Northern Red

Obviously going for a repeat of the "if the fans can't work out the formation then hopefully the opposition won't either" approach. To be fair it worked against Orient.

More than it reasonably should do. 3 and a half year contract FFS. Didn't want him appointed, and he's done almost nothing since to convince me that he knows what he's doing.

Maybe that's what he's going for, a cunning plan to confuse the opposition....

He was okay, but no better than that. Some nice passes but gave the ball away cheaply on a few occasions too. Marv was having a very good game until he had to go off.

Just back home now. A well-earned point in horrible conditions. Oldham might feel hard done by if we'd nicked all 3, but we slightly edged it in terms of chances and never really looked like losing the game either. The defence looked a lot more solid in a flat 4. Flint in particular was excellent, and El Abd had a good game too. I hadn't seen him in the flesh before today but the comments from those who had were that it was his best game for us by some distance. Williams looked a bit out of place at left back, he defended well enough but certainly didn't provide as much threat going forward as Cunningham does. I'd have to see the goal we conceded again, but from my angle I thought Moore could have got nearer to it. Other than that he looked very solid, didn't have too many saves to make but much more commanding of his area than Parish. That said, the goal could have been prevented if we'd attempted to close their player down. Going forward we created a few chances but nothing really clear cut, and I can't recall their keeper making a save of note. Barnett holds it up well, but seemed a bit lazy when we didn't have the ball. Burns was very lively but we didn't get the ball to him enough, especially in the 2nd half. The midfield were a mixed bag, some nice passing and battling tackles, but also a hell of a lot of squandered possesion. In isolation, that's a decent result. Unfortunately we really need to start winning these types of games and bar the odd moment, we didn't look that likely to do so today. If he sticks with 4 at the back, then I'd be confident we can pick up enough points at home to be alright. It was 4-3-3 today and it looked solid for the most part, the problem is how you get JET into that formation. He came on for Burns on the right of the front 3 but didn't look entirely comfortable there.

Balls

Reid shoots over from 6 yards after a City counter attack

Are there any Watford fans there?

City fans sound in fine voice

Let's not be too harsh. It's the first post I've ever seen from him that's even remotely positive, despite the SO'D dig.

I think it helped that the ref clamped down on it reasonably early and booked a couple of them, meaning they had to lay off a bit. Though there were still a fair few 'robust' challenges going in. Really professional performance, the only criticisim is that we could and should have won by more. It was getting a little nervy in the few minutes before our 2nd goal, but we should have been 3 or 4 up by that point.

Did anyone hear Alastair Cook being interviewed pre-match by Jim Maxwell, the Australian guy who works for Test Match Special? Maxwell asked him if the team were ready and up for it, only for Cook to utter the immortal words "stupid question"!

The best one I found was where you hit a shot that went just past the fielder, only for him to magically invisibly claw the ball back from several yards behind him and hit the stumps with a direct hit to run you out.

Brilliant. Brian Lara Cricket was a great game, even if it did have a few glitches. I've played a few cricket games since and every one has been riddled with glitches.

True. But then they publically backed Del then sacked him barely a week later and had SO'D being paraded to the press a couple of days after that. If your last sentence is true, then the logical conclusion would be that circumstances had changed dramatically in the last 24 hours of his tenure leading to him being sacked.

According to Dollymarie on twitter:

We made the last one Vice Chairman.

I hate the bloke and would never have imagined being happy about his appointment but frankly I'd take him over a lot of the other names being bandied about, like Steve Cotterill, Di Canio etc.

Spot on as usual. Johnson, Coppell, Millen, McInnes, O'Driscoll. There's one constant there. They can't all be bad managers, and a couple of them have since proved that they aren't.

He hates us, we hate him. No thanks.

Spot on. I wouldn't be so disappointed if there was an obvious candidate to come in, but I can't see one.

Absolute shambles. Not his biggest fan but there were signs he was starting to get it right.

Swindon St Albans 1-8 Mansfield. We put 9 past them at this stage a few years back.

Both spot on. I don't think you can blame the players at all, and tbh if it was us in that situation again I'm not sure if any of ours would do the same, perhaps a few of the local lads but that's probably it. I have sympathy for the fans and those non-football staff who stand to lose their jobs but quite frankly the club should have been shut down 2 years ago, and despite being let off once, those in charge continued to spend beyond their means and stick 2 proverbial fingers up to their creditors, taking no responsibility for their situation.