Steve Watts

I think a big difference this season is that for the first time in ages we get to the latter stages of the game trailing but I don't think anyone is thinking "well this is over". I don't think it's self congratulatory to say how well we played. This was a team that came down from the Prem last year with the budgets that come with that and we dominated them for a large majority of the match. That shows how much this side has progressed. Being pleased with the performance in spite of the loss is just an acknowledgement of what we're coming out of. We played well and if not for the defensive frailties could've put the pre-season title favourites to the sword on their own patch. Reasons to be cheerful aplenty right now.

You see I saw that as six of one and half a dozen of the other. Wells seemed to me to be grappled by their player and then he put his arms out himself and caught the guy. I can only assume that's how it looked to the referee as well. Hats off to Williams though. Really switched on to the opportunity.

As others have said, there's a real lack of options at the moment here. His little brain farts are proving very costly, though. Why Semenyo and Conway and not Semenyo and Wells? That's the conundrum. To fit AS into the starting line up you need to break up a partnership that is reaping rewards left right and centre. Which one could/would you drop and why? It needs to be noted that it's actually only over the last 9 months. Up until Christmas 2021 he was nothing more than an intriguing prospect. And then it clicked for him. I personally think Scott's value is far in excess of Semenyo's.

If it was the same David Webb then we can forgive him for not having the most mobile of matches tonight at the tender age of 76!

Interesting that home grown is English only, not UK. That bloody foreigner, Naismith!

Antoine's little bro playing. Does he look like he could be one we let get away, or not really up to the standard?

You mean like the 18 year olds flipping burgers at the football this weekend....? Yeah, but do you not remember the meltdown on Twitter when the games weren't postponed? It was crazy.....!

Nope it was a group of about 200 latecomers who basically got into the Atyeo and made a beeline for the Dolman. I remember it well as it was the first match my lad went to that had any sort of trouble. Poor little sod was really nervous about it all. It may have been the 19/20 season thinking about it, but certainly they were let out at the end after trouble as I had to calm his nerves down.

It doesn't. Was it last season that there was quite a bit of trouble when Swansea came over? They weren't held in that day, in spite of the aggro.

He will no doubt have a clause in his contract that deals with behaving in ways that could harm the company. His comments may possibly cost the station listeners and ultimately advertising cash if he is retained. He is perfectly entitled to feel the way he does, but this certainly would have been a situation that he will have been better off having those thoughts and not sharing them on a global platform.

It could be argued that even out of his natural position, Scott is one of the best players we have in that position. Or indeed most positions on the pitch. It wouldn't be a shock to see him jump in goal and save a penalty if we needed him to! Obviously we need to utilise him where he's most impactful for the team, but if Tanner and Wilson aren't considered ready and Sykes, who has taken to the position extremely well, is unavailable then the options are few and far between. Tanner and Wilson's time will come, but the step up is huge, and so we will just need to be patient.

I realise this will sound slightly hypocritical....but... I was offered tickets to the '95 cup final (Everton 1-0 United) as I worked with the daughter of one of the Everton board at the time. Driving home from Wembley, a guy in a United shirt walked down the road, took his keys out and went in through his front door. Even back then at the start of their purple patch under Fergie they had the rep.

It's a delicious irony that the more accurate description would be the red three quarters (Or should that be the red three faymuss qwawturrzz?)!

Goes to show just how professional he is. His desire to get a run of games in the 23's was commendable. And whilst playing there presumably built a good partnership with Young TC and jeez has it shown this past week. They are on such a good wavelength together. You look at it and when Semenyo is back it certainly isn't going to be easy for him to get past these two if they continue in this vein. Knew Tommy would get man of the match, but I too thought Nahki was (just) more deserving. Fantastic from him and long may it continue.

When he went down for a bit in front of the Lansdown it seemed to be his shoulder that was causing him some discomfort. Maybe just landed heavy....my hope is that @sinenomine was wrong when suggesting his shoulder is made of hamstrings! Would be interesting to see the comparison between his two halves. Seemed to be quiet first half, but maybe it just looked that way because of the second half where he was playing like a man possessed!

You see, I used to have a soft spot for Forest because of Cloughie and how he set his teams to play attractive passing football. That soft spot disappeared following relegation when it became very clear to everyone that they have the most entitled fanbase I'd come across at that point. They are rivalled in that by Leeds and Villa now mind.

Will we be able to even notice this....?!?

And if my Auntie had been born with a wanger, she'd have been my uncle. But she wasn't, so she's not. I find it a really strange piece of conjecture about what might have happened when we know what did happen. We may as well say Vyner had a good game yesterday but what would have happened if he'd made his customary costly mistake....but he didn't, so no-one is saying it. Discussion and debate is all well and good and what a forum is all about of course, but it does seem a little picky to do it after the substitutions had the desired effect against the opposition in front of us and we saw the game out without conceding despite being down to 10 men.

That's the point though.... Against Luton it made complete sense. Against Norwich would he have made the same changes? That is something that hopefully we don't have to find out, but ultimately right now we don't know. What we do know is that the changes he made last night countered any rally from Luton and therefore it worked well.

I think the highlighted bit is where the argument falters slightly. The fact is that the opposition was clueless and Nige had been watching this clueless opponent for 70 minutes. They were always going to be lumping the high ball into the box after the red card and the subs reflected both that and the desire to stifle any momentum Luton may have built up before they had a chance. The likelihood is that if we were playing against a better team then the changes will have been different. I agree on the periphery it seems odd to lose your RWB and not replace him with 1 of 2 RWB's on the bench, but I genuinely believe that the changes were sensible because of the opposition, not in spite of it.

Some of the comments on this thread are like some of my fave Facebook stories. You can tell by the comments that all they've done is read the headline and managed to come up with what they thought was a fully informed opinion!

Fixed that for you. There are some posts that deserve no more than a confused emoji to be fair... It's a cheap way to get past the "attack the post, not the poster" rule in some situations!