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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.

No, Ward was Rodgers. Puel never made a bad signing

Lack of fitness. Lack of strength in depth. They obviously had a rocket at half time and we started slowly. The early goal gave them belief. Ref was decent for a change.

Overall violent crime is down but when violent crime occurs, people (young people in particular, both genders) seem to be willing to very quickly escalate it to an extreme level of violence. There's generally a lower value on other people's lives now and easy access to images and audio that normalise extreme violence. The days of a punch up and shaking hands afterwards seem to be firmly a thing of the past.

Weird article. Seems like lazy/lax journalism. The article looks like it was written in the immediate aftermath of the incident with an appeal for witnesses, but they have since been found guilty and the reporting restrictions lifted yesterday after sentencing. No mention of the actual court result in the article. But yeah, absolutely vile.

This argument where he should play the kids is a nonsense. We have had a good few years where decent talent from the academy has been slim pickings. Now we have half a dozen genuinely promising prospects, they should all go straight into the team and show the seasoned pros how it's done? Come off it Ben Nelson.. I have seen him play two games. Good in one, poor in the other. Has been injured for a bit. Would I like to see more of him? Yes. Does not picking him in every game mean that Marti doesn't know what he's doing? No Louis Page... Has looked out of his depth whenever I've seen him. Decent prospect? For sure. Ready to rip up the Championship? Absolutely not. Jake Evans... Hasn't featured. From what I saw if him in pre-season, he didn't look like someone who was going to get double figures in the Championship. Do I want him to do well? Definitely (he was in the year above my lad at school) Does he need more development time? Yes, I think so. Jeremy Monga... Exceptionally talented. Could he go to the very top of the game? Maybe, but he's nowhere near yet. A lot of pressure for a 16 year old and there are many aspects of his game that need fine tuning. Olabade Aluko... People crying out for him to get a game. "Marti, give Aluko a game because Thomas is rubbish", "Marti should give Aluko a chance". Gets a game. Gets sent off after 30 minutes, what happens? "Marti shouldn't have played him in that game". Silko Thomas... Another one that holds a lot of promise, but needs careful development. The list goes on. What do you do? Play them all? At the same time? What happens when they get battered 5 or 6 nil? Still Marti's fault. Any manager that comes in at this point in our history is on an absolute hiding to nothing. Spring follows Winter. Right now it's Winter. Things will get better but changing the manager will not all of a sudden bring us sustainable long term success. It's not possible in the current situation.

If Farke became available, that could be a sensible decision, but if that's not an option, there's no point making a change.

Interesting pre-Marti thread, because there's some posts in here that were correct about our season before we had a manager. There's interesting references to us going to be fine because we have Bilal, Mads, Wilf. Justin will be fine at this level and McAteer was decent in the Championship (all of them now gone). Yet some people blame our current predicament on the fact that Faes is preferred over Nelson. I'm not saying Marti is perfect by any stretch but look at the tools he has at his disposal. This club limped over the line in 2024 with Maresca. It was a poor finish to the season where we benefitted massively from a statistically anomalous first half of the season. We were shocking in the Prem under Cooper, some would say even worse under Ruud. Now we have much weaker team on paper, yet for some, it's Marti's fault we're not winning every game. So many fans were calling for a reset last season. Now it appears loads of those same fans thought it could be sorted in a single transfer window and less than half a season. It's a multi-window, multi-season task. Yes, of course we all want to be winning every week but we pretty much all wanted a manager to preside over a rebuild. We're still very much in the demolition phase and Marti needs at least one transfer window to start laying some proper foundations.

The Mist. I really enjoyed it, but it seems everyone else hated it. Set up nicely for a second season as well.

What is this ref actually doing???

Lee Hendrie can get in the bin as well.

No width now. 432. Compact middle. Lump it forward

Ayew ans Soumare on. Let's go!

Big half time team talk. Earn your money Marti.

I'm starting to struggle to see a way back tonight.

He'll be up against it at Newport, for sure. They're rock bottom of League Two! Absolutely love the bloke though, he was a great player, brilliant professional and had a genuine connection with the fans. Hope he does well and regardless of results, I'd welcome him back here in a flash in pretty much any capacity right now.