Offside

Hungry Like The Wolf - Duran Duran

When I Paint My Masterpiece - The Band

Large contingent.

One of the iconic names in football. He was before my time, but I love the effortless simplicity of that goal from the 1970 World Cup when he passes into what looks like nowhere until Alberto suddenly appears and strikes home. RIP Pele. A true legend.

I‘ve only seen the highlights, but I’m happy with a point and clean sheet, even though it looks like we could have got the win had Weimann’s chance gone in (good to see him in a scoring position, though). I’m taking anything we can get at the moment.

Wild World - Cat Stevens

I’m not sure what’s happened with Klose. He played well and looked assured when he joined us last season, but he has dropped off the radar this season, despite our being short of numbers with injuries to Kalas and Naismith. Not sure why. Have his legs gone sooner than anyone anticipated?

That’s the team I’d go with. Conway hasn’t done anything wrong, but could maybe do with being rested. Weimann behind the front two makes sense because he is integral when we press. Scott struggled on Boxing Day, but he retains the ball, runs at players and gives the opposition something to think about.

I agree, he should definitely be getting more out of these players. I am under no illusion that we should be near the top six, but we should be in a better position than we are currently. Some of the performances have been truly dire and we don’t seem to learn from them. We lose games so easily.

The mentality of these people beggars belief.

Seems like a good appointment. Welcome to the club, Phil.

The atmosphere at AG was very flat today and has been for a while. A depressed malaise seems to have set in. But there is also the context of some poor results and performances. There was precious little to give fans something to cheer today. Our play from the start was so slow with no urgency, we even took an age with goal kicks and throw-ins. We are being beaten so easily, today without a whimper.

Diabolical performance from City. Difficult to find positives. Relegation written all over us at the moment.

First 30 mins was pathetic from City. We got a grip on the game towards the end of the half, but it shouldn’t take that long.

It seems odd if King is at CB again after his costly errors last time. I’d much rather see Atkinson there. But then again, so many of our players are capable of making howlers, if Atkinson did play he’d score an own goal or something.

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright - Bob Dylan

Happy Christmas everyone. And thanks for making this forum such an amazing place.

It’s ages since I bought home programmes, but I’ve always bought them at away games. It’s a shame to see them die out.

Completely agree. This is exactly how I feel. We are losing games so cheaply and unnecessarily (last Saturday being a typical example). NP has to find a way to reduce the number of times that happens, otherwise I can see us being in a relegation scrap this season.

I remember it well. I feared the worst when they got the early goal, but we were much the better side and Thorpe’s header from Aaron Brown’s surging run and cross is one of my favourite City goals of all time.

I really rate Pring. He’s good going forward and he’s aggressive and uses his physicality when defending. He is prone to some errors (like when his mistake led to Stoke breaking away and nearly scripting near the end of Saturday’s game), but that will improve with experience.

Alex Scott is by far our best player in my opinion. He plays with a maturity beyond his years and is and exciting player who is always trying to make things happen.

I thought Semenyo did ok and caused them problems. He should have scored from that cross. But I agree that in the last 20 mins, like has been the case so often when we’re chasing a game, we lacked any sort of fluency and didn’t make it difficult enough for Stoke.

King has done ok as a makeshift centre back, but that first goal (I didn’t get a good view of the second) shows why he shouldn’t be first choice there.

Yet another game where we contrived to lose against poor opposition without making them really work for it. Our defending for their goals was so soft. We were lacklustre for a lot of the game, but once we got ahead we should have won.