General Zod

I think unfortunately we lost our most dominant defender when comes to getting your head on the ball in the box, last summer when Famara left.  The amount of times it was his head clearing it out of our box.  A massive loss defensively more than in the final third in my opinion.

It could be Liz Truss next.  I think if that’s the case we will all look back at Boris’s shambles with fondness.  Let it sink in.  It could be Liz Truss next!

It’s been an awful season and the one consolation is that kids like Semenyo have got more game time and experience then they would have expected.  Having to take this season on the chin as some sort of youth team development experiment I thought the trade off was going to be the excitement of watching these players kick on.  Clubs clearly think Semenyo has the potential, I’d like to see that developed here for at least another season.

3-5 million seems very little money for a young player with so much potential.  Having to get rid of this type of player before they’d had a chance to shine, just to fund a rebuild frustrates me especially when you look at how much we’ve wasted on our scattergun approach to buying players over the past few years. 

51 minutes ago, mozo said:

I don't disagree with you but since when has football been driven by integrity? My cynical side thinks that there's so much money in football that they will find a way to justify to themselves as close to BAU as possible. 

Greedy agents want their deals. Clubs are owned by businessmen. BT and Sky need a product. Advertising has to reach its market. Etc etc

Money is king.

Sadly you probably have a point.  But games going ahead with half the squad in isolation or even without managers and coaches just to say we finished the season would be a very strange. 

31 minutes ago, Kid in the Riot said:

Unfair and wrong to abandon the season, as I said yesterday. HOWEVER, if the government are seriously considering placing a ban on all gatherings of over 500 people for up to two years then it's difficult to see any other outcome. 

I just can’t see a way this season can be finished with any integrity.  It’s likely teams will be at different stages of fitness/illness so even playing behind closed doors has massive integrity problems.  Abandoning the season is extremely probable as this virus kicks on so working out what happens next to be fair for those at the top and those at the bottom is going to be intriguing.

I think this season will be cancelled.  If they decide to play on the virus will result in some team’s isolating and others being unfit as they are coming out of isolation. Training and traveling is going to be problematic.  Integrity is shot away. Why not just abandon and when we kick off next season give teams points head start to reflect where they are at this stage.

I see Pulis still looks like he takes full advantage of his staff discount in the club shop. Any merchandise he doesn’t like to wear?

6 minutes ago, ChippenhamRed said:

Our poor form has been hugely overstated. “Horrible” runs are losing every week - like 8 defeats in a row last season.

Our current horrible run has seen us lose 3 in 12, and unbeaten in 5 at home.

A decline compared to pre-Christmas without a doubt, but not “horrible”. Away form is certainly a concern.

It’s not just the points total that shows we are in decline.  Performances this year have simply not been good enough with very little creativity, shots on target, energy, control and tempo.  We are terrible away from home and not great on the eye at home.  A couple of performances have seen us back to our old selves  but on the whole it feels like a team that doesn’t know how to get out of this downward spiral 

Glad we rescued a point but another poor performance.  It’s becoming a rare event when we click as a team and whilst the league position is great and our league form good in the first half of the season for me I’m questioning how much improvement there has actually been.  I’m not seeing the team working things out for themselves on the pitch and I’m struggling to see that Lee’s learning that quickly as a manager. 

Another difficult game but they will all feel like must wins from now until the end of the season if we want to challenge for a playoff spot.  We’ve forgotten the formula for solid, winning football away from home but with a rested squad playing against a struggling team today’s feels like the perfect day to prove the bad form was just a blip and we’ve worked out how to turn it around.