Match Day Thread Saints v Stoke Sponsored by Richard Osman, Alexander Armstrong and Joe Rothwell

I don’t know. Genuinely lost interest in watching us play at the moment- but then we are all an exciting performance away from getting it back I guess.

 

The Preston game and the first 60 minutes of the Cardiff game we played some great football, Leicester was a shock but they were more motivated than us.

 

Well I'm really looking forward to today tbh.

Nice to have a no pressure game to enjoy before the play offs and it being our last home game is a chance to give the lads a good send off before the pressure ramps back up.

Can see us Stoke causing us some problems too as they still need points so should be an interesting game. Might be wrong but not expecting a dull end of season game.

 

It is all absolutely lacklustre for me. We play pretty football with minimal rewards and then capitulate to any pressure. So tedious to see that on repeat.

 

Minimal rewards?..Martin has a win ratio of 55% and the team has scored 94 goals this season. Any other season it would've been enough for the autos.

 

That is one of those lines people keep throwing out. I would argue this is a particularly weak set of Championship teams. The standard has been very poor. The issue is that dominating games for 70 minutes and losing is not great. We have done that a lot. And right now we are set to hit our minimum target - a playoff place. That is not success.

Our opponents all decided to have a late season wobble - but we wobbled with them and so this season is on the verge of being a failure.

 

That's it, it's all about personal expectation, mine was the play-offs in August because of a lot of changes at the club, plus we were the weakest of the relegated clubs by a lot. The season is not over yet and promotion would be a very good achievement. You'd absolutely hate to be a Rotherham fan I guess?

 

Second to last home game of the season. Don’t really know what to expect from this one. Could be a drab 0-0, both teams nothing really to play for. Could be a 4-0 home win and the players want to show they should be in the team for the play offs. Could be the saints classic, dominate but only score 1 and then concede twice in the second half. It’ll be interesting to see who makes the team…

 

See, I very much expected play offs so in that respect I'm not disappointed at all. We've had a very good season based on my expectafions in the summer, particularly based on how we started with a mismatched squad devoid of confidence.

But then you see all the missed opportunities we've had to make the autos and damn, it's frustrating. It could've been so much more.

 

Not necessarily. You started off by saying it is about expectation and then swung to say it is about achievement. Your first statement was correct. I expected us to fight for promotion and to get better as the season went on. We have got worse. Not only that but we have shown a real lack of heart.

 

We are still fighting for promotion.

 

All the top four have had poor results, it was our September that has ultimately cost us I believe because we have never quite touched those top 2 positions apart from maybe one match.

 

To me it looks like there is not a hell of a lot of fight involved. We are a good team full of bottlers. Let’s see what happens.

 

Yep, let's see. I hope the fans are up for the fight because the team is going to need them.

 

The difference is it matters to the fans.

 

I don't think it's even that, thats was early enough to recover from in my opinion; whilst that of course didn't help, we did get ourselves within touching distance.

If we held on against Middlesborough (+2), Ipswich (+3) and Cardiff (+3), we'd be top 2 now. Admittedly thats with Ipswich having a game in hand but still leaves us within the thick of it. That's the missed opportunities that's frustrated me.

 

Are you honestly suggesting that professional players don't want a promotion on their resume?

 

Whoever misses out will point to certain games where they dropped points, we remember ours better of course.

 

I am honestly suggesting that if I was as good as Brooks I would be throwing myself at everything and taking a yellow for the team to stop a goal. I would be doing anything to win because that is my team. I think some of these guys would quite like the glory of promotion but when push comes to shove they don’t want it enough.

 

They're fallible human, not robots of course they want to win although I think mentally they were off it against Leicester. Hoping to see a reaction today.