Sheaf Saint

Well if Potter really is being lined up, he doesn't appear to have been doing his homework 🤨

Little wonder that GM loves him so much. True kindred spirits.

With the greatest of respect, that didn't exactly work out well last time, did it 😉

4 episodes in to S2 of Rings of Power now. OK the writing and dialogue is a little suspect at times, but my God it's so beautiful to look at. The cinematography, VFX, and general visual aesthetics are just mind-blowingly good. It hasn't just raised the bar for TV production, it's launched it into orbit.

This looks familiar...

It's a hell of a stretch to describe Isabel Oakeshott as a 'journalist'.

The final is going to be at St Mary's? Wow.

Such a shame that GM has decided to bow out of the forum. I'm sure he would have had a perfectly reasonable explanation why his tip isn't doing so well:

Yeah but news headlines need to be concise and, as such, they have always had their own grammatical rules that you don't find anywhere else. It's not a new thing.

Of course we should. But the blame for that lies entirely with our failure to convert our chances.

Disagree with the tactics being abysmal. We weren't overrun in midfield, our defensive shape overall was much better without Stephens constantly being out if position, and we got forward and created chances, which our attackers couldn't convert. Most of the subs were decent IMO. Lallana and Dibling obviously couldn't continue and needed to be replaced. The only one that really made us worse was Aribo for Fernandes late on, and I'm sure RM would have kept Fernandes on if he could because he was our best player still on the pitch after the previous subs. The fact that Aribo was the only viable option to replace him with rests with our recruitment, not on Martin. As for the pitiful defensive setup, I thought the overall shape was OK but the way we defended that corner in injury time was abject, looking at the puc someone posted elsewhere. But I'm absolutely certain that is down to players not listening to instructions and poor on-field leadership, rather than intentional tactics from the manager.

Yeah I got that. But perhaps Archer wasn't actually the 'backup' option. Had we signed Delap, it's possible we might still have signed Archer and not BBD. I'm just saying I'm quite glad we didn't waste that money on Delap, cos from what I've seen he's no better than what we have.

Perhaps so, but it took Che nearly 30 appearances to get his first goal for us in all competitions. And Archer's first goal against Cardiff (on the turn, on his left foot, and from a fairly tight angle) showed technique of which Che simply isn't capable.

Delap didn't look anything special for Ipswich today. Glad we didn't spaff £20m on him TBH.

It's not just the transfer fees though is it. If we'd combined what we spent on those players' fees to sign a single, better player, we would also have had to break our wage structure to get them. There are consequences to doing that, that we obviously weren't willing to accept.

We will have offered him exactly what we felt he was worth based on the qualities he showed in the years he was with us. Let's not rewrite history here. Adams was an extremely limited PL striker, who would have done no better with the chances we created today than the players they fell to. Archer may not have managed a league goal yet, but IMO he's already shown he has better movement and finishing ability than Adams ever had.

By some morons who don't know an excellent save when they see one, maybe. But we'll never know, because I've never actually seen Baz pull off a save like that.

Well it's obviously hugely disappointing not to win that, but I saw plenty of positives today. Dibling is undoubtedly going to be a superstar. Lallana was excellent and the ball he played to TD for the goal was exquisite. Fernandes is really adapting to this league and looking good, as is Sugawara. I feel a bit for Archer. I actually think he got a bit unlucky with his two chances today. For the first one, their keeper did really well to close down the angles to prevent a first time shot and force Archer wide. And for the second, the ball bounced just too far in front of him to allow him to get any power or accuracy in the shot. He will get goals though cos his movement is good and he's shown he has a good finish on him.

Did you not see the outstanding save he made from Hutchinson's shot? Was very refreshing to see a Saints keeper make a save like that. No way in hell Baz would have made it.

We didn't 'let' Adams leave. We offered him a new contract and he chose not to sign it because he wanted to move on.

You watched a different match from me then.

What did he get wrong today?

Well we did, didn't we. It was 1-0 at HT.

Ridiculous knee-jerk reaction. We absolutely bossed the second half. Nothing wrong with the tactics today at all. We failed to win because we didn't take our chances. You can't blame the manager for that.