mowgli, I admire your positivity but I think your last line is going to be closer to the truth. Your point about the players being distracted and can now show us what they are made of will only be relevant if Ralph picks them. I'm afraid the team selected will indeed show us what they are made of. I can't think this is going to end up as anything but a mauling played out before us. The recent optimism has evaporated with the last three league games and in a match that would be a challenge to our strongest team you just know that Ralph is going to give our back ups a run out. @Le Tissier's Laces is doing his best but @tomw24 assured me that Ralph will play his strongest side, so we know how this one is going to go. I've only myself to blame buying tickets in a moment of weakness and listening to Tom. By about 5pm tomorrow it will be season over if not earlier.
Whoops, at this late stage of the season this prediction is 100% true. They're messing with my head now, I don't even know what day it is. And it means we are still in the cup longer than I first thought.
It’s a real shame this game wasn’t played at the time of the draw when I would have genuinely fancied our chances. At least there won’t be too many high hopes and expectations now dashed should we inevitably lose. Similarly having seen our ‘best’ team fall short in recent weeks I won’t be giving too much criticism if we make a handful of changes for this one (emphasis on handful - not nine like we did last time!).
Dias won’t be available for the game, apparently. Back in light training only, and not training with the squad.
Oh dear they will only have Stones and Laporte instead, who would probably be the starting centre backs for any other team in the league anyway
Dias is easily the best of the trio though. And I'm not sure about Stones TBH. Dias normally partners one of those two - they don't play together very often. I think they can be got at.
Maybe, doubt we will be getting at them much at all this weekend though. Need to make the most of set pieces to have any real chance I think. Need to have a bit of luck when playing teams like City as well.
Oh yeah we'll need a bit of luck but we had chances in both games we played against them this season. And we'll need Salisu to play like he did against City last time and NOT like last week. The way I see it is we've got a better chance of beating them at St Mary's than at Wembley and you've got to beat the best teams when you get to this stage of a cup so bring it on!
Two things that may help our cause: We are apparently sold out, in that the son of a friend of mine was told there were no tickets left (perhaps they looked in the wrong drawer), and Lawro has predicted us to lose. The trouble is, his last three predictions have all been correct... Still, after Sunday we can get back to concentrating on the league. Or the beach
When the draw was first made I thought we had an asbestos-coated snowball in hell's chance. Asbestos now gone.
Ah, the Tom certainty...wait for us to get expelled from the competition tomorrow at 4:59pm due to some weird FA rule we broke.
Lawros chum thinks we’re going to sit back and play defensively. In a cup game. At home. Clearly really clued up with how we play.
