italian dave

Oh 100% RR. And as I understand it Fam was as gracious as ever. Well, 99% - I have to say I find it hard not to have a smile about the way Eric Cantona dealt with it!

Do you remember that Wallace and Gromit ‘Creature Comforts’ ad for Heat Electric in the ‘90s? Voted one of the most popular ads of the time in surveys. The only problem was that the surveys also found that most people thought they were advertising gas!

Works both ways mind, RR. Reading the reports of the grief Fammy was given on Saturday, you’d not really blame him for shutting it out. I do agree with your sentiment though.

No pay on the day

To be honest, my first thought is that the police should have just left them to get on with it.

English Summer……Eurythmics

God’s Great Banana Skin…….Chris Rea

It gets worse Dolly,….you’ll reach the time where they start offering you their seat on the bus/tube.

Interesting, thanks Dave. You monitor these things far more assiduously than I do! I'm surprised none at all first 19. The only time slot I've been watching recently is 45-60: we thankfully seem to have lost that habit of conceding then every week! Albeit Wednesday didn't need to, and Cardiff weren't too long after!

Fair enough! And no you probably didn't! It was others crediting the TV, luck, NP etc that I started by responding to - you just came along with David Moyes' injury hit squad at the last minute!! Sorry!! I try to look for positives. I agree that's been hard at times. I see change, which is always difficult (and suggesting it wasn't going to be was another foolish part of the Board's handling) and yesterday certainly frustration and draining confidence. I'm hoping for something more positive Tuesday - but not holding my breath! COYR.

Rule of thumb, you drop down a lot more dramatically when you lose at the top than you do at the bottom. Although the Championship is a strange old place!

Yep. Still easier said than done against the Millwalls of this league! And we did do it in little spells first half yesterday. I'd guess that's where a good proportion of our 17 shots came from - but never really troubled the keeper as I recall. The other stuff - don't know Dave, maybe. Certainly seemed to be more finger pointing at each other yesterday, which may be a sign of that? I guess the other issue, probably way beyond the scope of this thread, is that in LM we've gone for someone still learning their trade. That's a massive change from where we were. And without doubt debatable as to whether that's a sensible move. But we are where we are!

I was in Washington DC some years ago just after they’d had about 4 foot of snow come down. They coped with it pretty effectively: the snow ploughs come out and shift it. The trouble is they shift everything on the road onto the pavement, which ends up under 8 foot of snow! So, yes, you’re OK with a vehicle of any sort, not so good if you’re walking! But they don’t on the whole!

That may be true, Dave, but it’s a lot harder to press and counter attack a side that’s determined to just sit back deep behind the ball a la Millwall for example. As Southampton themselves found only last week! I think of the game up at QPR when not losing was the priority for both sides, and both sides simply sat back and invited the other to take the game to them, and neither did. At times it was almost like the last 10 minutes of that famous Coventry game! Or the game at Birmingham: so intent were they on a 0-0 I swear Man City and Liverpool combined would have found it difficult to find a way through! We’ve struggled with it for some years now. At this level, plenty of other sides struggle with it too. Our inability to stick the ball away doesn’t help. We had chances first 20 minutes yesterday. Thats when you need to score and force them to be more adventurous. Thats what we can’t do, and don’t seem to have been able to do for ages.

I’m not aware I ever attributed the word ‘rosy’ to you. I didn’t realise I wasn’t allowed to use an adjective you’d not already used…sorry I’m glad you enjoyed Southampton and can at least give LM some credit for using a style that day that suited the players! Look: if you want to take the view that nothing Manning can do is right then that’s your prerogative. It’s your view and that’s fine with me. I’m just saying I don’t agree. But maybe more to the point what I’m saying is that just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean that I take the polar opposite view and think that everything he does is right. I don’t see the world in black and white like that. There are shades of grey for me.

I think you may be missing the context in quoting me here SA. I’m not for one minute suggesting that those are reasons for or excuses for those poor results. I was responding to posts that used West Ham’s injuries and some good fortune at Boro to argue that we didn’t deserve credit for those results. If anything, I’m probably in alignment with you - those shouldn’t hide the problems - but equally you can’t have it both ways and dismiss our successes for the same reason.

Rosy was a word used by another poster but as part of this discussion. It seemed like a good way of summing up some positives in one word. So, going back to the OP - you don't think Southampton was rosy? You didn't enjoy that win, or think we played well? And beating West Ham - you didn't think that was rosy?

Leeds was poor, but I think we were just punch drunk. It reminded me a bit of a game against Bournemouth a few years back when Bournemouth were in one of their Championship stints between the PL. And even their fans were saying that they played better that night against us than they'd done any time the previous season in the PL!! Leeds were just outstanding that night. And, yes, still not sure how it ended only 0-1! I could suggest we did well to keep it down to that - but I won't push my luck

I don't think it was down to Manning's coaching brilliance. I think it was down to a combination of factors. His coaching, his management of players, some resolute defending, West Ham's depleted squad, a bit of luck with a poor back pass, and any number more things that would probably fill the page. And that's true of pretty much every game we play - there's a combination of factors that determine the final outcome. My view is that some of those - the good, the rosy, the less good, the bad - are down to Manning. And that some of them - good, rosy, not so good, bad - are down to other factors. Your view seems to be that everything bad or not so good is down to Manning and that everything rosy is down to something or someone else. That's where we disagree.

Of course I'm doing it!! I'm doing it precisely to make that point!! Yes, every single thing you've said in this post you could say about the West Ham game. yet when it come to that game, the fact that we drew and then won is - according to you - all down to injuries and nothing to do with Manning.

Watford away - yes. I'm not sure there's anyone saying that everything is rosy, Pete. On this thread at least, simply challenging the proposition that everything bad is down to Manning and everything rosy is down to something or someone else.

Quite possibly not. Who knows? But I also think we'd have been much more likely to have won at least one of the last three if we'd had Twine and Sykes and Bell fit.

Of course I'm not. But you can come up with "what if"s about every single game if you want to. What if we'd been given that penalty shout yesterday, or not had the goal disallowed at the end. What if Wednesday had had the red card they should have early on, and if we'd been given the clear handball pen near the end. What if Twine hadn't got injured. What if Sykes had stayed fit. I could go on. Pretty much every single game that gets played will have reasons someone can point to why something might have been different. And if you want to you can pick every single one that's a reason to slate Manning, and ignore every single one doesn't fit that agenda.

That maybe so. But it's not the point I'm making. Which is that there are more than just two games where we've had a good result and/or performance. We're inconsistent. As we have been for several years now. We have crap games. We have good games. We have in between games. It's just this black and white everything Maning does is bad, every failure is his, any success is due to something else - TV, NP's legacy or whatever that I find nonsensical. Edit - and add David Moyes to the list of 'other reasons' from @Back of the Dolman

And Forest. And West Ham. And Coventry. And Watford. And Hull. And Boro at home. All blips?