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January is usually a tough market with over inflated prices as clubs don't usually want to lose their better players half way through the season. I do get the impression though, that other Championship clubs could make signings if they really needed to. I am firmly of the opinion that we are absolutely brassic and even though the need to buy players is high, there's just no money to do it. Even to the point that if two or three did get sold, I suspect that money might get used elsewhere before it's reinvested in players.

The thing is, people will start ignoring the warnings, that's when it gets dangerous. It wouldn't be so bad if they were right 50% of the time. Nobody expects them to get it right all the time.

I'm finding these weather warnings, approximately 100% of the time, are over-egged and it turns out to be never as bad as predicted.

I clearly have too much time in the morning

Yeah the first bong is the hour but there's some dings and dongs before that first bong. It's a bit of a count down I suppose... Ding ding dong, dong dong ding, ding dong, ding dong [dramatic pause] BONG. It's the BONG that should signal fireworks, not the dings or dongs.

I agree that Top & Co have been very poor in setting high standards and demanding excellence from everyone connected to the club. He's been too soft for too long and I don't think it's in his nature to be the tough guy we need. That said, Marti is on the training pitch, with the players every day. Responsibility for these stats lies with him and him alone, unless Top has explicitly said he wants the team to play walking football. I've been one of Marti's supporters due largely to the poor hand he's been dealt and the shambolic way the club is run, but this stat is on him and makes me more sympathetic towards the Marti Out brigade. Out of interest, does anyone know what QPR's stats in these areas were when Marti was there?

Sadly, I suspect they were already aware. Those metrics - distance covered and number of sprints are an easy stat to improve. Aim to be number one in both, and results (and league position) will improve drastically. When I used to coach grass roots youth football I always told my players that the result of the football match will largely be decided by what you do when you don't have the ball - how far and how fast you run to put the opposition under pressure, make them make mistakes and win the ball back. It's absolute basics and at a mis-firing professional club, this needs addressing immediately.

Lack of fitness has been a big issue for a long time. Not just under Marti either. It's shocking. Watch a Premier League game, the fitness levels are off the scale compared to us right now. If by some miracle we do go up, we'll get absolutely smashed every week.

We do everything at 80% or less. Running Passing Shooting Concentrating Helping teammates We're lazy. It's been that way for a long, long time. It's a mentality that underwrites the whole club through multiple managers and too many players. And the people at the very top of the club who should set and expect high standards are permanently MIA.

3,629

Hide Marti?

Where is the evidence of "the short sums we do have"? What is our transfer budget this window? Everything I see going on from the outside points very much there being no funds whatsoever. I expect us to pay nothing at all this window, so strikers capable of digging us out of our current predicament will be slim pickings. I don't think Antonio would be scoring every game by a long shot, but if the choice is Antonio or nobody, then I go with Antonio. And he always seemed to score when Leicester were on the pitch, so it might not be a bad idea!

Antonio is nowhere near as bad as some of the signings we've made in the recent past that actually cost a lot of money in fees and wages. If he's willing and even partially able, then he's absolutely worth a shot.

It's a valid question for sure. There are many missing pieces to this particular puzzle which makes it a great environment for breeding of conspiracy theories. Entering another state and arresting their leader is a ballsy move. I'm sure it wouldn't have been done on a whim, but do the US have a lower threshold to justify the action than other countries? Maybe. It's entirely possible that any "investigation" might have been driven by ulterior motives. We don't know right now and we may never know!

To be fair (I'm no Starmer fan), there's not much else he can do. I dare say there's an awful lot of evidence and intelligence that the US were in possession of that they feel justified to do what they did. Starmer almost certainly won't know the full picture so he, like the rest of the world, need to exercise some patience for the full facts to come out... Which might be a long time in a world where Joe Public believes they should receive full facts in a real time commentary. Starmer is a lawyer, he's adopting a stance of allowing the relevant justice process to play out by sitting on the fence.

Rubbish team in losing game of football shock. 9 academy players in the squad but most of them there before they're ready, papering over the fact that we're skint and don't have any money to bring in any talent. It's going to be a while until we are back in the prem.

Oh wait...

I think we'll lose now.

Must keep.

I really don't get the hate for him. He's largely fine defensively. Doesn't get forward as much as some other full backs and that seems to trigger some on here. I thought he was one of our better players against Derby last night. There are at least 6 positions in the team that I would want to upgrade before I get to Luke.

Without attempting to put any negativity in this thread... The squad is nowhere near good enough. We have some good players, but when you look at the spine of the team, we are severely lacking. Jakub - not good enough Vesty/Nelson - might be good enough, but missing one of those means the centre of defence is bang average. Jordan James - Fine (but not our player), supported by Skipp/Soumare/Winks = centre midfield isn't good enough. I don't even have to mention striking options. Outside of that we have a couple of decent options in more luxury positions and a bunch of youngsters that might be quite good some day. We need new players before a new manager.

I've been saying this for a while. Summers get all the headlines for heat because the extreme heat is noticed by everyone, but for me, Winters are now a lot milder than they used to be. We seem to get a fair few days now where the temperature is 8 or 9 degrees above average which is really concerning. But it's still cool enough to wear a coat, so nobody takes notice.

Hope he's ok. Was expecting great things from him during the second half of the season.

This is the Championship. Consistency is key. It's very closely matched. Ipswich are 3rd in the table and only 6 points ahead of us in 13th. Most games are won in this division because the opposition has an off day. There really aren't that many teams that have consistently performed well all season, there are only half a dozen teams so far this season to go on a winning streak of 4 or more games; Coventry and Middlesbrough are two. The others are Millwall (4 points ahead of us), Derby and Southampton (both level on points with us) and Sheff Utd (5 points behind us). We've managed back to back wins twice this season which is very disappointing, but Ipswich have only managed it 3 times (and not gone on a 3 game streak yet). If we were 7 or 8 out of 10 every week, we would be absolutely fine. Our problem is that there's such variance in our performances, you never know what you're going to get. On any given day we can give a 9/10 performance, or equally we are just as capable of a 4/10 with the same players. Nobody can put their finger on it, and haven't been able to for a long, long time.

Well it made sense at the time.