awbb

He’s got to be considered one of the best value signings we’ve ever made. £15k from Lincoln, or something equally ridiculous.

22? 22?

Totally. Revenge for 07/08 too. Well up for that.

I'll lend my voice to the cautious. The Championship is utterly abject and ruthless in equal measure. It's incredibly difficult to perform to an average level consistently match by match, let alone well. The stars can align, of course, especially if a team has momentum, as we have seen with Ipswich this season. Nothing would really surprise me regarding Huddersfield on Saturday. We could be as bad as Blackburn were last night and somehow find ourselves on 60 points at 5pm or play as well as we have in years and somehow contrive to lose. Geniunely, I hope Manning has seen that, despite what the analytics might say, our performances will be better when we press when we're out of possession and look to move the ball "vertically" at pace when in possession. That style of football is one that I enjoy watching and if there is any belief that a home crowd can make a difference, an intangible that most statistics, I suspect, will struggle to identify, having your fans enjoying the match will help.

Worse than that. Palmer had already been on loan and been fine (though I had no ideas about allowing my Mrs to dabble in some light NTR, personally). We signed Palmer for £3.5M that summer. Madness.

Incident in question - the last 3 or so minutes is all anyone need concern themselves with. This man got upset and swears quite a bit, so don't bother if you are offended by such vulgarity.

It could be worse. My non-league local side lost 1-0 at home today severely denting their playoff hopes to another team that had lost 6 in a row without scoring once.

I'd say we're phoning this one in from Marbs by the looks of it at the moment.

Delighted as I am with back to back wins there is no enjoyment to be had for the rest of the season since our season is over. It's largely dull, but there may be a chance for Manning to show us something against some opponents with something left to play for. There is also a mighty fine hypothetical on the final day... Sunderland (A): Sammy Szmodics tore them apart in their last game. Their form prior to that has been fairly ropey, but 3 of the previous 4 defeats were to teams with parachute payments. I think that humbling at home will probably sting them into wanting to get a result against us, which may allow us to play to our strengths a bit. Albeit, really, neither team has anything but pride on the line. Blackburn (H): Depending on how they get on at home to Southampton, they might not be completely free from relegation worries. If that's the case, again, they may need to look for points against us which plays to our strengths. Otherwise, they will almost certainly be happy with a point, with nothing to play for, which is generally a sign that we will phone in a performance and let them score an avoidable goal to take all 3 points. This could be a game to see Manning finally make a difference. Hudderfield (H): Chances are, they're going to still be fighting for survival (they have Millwall at home and Preston away before us), so if they're desperate for the 3 points we'll find it easier and the match will be more entertaining than if they're going to be happy with a point which would bring Manning under the microscope again. Norwich (A): Norwich are still likely to be fighting for the playoffs so will almost certainly come out try and beat us. Since we got promoted, we've played 12 times (11 in the league and once in the League Cup, this season), winning 1 of those games and drawing 3. Let's just say, miracles do happen, but getting anything out of this would be astonishing. Could be a Manning masterclass... Rotherham (H): OK, Rotherham will certainly be down at this point. Could be on the beach (as we certainly will be) or could be fighting for every last scrap of pride available to them. Either way, this is a complete no-win situation for Manning. A win is expected, a draw does no-one any favours and a defeat would undo any good work that he may have achieved between now and then. Stoke (A): I mean, the dream is surely to send Stoke down on the final day isn't it? At their own place? They've got a bit of a gap at the moment, with a couple of relegation 6 pointers to play (Huddersfield and Plymouth) so there is a delightful outside chance we could be in the position to do it. Such a sweet revenge for Pulis and them doing us in 07/08. The awfulness of watching them on Match of the Day for a decade. Rory Delap's throw ins and kicking Arsenal off the park every time they played them. We choked our chance to do Birmingham City a few years ago, IIRC, so would be pleasant to do it this time! Manning would buy himself a lot of respect from me if he could pull that off, given the chance!

Yesterday, I thought we were realistically about as 'on it' as we could have been, which, compared to the horrible efforts we've dialled in recently, was a relief more than anything. Yes, Leicester had some great opportunities that Max dealt with (including a shocker of his own devising) but I thought we gave them a game and I don't think, when they factor in our penalty shouts, they can complain about it too much - that's football. However, when push comes to shove, this performance (and result) is something we've already shown we can do; going toe-to-toe with a team with financial advantages over us and getting something out of it while playing to the strengths we have developed over the last couple of seasons. Ultimately, the only reasonable metric I can hold LM to, bearing in mind the position we were in when he arrived, is to get us performing and stop us being so passive and/or toothless against teams that we should be better than, that we should be looking to take 3 points from. I get it, consistency of performance (let alone result) is a difficult task in The Championship, especially with what feels like our abysmal injury record, but Monday is another opportunity to show me that he has something and can genuinely make a difference.

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

404: Entertaining football not found.

Most fans never wanted to get rid of Pearson and could well imagine the absolute shambles we see unfolding before us, as it’s not that far in to the past that we did something similar, only slightly less egregious. Removing Manning is very unlikely to happen, but if it was, the cheapest and quickest option is to appoint someone internally and because of the idiotic cull of Pearson and his staff, King is the only creditable option. Also, bear in mind that the title of the thread is to ask King to take the reins until the end of the season, not give him a 4 year contract.

I was trying to stop myself from getting in to that and limit myself to where we were when NP took over and my understanding of cultural impact he had. But, yeah, LJ didn’t (and likely still doesn’t) have the chops to do it the way he wanted to but, god knows, the recruitment did him no favours!

Regarding Culture. For me, Pearson altered the way our players thought and acted on the pitch. After several years under LJ who was tactically obsessive where he appeared to coach that every phase in a match should trigger a specific action or reaction from each player in the team. This caused issues in that, due to that and other coaching factors, the players seemed to lose the ability to take responsibility for themselves and their team mates on the pitch and as seeing now, players became scared of making mistakes and ironically made more of them because of it. Pearson changed this. He wanted our players to ‘all be leaders’ as the cliche says and made attempts to empower them to do that his focus was on general responsibility (rather than tactical responsibilities). This was coupled with his desire to sort out the playing squad where there were a several players with attitudes that did not meet his standard (commonly accepted: Bakinson generally, Watkins not fancying training and Wells needing to remind himself how to be a good squad member are examples). This drove professionalism and team ethics. Lastly he made it clear that the disparity in wages was a hinderance to team dynamics and needed to be resolved. Pearson also made the point that the whole club needed to be united and made more attempts to link the women’s team to the men’s. The last time a manger changed our culture so drastically, he’d just taken over the mess left by our, now, Technical Director. Make of that what you will. Manning is similar to Lee Johnson only his fixation is process as opposed to tactics. Ultimately the outcome, at this point, is the same. It’s a legitimate argument to say that Pearson had achieved his remit and was therefore disposable, but his successor should have been far more attuned to the way our players had been coached to think and act.