’s been my thinking too. If we’re expecting a front four of Archer, Scienza, Azaz and Fellows to press high up the pitch then it’s probably only Fellows who has done that effectively in the past. Defensively we’re not blessed with much pace in the cbs if we play Stephens and THB either so playing a high line to condense the play is going to come with some risk. I reckon we’ll play more of a mid block which might not be a bad thing as it should invite the opposition onto us a bit and leave a bit of space for the forwards to exploit