afar

It's weird to think that 10 more points from 11 games (which should be more than possible) will get us to 38. But that might not be enough. This weekend could kill WBA, they really need to win their game because if they don't they are 7 points adrift, that's way too much at this stage.

Yep and £4m apparently. Based on one performance that is an absolute steal and we need to exercise it.

Another player who was outstanding today, really happy for him, hopefully this kicks off his career with us.

Love him already, you could see early on the difference he made, he was so vocal and decisive.

Fantastic today, that's the player that we need, keep it up lad.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43010230 FFS, really ? I don't remember Murphy's tackle but I fast forwarded through much of that game

I'm sure that's a huge factor in it.

Sheffield Wednesday are bigger than the mackems like, on every conceivable level. Not wanting to stick up for them, but 6 league titles for the mackems to 4 for Sheff Wed, that's one way you could argue their case. Six is actually pretty impressive, not many clubs in England have more titles.

It was career suicide in many respects, there was no chance of him being successful in that set up even if he was a good manager, which he's not. They were bottom of the league, no talent in the existing squad, their leading goal scorer was to return to his parent club and there was no money at all to spend to remedy anything. Why leave a role where he was comfortable for that ? If he really wanted out of Wales then all he had to do is sit tight a little longer and wait for a much better situation. He's now tarred like Grayson with the shit from this situation which frankly both of them have had little control over.

I'm not saying this with the benefit of hindsight, but I did not like that sale at all. I know he wouldn't have wanted to stay with us when we went down, but he was clearly a quality young player who needed time to adapt. We could and should have still loaned him out last season, but not put in the silly "they must buy" clause in. They got panicked into doing that, he went for way under his market value in the end.

Would it be financially in their best interests to drop again or are they better hanging on by the fingernails to Champo (AKA Pub League ) status ? It's not like the drop from PL to champo, they won't suddenly miss out on 100 Million. They still receive their parachute payment for next season regardless of the division they play in, I don't believe the amount they get will change. From a positive perspective (for them) they surely get rid of the bulk of their big earners, Kone, Khazri, Borini and a like will think they are far too good for L1, like they do for the champo, and the club will take literally anything to get them off the books. They will probably just be left with Cattermole and Rodwell plus the ex Manure and Everton has beens on big wages. That's got to help them rebuild, and looking at the L1 table that division is obviously truly awful, if Wigan can be coasting it and Rotherham who were worse last year than the Mackems have been this year are a playoff team. So they should spring back up the following year. Having said that, going down puts them another year at least away from a PL return. Their big external loan is due for repayment in 2019 apparently, with no real source of income to pay it off. Administration is a real possibility, it may actually be preferable, assuming like most clubs they come back to life. Even if they survive this year, there is little hope for a promotion push the following year unless, they uncover two or three gems. They have a lot of loanees and a lot of players out of contract in the summer, huge rebuild job on for whichever division they are playing in. Oh well, 6 in a row, FTM 9-1 and all that

With out a doubt that is plausible however I think he's also wise to the fact that his young team can be influenced by visible confrontation between the manager and owner and is aware that we are in a precarious position, so he's being dignified to keep an illusion of harmony the players need right now. I fully expect at the end of the season for fireworks to go off once our fate has been decided.

Away from home Manure don't seem to be set up for that, I think it'll be a tight game personally, Mourino's woeful record at SJP will be played out in full in the run up I'm sure, hopefully that gets into his and his team's heads and we can get a result. I think we are more than capable of getting a draw from this.

World Cup years also complicate things, you've got players wanting to avoid injury but also players wanting to make finals squads. In general the extra motivation for relegation threatened teams sees them pick up more points towards the end and a few surprises. This place is very down right now on our chances, but personally what I have seen from recent performance has given me much more hope. Thought we played really well during 80 mins of the Burnley game and the first half against Palace, it's just getting that 2nd goal that is killing us, hopefully the new signings will help kill off games. We are creating chances, which is a good thing and a thing most relegated sides struggle greatly with. Most relegated sides also struggle to score and although we've not scored nearly enough there at least 5 teams below us in the scoring charts. We've been a little too brittle at the back in recent games, we seem to get punished when we make a mistake and can't of course hang onto a lead to save our lives. We've got to find a different approach to games against the top six, because one point from the 4 games we've played is nowhere near enough, Spuds and Liverpool away have the potential to ruin our decent GD. Manure, Arsenal and Chelsea at home are games we can get something from if we set up correctly. But at the end of the day it's the Huddersfield, Brom and Southampton home games that'll decide our fate win all three of those and I'm positive we will stay up with the odd few points gained elsewhere.

Couldn't trust Clark any less than I do right now. Clark was certainly a little stupid for the penalty on Sunday, but he did make a double clearance off the line a little later on. When Lejuene is fit again, he should be pushing Clark for the starting spot however. Seems like forever since we kept a clean sheet. Lejuene though was terribad prior to his injury and although Clark's form is nowhere near what it was last year, he's not been wretched and better than what we saw from Lejuene prior to his injury.

Depends which Chelsea turn up on the day, the one that's turned up recently for our rivals has been nothing like the one that beat us comfortably earlier in the season.

From the current bottom half of the table we've: P: 14 W:6 D:5 L:3 Pts:23 That is excellent tbh. Its the 2 points we've only managed to take from the top half teams that's killing us. After being ahead in both the last two games it's disappointing that we've not won either however we've taken 2 pts from teams above us in the table, I think that is par for the two games, palace is a tough place to get a result and Burnley have been getting results all season. Not the end of the world, we are only one point off level points to games which is considered by many as the target to stay up. We do need to start winning more though. At least we are creating chances, we should have beaten Burnley comfortably and in the first half we looked pretty sharp today. Staying at a 6, if we get a win against Manure, I will drop to 5.

should have been 1-1 west ham missed a point blank free header on the six yard line. We need them to get back into this.

I don't think we have an option to buy, but if he continues in the way he started we should be looking to bring him back permanently if we stay up, not that we'll be able to afford him of course

Okay at the back, cack going forward. Absolutely typical performance. TBF to him he did put in one peach of a cross in the first half that led to a corner.

Looking at their table, there are 3 points between the bottom six, with a little gap to the rest. You would think it will be three from those: Burton, Mackems, Bolton, Brum, Hull and Barnsley. Surprisingly enough only Hull of those have scored more than the mackems, it seems like the problem they have is conceding, with Burton only letting in more than them. Camp wasn't getting a game at Cardiff, so not sure he's going to really fix all those problems, and this Fletcher kid is nowhere near the goal threat Grabban was for them, they are weaker up front for sure.

https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/trust-me.1415844/ Lets just sit on our hands and take it lads, because we don't want to look "deluded". What a bunch of fucking melon heads they are.

They've slowed down a little of late, still in good form but if we had held on yesterday we would have moved ahead of them in the table. We need to be targeting this one for a result. three points would be huge if we can get it.

Really needs to start right away, I think Rafa hinted that he would in his comments about the signing needing to adapt very quickly. Hard on Darlow but we've brought this lad in for a reason and if we are looking to "try before we buy" he needs an opportunity to do that.

sigh... really Dave ?: 39. Posted by Dave on 31 Jan 2018 23:46 The quote in the banner is daft. It's _not_ the fans' club, it's Mike Ashley's. If they want it to be theirs, they need to come up with the money to buy it. A bit less moaning and a bit more organising and they could have bought him out by now - the sums involved aren't that much, none of us individually have that kind of cash, but 100k fans together is a different story. http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/42799047