SouthS22

He wasnt ready and it was a terrible decision to play him. Very poor call from Manning, among many others today. Just hope he recovers from the experience because he was miles off championship standard today.

Nanana by Peggy Gou i can’t explain I got a felling that I just I can’t erase just a feeling that I won’t, won’t leave behind Because it’s something that is on, its on my mind i guess it goes like Jason Knight Nananana Knight Nananana Knight Nananana Knight…

Embarrassing. What were we doing? Either press or drop into a block. So easy for Leeds, they must have thought it was Christmas again. Fair enough we were worried about their pace, but having the front 3 press with no one following behind is inept. Proper horror show, haven’t seen us that outtplayed since Holden. I get that the squad is thin and we played too many games, but we were still our own worst enemies tonight. IPlay offs? Not even close.

I enjoyed the game today. It was tight, but we took the game to Watford and looked to me like the better side. Twine looks quality - he’s clearly got a lot more getting used to teammates to do but he can receive the ball in tight areas and make things happen even if they didn’t all come off today. I”m not sure what happened to the passing out of the back, but the midfield competed well and it was them more than us playing onthe break. We are finally looking like a side with a bit of strength in depth now that the injuries are easing. Gardner Hickman made a progressive difference, Bell was a bit indifferent, and I was delighted that we didn’t have to put up with the usual pointless cameo from Cornick, but carried a threat right to the final whistle. Just a massive shame that we couldn’t get that winner - not sure how that ball stayed out of their net at times, though Max made a brilliant stop at our end to keep it all square to be fair. Work to do, but I’m looking forward pretty optimistically to see what we can do.

How did we manage to lose that game? I thought we actually played pretty well and were the better team for large parts of it. I don’t mind the passing it about; we built up slowly, moved them around and carved out some good opportunities. Only one team looked like winning it in the last 20 mins and it wasn’t Norwich. James, Knight and Gardner Hickman mostly bossed the midfield, Tommy looked a threat but didn’t have his shooting boots on again, even Weimann had a half decent first half. However, Tanner is not a wing back, Sykes wasn’t on it today, and we really lack options off the bench to affect the game - Mehmeti, Cornick and Bell all well off the pace. Even with them on the pitch, and with Williams not able to find a teammate from 5 yards, we were still the team pushing for the winner at the end. Gutted that the ghost of Vyner past came back to haunt us.

Isn't the Board Jon Lansdown and Gavin Marshall? I'm not sure Jon is capable of making a decision beyond which crayon to colour in with, so no I don't trust them collectively to make good decisions. I'm not sure on Steve as owner - he doesn't have a great track record on managerial decisions, but at the same time he has put us in a position structurally to step up and looking around at the position of some other clubs, it could be a lot worse.

All of you who are saying you are not going to renew your season ticket or going to hand it back if Pearson doesn’t get a new contract, stroll on. Go take your cult like worshipfulness elsewhere. No manager is bigger than the club and if Pearson has become your primary focus you need to have a little think about where your support is at. The fact is that he hasn’t earned a contract extension as yet. He needs to stop throwing his toys out of the pram and get on with the job he’s contracted to do and very well paid for. Let’s see improvement and more consistent quality before he’s trusted to spend any more of the clubs money. If we’re in the hunt at Christmas, playing with more assurance at home and demonstrating some capacity to break rubbish teams down when they sit in, perhaps there is scope for a conversation. Until then, wind your neck in Pearson and get on with sorting the football out. Not bothered? My arse. Cosy culture of acceptance of mediocrity - yep, now where did I hear that before?

It was Tommy what won it, outstanding 15 mins from him

At last, a quality striker on the pitch

Observation from being at 7 games out of 9 and watching the other two on tv, but I’m happy to bow to actual stats if you have them. For me, he’s done a job, poorly at times, okay at others and and occasionally pretty well. Some very good touches, energy, and closing down but I was hoping g for proper competition and back up for Nakhi, Tommy, Sam and Andi, and yet he’s still the 6th choice. Great goal on Tuesday, and hopefully that performance and the vocal support he got will give him a lot more confidence and he can push the others harder. Time will tell I guess, and if a good song helps, then he’s got that in his favour.

No goals, no assists, no goal involvements, no successful crosses, today the only shot so far this season. I’m not sure where the happening is there. it was a good touch today to set up the chance, but the touch doesn’t matter unless the chance is taken. It wasn’t, and from where I was sitting it was a miss, though the goalkeeper also did well. I was hoping after a pre-season that Cornick would kick on this year. Only fleeting glimpses of any progression so far, though I can’t criticise his work rate. Good contrast can be made with Yeboah. Exciting prospect, fast, strong, unpredictable, and excellent work rate.

Very very poor Reading side, and we still couldn’t beat them. The pitch didn’t help, and neither did the injuries, but his has been a pretty terrible run since the Man City game. A solitary win against Blackpool aside, we look back to the same clueless bunch of numpties we did before Christmas. Reading even gave us the ball a number of times today, including in their own penalty area and we didn’t have a clue how to put it the net. Not many positives to take from today, but good to get TC back and welcome return for James.

Just back from the game. We were abysmal, total embarrassment. There are only a few players to come out of that with any credit, and principal among them is Omar T C. Battled and scrapped for everything. The other was Sykes who put another shift in. Scott was marked out of the game, and without his influence we were clueless. We couldn’t get anywhere near the ball for large parts of the game, and once they had gone ahead (such a soft goal), there was no way we were ever going to get back in it. Cornick as a starter, come on NP have a word with yourself. I’m not writing him off totally yet, but this season he looks about as much threat as a cold rice pudding. Worrying., Zak seems to be regressing, King cannot play more than one decent game a fortnight, Sam still looks really lightweight and got bullied by their defenders today, and Max had a shocker - couldn’t see the second too clearly but it looked stoppable, was right behind the first and I that seemed to go past him in slow motion. Thought Tanner did ok, totally baffled by his substitution, effectively nullifying Sykes. That was the quietest away end I’ve been in for some time, thought we’d get it going at some point, but the team gave us nothing. I can’t be bothered with international breaks normally, but thank god we have one now, we desperately need it.

Incredibly disappointing, even though probably inevitable. I don’t really understand the dynamics of the transfer market, and what is and isn’t possible as regards holding on to players, but I did hope that we could hold out until the summer. He’s a massive loss and even though we could get a few million more than we may have done later, we’ll be worse off overall if we’re relegated. He might be inconsistent but he makes things happen and that will be sorely missed. We need to hope that we can pull something out of the bag on a replacement over the next week or so, or unless Weimann has a rediscovery of the form of last year, I can’t see us creating enough to keep us out of a relegation dogfight. Good luck to him, I think he could develop to be a top player.

Good summary of the game. I would just add to the positives that Semenyo looked a real threat all game, held the ball up well, make some great runs and got our goal. Without him our attack was toothless. Nakhi must have put his boots on the wrong way round because his link up play was poor, and unfortunately Sykes looked out of his depth today. Everything good up front went through Semenyo, best player on the pitch for me today, closely followed by Zak. Midfield 3 did a decent job of controlling the game after they had scored, and Atkinson had another solid game at the back.

No, because he is the Messiah and, verily, the sun shines out of his arsehole.

Thought about this question for a few days, after the Boxing Day horror show. That’s the worst atmosphere I can remember at the Gate in 15 years. I don’t know if there’s a way back for him after that. I’ve said before that I think he has until January and no doubt he has for the simple reason that no one is actually taking charge of our club. I think now though that there may just have been too many bizarre decisions, player fallings out and poorly managed games for there to be any other outcome for him other than the sack., whether that’s soon, or later once a new CEO is in. I do see progress in some areas, but I also see regression in others, and at the end of the day, his record is just not good enough. Like it or not, I think we may have reached a tipping point where too many fans are fed up with watching the team chuck games away and leaving the ground depressed after yet another poor performance, particularly at home which is so important. We need to rediscover something like that early season form from the next home game onwards for him to stand a chance of getting the fans back on side, but I’m not sure the players believe enough to enable that to happen. Most of them looked as dejected as I felt at the end of the Baggies game. Whether there’s a reaction from them against Millwall might just be decisive.

He did a decent job today, but he makes me nervous n that centre back role and I would prefer to see him in there as little as possible. He reads the game well, his distribution is good and he’s good at keeping the back 3 organised, which are all important parts of that role. However, he seems weaker against the more physical, direct and especially aerial threats, and he seems to dive in a bit in one on one’s. More importantly for me today was that we had Naismith back. He looked good in that LCB role, and we looked much better with him in the side. Tanner also did ok for the most part, though he did lose his man for their goal. As a makeshift back 3, they all had a good game, shielded well aLeo by the 3 in front of them. Pring was given a bit of a torrid time defensively, but he was excellent going forward and gave us much needed threat from crosses. Andy on the other side is surprisingly effective at RWB.

Much better performance today. Midfield 3 ran the first half and stayed solid in the second. Weimann was excellent at right wing back, his best game for a while. Vyner and Pring outstanding at the back, much prefer Pring there with his pace and eye for a good pass forward. Conway and Wells put a shift in up front, just not quite on the same wavelength today. Even Semenyo looked like he was up for it and gave their defenders some problems when he came on. Would love to see a replay of the first half penalty shout, looked pretty strong to me, but to be fair it was just too far away to know for sure. Good to go in to the World Cup break on a positive, and with a clean sheet against what is a strong Watford frontline. A performance to build on when the league resumes.

That was as poor a performance as I’ve ever seen from City. It was embarrassingly bad, and as much as anyone may like to make yet more excuses for poor management by brushing it off as a Mickey Mouse cup, any performance that bad by any team that makes that little effort and shows that kind of lack of basic organisation and resilience is not a sign of any kind of development or plan that is coming together. For us fans who turn up to support our team every week, that was a chance to get a morale boosting win before a depressing period at the bottom end of the table. And yet Pearson sets up a joke of a side, exposing some of our younger players to what turned into a pretty toxic atmosphere quite quickly. He lets the horror show run for the whole of the first half, then he makes baffling substitutions at half time, putting King in the centre of defence, because that worked so well last time. And of course the mighty Lincoln (looked it against us) immediately take advantage and score a third straight after half time. Another outstanding demonstration of quality game management from a master tactician at the top of his trade. Much more of this and we’ll be playing the likes of these every week. But no worries, as long as we get a good straight talking post match interview, I’m pretty sure it will be alright.

Its been a very good thread this, with lots of reasoned discussion. There was the inevitiable slinging of sh*t somewhere in the middle, a little bit of bullying and name calling, but its great to see that its settled into a genuinely interesting and informative debate. Lots of very good input, on both sides of the discussion, OTIB at its finest!

I agree with this in general terms in that I would expect us to be in a better place at this stage, after 20 months under this management team. Its clearly the case that there were massive issues that NP took on when he joined us. That is the principle reason why I’ve tried to be more patient, less critical and more supportive, despite the football being played by the team being so bad for so long. The squad NP inherited was decimated by injuries but that was by far not the only issue. Perhaps more importantly the culture at the club was far too accepting of ‘mediocre’, and then there did need to be huge upheaval in the summer at the end of that first season because we needed to cut the wage bill by so much. We’ve been massively constrained in what we’ve been able to do in the transfer market to replace those players and have had to look to the academy instead and bring players through. There have been some positives, especially this season, which have been instrumental in retaining any faith. Cultural change is clearly being achieved and we’ve started to see an identity on the pitch at long last. There’s been progress on the pitch to some extent, with some strong performances this season which continue to give me hope that those are the levels we can reach on a consistent basis under NP. Despite the constraints he’s also bought in some good signings in Naismith and James (and with more development Sykes, Tanner and Wilson). That said, there are lot of negatives too. I don’t buy into this narrative that the squad is so poor or thin that it’s amazing that NP has managed to get anything out of them. We have some real talent in the team, who we should be getting more from. We should be more organised and stop giving away soft goals game after game. Team set up has got to be better, and consider opponents as well as playing to whatever strengths we have - at least a plan B. We’ve got got to stop playing players constantly out of position and only basing team selection on trial and error. And in game management has got to be better - making tactical tweaks and changes according to how the game is going and not randomly chucking extra strikers on (Chris Martin especially) when we are losing and totally disrupting the rhythm of the team. I thought at the end of last season that if we are in the bottom 6 by the time the World Cup break comes around, we probably need to be looking at management recruitment and putting plans in place. If we’re still there by end of January then those plans need to be implemented because this club should be aspiring to better than bottom of the table finish, or even worse relegation. Still hoping for a good run of results and the achievement of greater consistency, but I think the next two games and then how we restart after the World Cup are going to be critical.

Last night’s performance was decent, apart from yet another really soft goal. But that’s the key and a continuing theme this season - yet another soft goal. We look solid in open play a lot of the time and then someone just makes a basic mistake and we’re behind or pegged back. Every game there’s hope of course but there’s also a feeling of dread of how we are going to contrive to mess it up, and then it happens and it’s head in hands time again. Even if we can keep putting in good performances, and that is by no means a given having seen the number of times we haven’t turned up, we are not going to win many games unless we stop conceding these goals. We are the Santa of the championship, gifting opponents points on a regular basis, either as a result of goals from set pieces or from basic defensive errors. I know that the officials shouldn’t have given it, and that it was a makeshift back 3, but it doesn’t change the fact that last night saw us make really poor defensive mistakes again. No matter who’s been playing, it’s been a pretty consistent run. I like the optimism of we’ll win if we play like this, but really it’s a recipe for disaster to continue giving up such soft goals and I it’s going to get us in trouble - this league is just too tight to being giving any out any more gifts.

But we did lose because a clear offside wasn’t given. And we also didn’t get to play against 10 men second half because the ref missed a clear red. Probably fair to say the officials played a pretty important part in the result overall, not even going into the loss of control, the failure to stop persistent fouling or to do anything about time wasting. Not saying that piss poor defending yet again wasn’t a critical factor too.

Great podcast, good range of opinions and perspectives. Enjoy listening to pretty much every episode, and it’s good to hear some different views on performances whether I agree with them or not. No one wants to live in an echo chamber… except for some posters on here. Many thanks Dave, Mark, Ian, Eli, Dave F and other contributors, please keep up the good work.