CWD

"There is always hope" Aragorn son of Arathorn, battle of Helms Deep.

Early days but quite like the job Carrick is doing at Middlesbrough. Could be someone to look at for next season.

Yes because if there was one thing Ralph excelled at it was game changing substitutions.

Listening to NJ post match, it still concerns me that he seems to think we played well against Forest and that we weren't playing long ball football. Every single person in that stadium and every pundit and journalist agreed it was a gobsmackingly woeful attempt at contesting a football match. Hopefully that's all a bit of a front, because in comparison today it was chalk and cheese. Brilliant football and brilliant night. Lets take this into the league now.

I cannot believe the contrast between tonight and Forest. Absolutely incredible turnaround. Gives us some belief.

I played hockey to a fairly high youth level. Any dissent, and the umpire would simply and silently move the free hit 10 yards closer to your goal. Stopped the mouthy little shits pretty quickly.

I don't want to pick on certain players because all of them were crap tonight, but if Elyounoussi is the answer, what the hell is the question? He's a decent squad player but starting ahead of Armstrong, Aribo and Edozie... Seriously? Madness. And JWP is so passive sometimes. Collect, pass backwards, collect, pass backwards. Lavia's injury, Diallo being questionable and Romeu going have meant he's had to play deeper and he's so much less effective there for me.

Two teams trying to out-shite each other. A competitions we won. We could've played the entire time it takes to wait in The Queue and still not scored.

It’s hard to predict the starting line up atm, as Ralph seems to be (cleverly imo) exploiting the 5 subs rule to play more of a rugby style game, with certain players like Aribo held back to make an impact later in the game. Will depend on how the lads who put a shift in on Tuesday are feeling, but wouldn’t be surprised to see Stu and Aribo start, and probably AMN comes in for Lavia.

Found myself scrolling through twitter for far too long yesterday. It's a funny old place. There's this weird kid called Saint Rob who seems to be held up as some sort of ITK Messiah by the gullible morons, with the only evidence of this being his use of classic look at me lines such as "it's my understanding" and "I'm told". Very strange behaviour. Decided to leave them to it and just turned on notifications for SaintsExtra. Not sure if it's run by an lonely obsessive or a particularly ingenious bot, but they always tweet every mention of Saints almost immediately whilst crucially citing the source. It's very helpful.

Just hope we can secure whoever is next on our list. The issue now is every team knows we're desperate for an attacker and supposedly have £35m in our pocket. Feels a bit Carrillo-ey...

I'm also East Kent. Canterbury. Moved here for University 12 years ago and never left. I try to get to 5+ games a season but it's not easy as I often work on Saturdays, and our most "local" away games are London, which tend to sell out. Hoping to get down for the Brentford game in a few weeks.

Think people describing Ralph as "lucky" based on yesterday is a bit disingenuous. Bearing in mind one of the biggest criticisms of him in recent time has been a slowness in responding to issues in the game... Well yesterday he changed it up and it completely rejuvenated the team. By all means criticise the starting line up, tactics etc, but credit where credit is due as it was his decisions that rescued us a point. For me a lot will depend on how our starting XI looks v Leicester, but I'm cautiously optimistic that lessons have been learned...

Really surprised at some of the feelings regarding Che. He’s (currently) our best striker. Holds the ball up well, makes intelligent runs, capable of a brilliant goal, good fitness record and seems like a decent bloke. for everyone criticising him for not getting 15+ goals a season, well honestly I don’t think we create enough chances for that at the moment. Plus it would be interesting to see what percentage of our goals he contributed to. I think he’s perfectly good for the level we’re at, and I’m not surprised other teams are interested based on his skill set. With the right players around him he could be a vital cog for us this season. (He’ll be sold now I’ve said that)

Before anyone else comments, I'm aware that he's been shite since I said this.

Unpopular opinion but for me, Redmond currently makes the best XI.

If we're going to line up with 3 midfielders and 3 attackers, I'd like to see Stuart Armstrong as an 8 alongside JWP with Lavia/Romeu behind. Just think we struggle to create chances without a link between attack and defence, and SA is great at picking it up deep and making yards.

OK interesting one I've just heard. I'm not ITK at all and this is second hand info, but I've been told that Ings is in talks to return. The supposed source is very reliable but as I said, this hasn't come to me directly from them so pinch of salt required.

Gonna log on to Twitter to find out how this is McCarthy's fault

Not claiming to know anything about him, but £12m does seem quite high for a player with so few appearances. I’m enjoying this new Dortmund style recruitment policy, but it’s definitely risky.

Agree completely with this. I like Ralph, and think he has done a good job for the most part. He's consistently had a very weak squad, but still given us some great results here and there and crucially kept us in the league comfortably. But for the first time, I'm in the Ralph Out camp. His game management has been dire, particularly in the last few months, and we haven't really shown any progression under him, bar a few purple patches. We've never got to the level of consistency I thought we would. I've lost faith that he's the man to get us back into the top half.

Saw this on the BBC. Terrible age to get one of them. Really hope he comes out the other side stronger. All the best Tino!

How the fuck has there not been a change

Valery is fine when it’s a team that play on the floor like Arsenal. But the amount of times he’s been caught way out of position by the direct balls tonight is ridiculous. get Valery and Bednarek off and bring on Salisu and Adams.

Christ this is shocking.