Pratlinho

His biggest problem is that he simply cannot organise a defence. You can play a pleasing, passing, possession based style with most professional footballers if they're well coached. They wouldn't be professionals if they didn't possess a level of skill that puts them in the top 1% of anyone who has kicked a ball. But when you concentrate so much on the passing aspect of the game and neglect the fundamentals like being solid defensively then you leave yourself wide open to conceding too many goals to get anywhere. When he was at Swansea we gave plenty of two goal leads away through defensive errors. We even gave away a three goal lead once. At Southampton he had what was basically a Premier League squad and still conceded 63 goals in 46 games. It then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy as players become drained of confidence and nervous wrecks (especially when you love blaming them for your failures as much as Martin does), so they make even more mistakes, concede more goals, and on, and on.

If he's fit he's likely to feature in most games for you whilst Martin is in charge. We had to watch him start game after game whilst Morgan Whittaker got five minutes at the end.

That was me I believe. Still wouldn't be surprised if he got between 10-15 goals for you over the course of the season, but he's never going to be influential in your play. Even less so with Russy in charge and his insistence on defenders racking up 10-15 passes before the ball sneaks forward.

First thing he did with us was sign Andy Fisher from MK to play in goal and then proceeded to absolutely destroy his confidence with the idiotic backwards passing. Constantly putting him under pressure for no reason. He's recovered a bit of his reputation since with some decent performances as backup to our current #1, but there are still those who moan whenever he plays. There should be some sort of online support group for fans of teams that Russell Martin has managed.

Quite often with us when he was feeling the heat we'd switch to a less mental way of playing. Results would obviously improve for a bit, but as soon as he felt comfortable again out would come the "process". Not sure if it was the same at Southampton, but it looks like he stuck to one way of playing at Rangers. So it's probably about 50/50. You really do need to get rid as soon as you can. You can stop playing Cullen then too.

That's basically all you can hope for unfortunately.

They're wrong. He had a stint playing for Wales at #10 and scored a couple of goals. Then had a stint for us at 10# and scored something like eight goals in six weeks. That was nearly two years ago, and people have been confidently declaring that he's actually a midfielder ever since despite him coming nowhere near replicating that performance when he's played in midfield. He is first and foremost a striker, and that's where he's spent the vast majority of his career.

Evening Foxes. A Swansea perspective. Firstly, Russy absolutely adores Cullen. Worships the ground he walks on. We had Morgan Whittaker at the club at the same time at one point and Martin unfailingly selected LC. One way or another, you're probably going to see a lot of him whilst Martin is in charge. The bad? (And bear in mind that this is based on watching him in The Championship) He's got no pace. Can't beat a man. His physical presence is basically zero. He can go whole periods, whole games, whole months whilst being almost totally anonymous on the pitch. I'd compare it to playing with ten men, but at least with ten men you know you're a man down and can prepare for it. Harder when you're supposed to have eleven. But, and it's a big but... I can't deny that the lad has a knack for scoring important goals. Even during the anonymous periods that I mentioned above you could never rule out him appearing out of nowhere on the end of a move, to smack home a rebound, or boot one in from further out that put us in front or nicked a draw. It's one of the main reasons why a lot of our supporters never lost faith in him despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, and why I can honestly say that I wouldn't be surprised if he gets you 15+ goals this season in L1. I wouldn't expect it to happen, but it might.

Some people may fall for his nonsense. Even now we've still got a few who pine for him and insist that he would have eventually succeeded if the club had backed him. This was after we went on a run of three wins in 26 games, only one of which was against eleven men.

Swans fan in peace. You have my sympathies. I wouldn't wish Russell Martin on Cardiff. Tactically insane, arrogant, thin skinned and utterly incapable of self reflection or accepting responsibility for anything. Easily the worst manager we've had in my lifetime, and we once appointed someone from Cradley Town youth team. Expect him to fall out with several players, your defence to concede ludicrously poor goals as a result of avoidable errors, and to wonder why so many other players are playing out of position. He'll make you question your own sanity sometimes with just how ridiculous he is.

He did that at Swansea too. After a bad run of form he'd quite often switch tactics and we'd go on a decent run. Then when he felt that the pressure was off out would come Plan A again. He's not incapable of learning. He clearly understands how to change things around to get results. He's just too wedded to the way that he wants to play to do it permanently. In four or five years time he'll be trying to copy Guardiola in League Two, and there will still no doubt be people claiming that he's a good manager and just needs to change a few things to achieve greatness.

You won't find many who will speak ill of Brendan in these parts. Martin has his defenders here too, but they're all a bit weird and most of them have gone very quiet over the last twelve months.

Swans fan in peace. For our sakes I hope this is true. We've got our own ambitions to return to the Premier League and having one of our likely rivals for that managed by Russell Martin can only help our cause. For your sakes I hope it doesn't happen. He's easily the Swans manager I've loathed the most in his time at the club. An arrogant, stubborn, tactically idiotic buffoon with a complete inability to get the best out of the players at his disposal and total willingness to blame them when things go wrong. He may play some youth players but he will chuck them under the bus at the first opportunity if he can shift responsibility for failure from himself in the process. He's far from the nice guy his cheerleaders in the media enable him to portray himself as too.