Mick

We're in no position to take the piss.

Agreed, sadly.

We've got some cracking posts in this and other threads.

I would agree today that a draw would have been a good result but I wouldn't have before the game, I don't know if that makes me fickle, I see it more as looking at the two situations at different times. It's a bit like me not wanting to win £10 on the lottery last night but being happy with it today as I had none of the numbers. I also agree that we're making progress, or at least it looks as if we are off the pitch, I don't see any progress away from home and can't see any in the near future if we go out with the same formation as we have so far away from home, I really hope I'm wrong about away form.

My guess is that Mort will decide who the manager is and he will look at everything at the club before making a decision.

The non-football men are watching the same as us, I don't think they are non-football men anyway, I just think they weren't tied down to a specific club or if they were they are keeping it quiet. Having said that, I think Allardyce will be judged mainly on results and our away results look as if they'll play a big part in that. I also think attendances will play a part in any decision, both home and away. Mort wants away support, he'll not like it if we're taking fewer fans to away games and I can see people stopping going if we're throwing up the white flag before kick-off.

It would be shite on here if we all held the same views, I think the mix of people on here is what makes for good debate, long may it continue.

I don't see anything wrong with sniffer coming on to moan, if that's what he does. I moan when we lose and doubt I'll ever change because I don't take defeat lightly. I have more of a problem with people who accept defeat than I do with those who don't.

He didn't directly say he was playing for a draw but he did say that a point would have been a good result. A draw is better than a defeat but Reading had lost twice as many as they'd won before yeaterday. Reading have the worst defensive record in the Premiership yet we were worried about them scoring, something they'd only managed to do 12 times before yesterday while they'd let in 22 goals before yesterday. Only three teams have scored more than us, one is Portsmouth who scored 7 in one game, they did that against the team we played yesterday. I agree that we lost against Derby and Reading because of poor passing and an inability to retain posession, I doubt that would have been the case if we'd gone out to get at them.

Shit, another stroppy teenager.

I agree that calling for his head this early is stupid and he has done a lot of good. That's no reason for him to go into games that we should be winning and instead trying to get a draw. It's not a one-off either, we did the same against Derby and it failed then the same as it did yesterday. Sending the players out to get a draw and then getting beat is not going to help the players gel, if anything they'll go away from home expecting to get beat. We should play to our strengths, our strengths are not trying to hold out for 0-0 at the bottom teams who are themselves low on confidence, we should be ripping into them. Derby were shitting themselves for the first half hour, the home fans could have been in a library for all the noise they made but as the game went on you could hear the noise level increase as the players began to realise that we had nothing to offer up front, Reading saw the team that we put out and must have got a lift from the start. No team is going to see our away teamsheet and worry about us, they'll look at it and think they've got a good chance of beating us if they get a goal and will go all out to do that, they'll get a lift before we've even kicked a ball.

If we don't have the players to go 4-3-3 then why do it? It would seem that only one person thinks that it's a formation that's going to work, most see it as three points lost before a ball is kicked. 6 players out of the 11 who started were brought to the club by Allardyce so it was basically his team that he put out yesterday. I think that's enough for him to have made his mark.

I think it would depend on who they could get in, I doubt they'd bin him then start looking for somebody. If the special one was still out of work then I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to get him, at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if they gave Allardyce more time.

Spot on James.

What has 'the whole club being rebuilt' got to do with Allardyce playing without wingers who were on the bench and Newcastle getting beat at Reading?

He didn't get Sevilla promoted, they were 6th the season before he took them to 5th.

You've forgot Jose Mourinho, add him to the list.

I think most of us thought we'd do OK until we noticed the white shorts on MOTD, I saw them and just knew we'd lose 2-1.

I'd go along with that.

We lost today after starting with no wingers, we started against Derby with one winger. I don't see the formation as being the problem, I see the players selected in the midfield 4 as the problem. At Derby we stuck with a shocking display from Shola for 90 minutes yet replaced like for like when bringing on Martins for Owen, we took off Geremi and brought on Faye and we took Taylor off for Beye, I don't see any of them changes as being game changing. As for Bolton away, look at the league table.

I admired Keegan for his outburst about Fergie, the players should have watched it and ran through walls for him but they didn't, that was down to them not him.

The problem today wasn't 4-4-2, it was the players selected to play in the formation that was the problem. 4-4-2 would have worked if we'd played with 2 wingers and attacked down the flanks from time to time, we would have stretched the game a bit and gave Reading something to think about.

I don't see guiding us to a defeat against teams like Reading as doing a good job, the last two managers were capable of doing that.

I've never really looked at how they did other than when we've played them, I seem to remember somebody saying that they had a record for goals conceded which wasn't as good as ours last season although I may be wrong.

You can't really make a comparison as all teams have changed since then.