Sheaf Saint

This is the key for me. If you know you're squad has serious limitations then at least set yourself up to be hard working and difficult to beat. But that seems to be beyond Martin's comprehension. We simply don't have the players to play the way he wants to play in the PL. And he's utterly incapable of seeing that, it seems.

Yeah but I didn't watch either of those games 😉

Fuck me this is just beyond pathetic. I don't think I've ever seen such an abject performance. I'll be amazed if it stays 3-0.

Seven defenders in the box and not one of them marking the guy on the penalty spot. Fucking clueless.

This is fucking awful to watch. I've been very reluctant to start calling for a managerial change just yet, cos I thought Russ deserved a chance to show he can adapt to the PL. But just what the fuck is this formation he's put out there tonight? No recognised striker on the pitch but 5 on the bench, and seemingly just instructing the whole team to pass it to a crowded out Dibling at every opportunity. He's doing himself no favours at all. Edit: And there's 2-0. Fuck off Russ.

How the fuck is that allowed to stand? The ball was clearly further forward from where the foul was when he took it. That's bullshit.

Trump on a visit to the hurricane ravaged Georgia today, when asked by a reporter if he had reached out to President Biden to work together on the recovery operation, says "No I haven't reached out to him. I think he's sleeping right now". Such a monumental prick.

Yep. He's going to make a quintuple substitution on 60 mins and change to a 4-1-5 formation. Seriously, what the fuck? Why would you have 5 strikers and only one defender on the bench? Absolute madness!

Yeah they've edited it now.

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.