nnfox

I'm looking forward to the Head of Football Insight arriving, figuring out what on earth is hurting us and straightening all this stuff out. It's a mystery!

Win it!

I actually had to check the date that it's not April 1st. Head of Football Insight? As in someone who has insight into football? At a professional football club? Where everyone should have football insight? Have the board actually gathered around a table, someone said "Hey guys, why don't we get someone in who knows about football?", and everyone else is like "I guess we could give it a go, nothing to lose I suppose." You can't make this up.

I don't think it will. Enzo was untested and talented so it took a while for everyone to work it out. Russell Martin's tactics are obvious, unchanging and extremely well documented over several years. Frankly, if you're a professional coach and haven't worked him out already, you shouldn't be in the job.

We're underperforming because of the manager's tactics, BUT I do have some sympathy for RM. Putting to one side his possession obsession, he is correct in saying that it's individual errors that cost us. We have a squad of football players who get paid to do nothing other than play football, it's their full time job. Most of them will have been playing organised football since the age of 6 or 7 and for 10, 15, 20 years+ will have been coached by some of the best coaches around. They don't go from playing Sunday mornings, coached by little Johnny's dad, to playing pro football. It's reasonable to assume that all professional players can do the basics... They can pass the ball 10-15 yards accurately, their first touch should be excellent, they should be able to read the game well enough to know when and how to mark a player and when to run with that player, they can strike the ball towards goal with power and accuracy more often than not, and their fitness levels should be good. Time and time again, we see failings with these fundamental basics. Russell Martin does not help with his tactical inflexibility. He absolutely needs to play to the strengths of the team and not to some misguided ideology of how perfect football should be played. However, it isn't his job to put the players through a remedial class to make them actual footballers. Russell Martin needs to fine tune and motivate. His system brings out the worst in the some of the players because they just aren't good enough. For all his faults though, I'm certain that his tactics don't include misplacing simple passes, getting dispossessed before taking a second touch, letting attackers through unmarked and playing the ball out of play for no reason.

The reality is that this is how cyber warfare will playout... Turn the freezers off Put all traffic lights on red (or worse, green) Target hospital equipment Take down cellular networks Flick the power on and off Our world is unbelievably connected. It's unfathomable to most people exactly how much we rely on this digital connectivity. Switch it off and we wouldn't know what to do.

There's a double positive actually... 1. The next manager will definitely be better. 2. This weird Russell Martin fetish that's been circling around the club for a while should finally be put to bed and we'll never be linked with him again.

I voted that we would stay up, like I did last season and the season before that. Law of averages dictates that eventually I will be right.

Actually, how about all teams refuse to play Man City? They'd win every game 3-0 by default and the Premier League would have the embarrassment of awarding the title to a team who haven't kicked a ball all season. That would be could be extremely damaging for the EPL from a sporting integrity point of view... Everyone would be playing to finish second, not win. And Man City's players would all get fat because they won't be playing.

I'm saying that there's no way that Russell Martin makes it to November without 4 wins between now and then. Especially after Rudkin saying he wants to learn from his mistakes and that Top is still interesting in getting us back to the Premier League.

It's the speed at which it's all happened. From cruising on a private jet to falling out of it without a parachute. And seemingly not even realising!

His interview: He says that the tactics aren't to blame for the goals being conceded. Goals against are usually because of individual errors. We're fragile at the back because people don't do their jobs. We're not clinical up front, especially when teams defend as though their life depends on it. Sometimes we need to do the ugly stuff in big moments, to settle us after we concede... The team is young. I tell them to get it forward and do the ugly side of the game, I don't know why they don't do it. There will be changes for the next game There's no point in changing the manager. I take responsibility. FU.

"A lot of people left because they were hurt by the first half. So was I." He should have left with them!

I'd go further and say that promotion at the first attempt to get out of League One and the club is at serious risk. They'll write books about this in the future - we are football's version of Blockbuster.

Genius decision to give him a three year contract.