Dastardly and Muttley

I make it four defeats out of five games where we’ve had a full week of training.

What?! Huddersfield, Leeds, both QPR, Preston, Birmingham, Sheff Weds, Cardiff, just off the top of my head…

Yes, when Lansdown acts.

It’s time. They’re cooked.

Yep. It’s so sad.

The man is clueless. Get him gone.

But he could have said “we are a club with ambitions of being in the top 6”. That’s very different to “we have a top 6 squad”.

9 points from the last 10 games…

The lowest point, so far.

He’s just not up to this level. Teams are underprepared, unfit and unable to break down a paper bag. Another two years of this before Lansdown wakes up and does something as they won’t admit they’re wrong.

Don’t think we’ll be threatening the playoffs any time soon. Unless it’s next year’s League One playoffs.

Exiled in Berkshire, I took advantage of free tickets to see Slough vs Chippenham yesterday. Amadi-Holloway was up front for Chippenham, bizarrely wearing number 5. Scored the first goal and looked a handful for a Chippenham side that were cruising 2-0 until a well-deserved red card got Slough back in the game which ended 2-2. Looked Amadi-Holloway up and he’s had quite a career since leaving us, with spells in India and Australia. Fair play to the lad, decent life travelling like that and playing football. Jem Hewlett, an 18 year old on loan from Southampton looked decent. Assume he’s Matty’s son, but may be wrong on that one. Aaron’s career stats linked here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Amadi-Holloway

The biggest problem for me, is that all of our problems are foreseeable. I predicted before Millwall that we would lose 1-0 to a late goal. Everyone knew Preston would beat us. I fancied us to beat West Ham and Forest. It’s all down to our lack of plan b and same approach to every game. We’ll look good against teams that come at us and give us space to pass in. Against those that won’t, we’ll struggle. Everyone knows this. We have the players to play a pressing style and force mistakes. Why we don’t do this in the games when we know our passing game isn’t working or won’t work, I don’t know. Suggests some stubbornness somewhere, or a complete lack of ingenuity. Like others have said, I’m yet to see us come out in a second half and be better than we were in the first. That’s a worry too. There are some promising signs about Manning, but equally there are many, many red flags which make me question whether he was the right appointment already.

Watch Derby wear him onto the ground now, playing through every niggle…

Funny. Pearce didn’t mention the Eastern European branch of the City fan club.

Ball doesn’t seem to be rolling properly, as both teams seem to be under hitting their passes. Did Manning measure the grass length pre-game or not?!

They were tickets Andi had booked for his family

I can get behind a deal at c£2.5m. Whilst it’s annoying that NP wasn’t given this money, we knew it was likely to be the case that LM would be allowed to spend, £2.5m on a player he’s worked with before and got good results with isn’t a bad deal.

£4-5m for Twine feels like a panic buy. We missed out on two other targets at a more reasonable fee, so we’re going back to pay Burnley’s high-price because we can’t afford to leave Manning without at least one of his targets this window. And, as you know, the best way out of a hole is to keep digging…

Stay, but appoint a real CEO.

I just want the audio I’ve paid for with Robins TV. Why can’t they make anything work.

How do you listen on the BBC page? Can’t find any audio

He sent me a private message on Twitter blaming it on autocorrect

He needs a plan B, as there clearly isn’t one at the moment. Whether that’s down to a lack of tactical nous, or whether we just don’t have the players LM wants yet is hard to say.

The Christmas and NY games are tough. Thick and fast, with little recovery. Few teams play well for all of those games. It’s a different game if Mehmeti scores an open goal from six yards out.