GrahamC

100th League game for us today (in all competitions he’s played our last 83), second consecutive clean sheet. Lovely to see a son of Somerset doing well. The Leicester game was the 100th in the league for us for both Matty James & Cam Pring, by the way.

Good professional win. Argyle struggled whenever Whittaker didn’t have the ball & must be looking over their shoulder now. Clear penalty for the push on Sykes, good job it didn’t matter. Makes such a difference when you can make a triple sub & bring on the likes of Sykes, Williams & Wells. Far stronger bench will often produce a better result.

Chelsea? Not sure there’s a cigarette paper between them. Their money effectively came from Putin.

Richardson their manager has been very honest in saying they’ve effectively been down for weeks. Lost 10 of their last 11 with a couple of recent 5-0 hammerings, only point was a 0-0 v Huddersfield.

Yep- plus Huddersfield & Birmingham still have to play each other. They might be crap but they can’t both lose that one. Rotherham’s abysmal minus 50 goal difference is effectively worth another point to the rest too.

Have you included Rotherham? They definitely have nothing to play for, effectively been relegated for weeks.

Don’t follow this stuff closely but that is a truly embarrassing thing to say. Just like Gary Neville moaning about Arsenal celebrating too much, the ex Man U players jealousy that their team are now miles adrift of the best 3 sides is genuinely pathetic.

100%. 19 year old who has just made a big move from National League to the Championship. Let’s see what he’s like in pre season rather than obsessing over this. I have been told he’s been impressive in training & let’s face it, it is with us now where he’s going to be judged, not games for a team he’s leaving.

Don’t like to spoil the fun, but it was an away game..

Atyeo finished in 65/66, so even if this person’s first season supporting us was his last, that was 58 years ago. Assuming he was at least 12, that makes him 70. So younger than you say, but still as irritating.

It wasn’t (you can look this stuff up). Apparently Murphy is quite a common Irish surname. Who knew?

Imagine my shock. It’s almost like he’s been struggling with tendinitis pretty much since signing & the stuff Tinnion said about a pre season was utter horseshit, isn’t it?

We’ve reached a situation where players (& Ivan Toney is the biggest offender here) initiate contact with an opponent to win a penalty, rather than make an attempt to play the ball. Referees & those operating VAR have to get wise to this, it’s becoming farcical. I watched some footage of Maradona recently, one of the greatest to play the game, he was repeatedly fouled but his instinct was always to get back on his feet & beat his opponent, not earn a cheap penalty like these cheats do. Before anyone says it, yes I do know he punched the ball into the net against us..

Bacuna is definitely one we should consider. Rudoni if (as looks likely) Huddersfield go down, too.

Yep. Couple of other observations; Sykes on a free the year before was sensational business. Our January signings tend not to be so good, it’s a tougher market & we need to shop in at as little as possible. This summer we need a second keeper, a striker & a number 10. If Conway leaves we need another striker too. Despite the comment about being short on numbers we need to use the likes of Stokes, Seb P-H & Murphy as bench players (if the latter ever appears) & concentrate on quality in terms of the outfield players over quantity.

Did the ref award Rangers a penalty for this? Most games they do.

Great photo. Joseph is a top bloke. I named my first cat (red tabby!) Riley, he was often up on the fence, really disappointed that he didn’t ever do the goal celebration though..

Unlike one of the contributors on SotC last week I actually don’t think our recruitment is the issue. Last summer we brought in 5 players, Knight, Dickie, McCrorie, Roberts & TGH. Ross had some bad luck with his injury & recently some on here have been on his case because results have been poor, but I’m prepared to give him time. I’m nowhere near as big a fan of TGH as some but picking up a 22 year old central midfielder who had played 50 times for West Brom won’t get anywhere near to making a list of our worst signings. The other 3 (Roberts of late admittedly but worth pointing out he’s still only 21) look great signings. The issue was we didn’t bring in enough numbers last summer, January was a bit odd but Twine is for me obviously a big part of what Manning wants to do & Mebude a “try before you buy” who simply isn’t good enough. If we bring in 4 more of the standard of Knight, Dickie & Roberts we’ll have done well.

So what you doing then? Paying up the last year of his contract? Then presumably signing a replacement for him, Conway (definitely off) & Cornick (probably so). This isn’t Football Manager, any attempt to move him on will cost more than honouring the last year of his deal.

As if we couldn’t forget the Cardiff result.. Anyway, Happy Easter to all.

Think the second paragraph is exactly how the club views the situation. I fully expect a far more experienced keeper to arrive this summer & Bajic to get fed up of waiting for his chance & return home. Don’t for a minute think it will be a big name, probably a keeper that’s out of contract in League One or a Championship squad one.

This. Spot on, mate. Stroud is comfortably better than at least half a dozen refs we often get. This obsession with him is years out of date, Eltringham, Linington, Gavin Ward, Davies, Langford, Doughty- all shit & far, far worse than Stroud.

I’m not saying that’s great but seeing as he usually gets the last 15 minutes now he’s not exactly getting much chance to improve on that. Obvious as he goes into the last year of his contract that his best days are behind him, but he has a decent availability record & with rumours Conway (almost certainly) & Cornick (possibly) could be off this summer he’s a useful experienced back up player.

Interesting definition of “a bit different” someone puts a word on a T shirt. Literally no one is going to buy this stuff.

That’s probably because of the role but for me (& it’s a forum, so it’s an opinion) he’s far better than either of these or indeed Paul Hartley, who was only here for one season & looked like time was catching up with him towards the end of it. The point made about Max Bird above is a good one, he’s certainly been brought in to replace one of James or Williams, we’ll find out who in May.