8 games to go and I still have no clue if Martin is good or not. I said it during our unbeaten run, are we winning in spite of him due to the talent we have, or because of him with his tactics. The Charles situation is infuriating as it is clear what he is, a DM who breaks up play and puts himself about, but isn’t too good on the ball. Martin obviously prioritises ball players for his preferred style but you need some “ugly” players to break things up when the tide changes in games. Bringing Charles on in a few of the games for the last 20 mins could’ve made a huge impact on games we’ve drawn from winning positions. To me he just puts out 11 players who he thinks are all comfortable on the ball and can knock it around nicely and we will score a hatful, without thinking about what the oppo could do to stop us/counter act us. Just seems incredibly naive to me and if we didn’t have such a talented squad I don’t see how he could get them playing better than the sum of their parts
He's the stand-out name, but I'd also throw in Patterson at Sunderland. O'Leary at Bristol City and Nicholls at Huddersfield seem decent too.
Is that the only insult you know? Not only is that an offensive word to a lot of people, but it’s also unimaginative. You should be ashamed really
Yeah. He's a Wanyama more than a Schneiderlin. But sometimes a Wanyama is what you need. Especially when your only DM is blowing out of his arse after 65 minutes.
What??? It may be disappointing for all concerned but devastating for the club?? If SFC stay in the Championship.it might actually help as everyone concerned now knows the strengths and weaknesses to work on and with parachute payments and 30,000 attendees every home to boost the income, these should be resolved in the Summer. Would I be right in thinking that SFC's income streams are 10x that of the League 1 promoted sides and probably 10x that of most other Championship sides?
Against posters that have aimed personal targeted responses to our players.if you you don't like the heat, don't throw the stones. I just love this society that sounds offended when criticised, including the mods.i know I have gone beyond the line, so be it, but so many infuriate me with you aggressive nature to our players.... so long.. ..
I sense some anger on here tonight. My take on the game is that we were the best team for the majority of the game and if we had forwards who could take the chances when they fall we would have won convincingly. Sadly our Achilles heel was our undoing, for the umpteenth time. The second Ipswich goal was the crucial one and for me the guilty party, if we are doling out blame, was Adarma. He actually tracked the scorer but then ran past him, after he had stopped his run, giving him the time and space to swivel and hit the ball. If Adarma had checked his own run, and stayed with their player, he would have been close enough to get a block in. A problem we also have is that we give far too much space to wide players (see the first goal aforementioned an example) even when KWP is in the team. I mentioned it during the Boro game about how we were being overloaded down our right, but we don’t learn. Surely someone should be showing a video to our wide players and telling them to get back and help the FB. Never a red card in my opinion, but I think the ref was occasionally prone to crowd pressure and I think this was one of those occasions. I’m probably the odd one out but I would be happy to face Ipswich in the playoff final.
We played a lot of weak opposition during that unbeaten run. And there were still too many draws within it. I think I've generally been on the side of our success being down to the players rather the manager. Without any doubt he has a philosophy and a style of play - that is inarguable - but he has deficiencies. I stand by what I said many months ago: regardless of what division we are in next season, I'm not convinced he'll be our manager come January 2025.
If we don’t go up it’s a big decision to make. Obviously the powers that be at the club will know far more than we do at the start of the summer just who will be leaving/who has to leave from a financial perspective. If we are having to do a big rebuild on a fairly tight budget then it wouldn’t surprise me if they sacked him. If he couldn’t get this squad up then I don’t know if they would trust him to with a “weaker” squad next year (budget wise anyway)
Litmus test: if we swapped managers today, would we have won that game? I think the answer is yes. His changes made the difference and Martin didn’t have the answers.
The biggest problem we have is that when teams up the intensity we haven’t got the players to deal with it. We are weak in these situations and need to sort this next season or it will be a long slog in this division. There were several situations in the second half when there players were out working ours all over the pitch, this gets there crowd louder and turns the game around. One of my biggest complaints is that our team very rarely does this to get the support at St Mary’s going. You notice it a lot more at places like Leeds and Ipswich was loud today as their team was busting a gut to win and drive the team on. I think a lot of this is down to the style of football we play. It can be very tedious to watch sometimes and we never have a higher gear to go into when things get tough.
