Hammo

Where are the Schmeichels, Fuchses, Huths and Morgans in this team? Warriors who gave their all for every point. Conspicuous by their absence, I would say … but there is still time for some to come to the fore and demonstrate their strength of character, Fatawu and Vestergaard being the most likely candidates, Mavididi, Justin and Daka the least. If they can’t rise to this challenge, and we fail to get promotion, they will all go down as ‘bottlers’. There is no getting away from that.

The two main reasons people are worried, I would suggest, are 1) three successive defeats and 2) a lack of clear evidence that this team (including the manager) are mentally up for the fight.

The positivity is admirable - even if it does smack of the kind of Maddisonesque ‘everything will be fine’, ignore-the-evidence complacency that got us relegated last season. Anyway, I sincerely hope you are right and my fears of a similar meltdown prove unfounded.

May I ask what it is that persuades you to feel that way? After three successive defeats, each more painful than the one before? Blind faith?

The cop-out cliche of our times. Hate it.

‘He only knows one way ‘ is fast becoming a valid criticism. Is he a man for a crisis? Or another shirker like Rodgers? Time will tell. But there is not much of it left this season now. He has to find a way to adapt - and quickly - because teams that play all out defence and just wait for our predictable passing game to yield a mistake are lapping it up and starting to make his team look like clueless, complacent fools Rodgers got sussed out and couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt.. The fear is that Maresca is going the same way. Yeah, I’m angry. This was a bad bad defeat.

Let’s agree to differ shall we? I have no agenda and just want what’s best for the team.

I suggest you check out the pass on YouTube, but if your agenda prevents you from giving credit where credit’s due then fine…

In Kel’s further defence I should add that he has appeared in just one Championship game since 2 December - when, lest it be forgotten, at the end of only his second 90-minute appearance in the league all season, his superb pass to KDH started the counterattack that ended with Winks’s last-gasp winner at West Brom. Unfortunately the one game since then was that awful sub appearance at Ipswich on Boxing Day, which has clouded so many people’s judgment. We need to cut him some slack.

One good game in 20? Yeah, right. People have short memories. Iheanacho scored in four successive league games in October, making it five in six - all victories. Yep, this season. True, he’s had some horrible games since then, warranting the harsh criticism, but to write him off when he has come to our rescue so many times before is just silly. After all, ‘he’s magic - you kno-ow’…

Why 'End of'? Iheanacho has a role to play this season - as he proved as recently as Tuesday night - and maybe that starts on Saturday. It might be trendy on here to dismiss him because of what appears to have been a lackadaisical approach pre-AFCON, but he is still our most gifted forward, and a proven one at that, and I'm pretty sure that if Enzo detects a change for the better in his attitude, he'll be calling on him. He'd be daft not to. A fit and firing Iheanacho is still a major asset to this club in our drive for promotion. To write him off at this point would be a terrible mistake.

Maresca pretty much kept his first XI active during the festive period when we had four games in ten days, so why would he act any differently now with three games in eight, especially now we are at the business end of the season? Barring injuries or suspensions, he should go full strength in all three. Likewise the Cup quarter-final as there is a full week free before it and a two-week break afterwards.

As long as they don’t have the semi final draw BEFORE the game! Bloody ridiculous draw time today. Just wait till all the games have finished for heaven’s sake.

Too true. It will take a long time for the law of averages to balance things out.

Since winning FA Cup in 2021 we have now been drawn away six times out of nine; in the League Cup it’s eight times out of ten since then, including all of the last five!

Away draws ‘r’ us

He was out of his depth and Enzo rightly pulled him off. He can learn from it, go back to training and improve. No big drama.

We have now reached a quarter final in one competition or another for the eighth successive season - 11 qfs in all during that time starting with the Champions League in 2016/17. That is some feat… and worth shouting about. Shame we have only won three of them (for the record: Everton - on pens - in 2019/20 EFL Cup, Man Utd in 2020/21 FA Cup, PSV in 2021/22 Europa Conference League) - though those have all come in the last six, so we’re getting better…

If he’d scored that chance, definitely

Yet again

Vestergaard was immense. A colossus.

If we keep gifting them possession in our own half we will lose. As there is next to no creativity in this side, why play out riskily from the back? Our best chances have come from long passes that are actually making their defenders work.

All this looking at what other teams are doing after our own defeat reminds me so much of last season’s horror story. Very disconcerting.

I said a while back that the second half of the season would show whether Maresca was a Ranieri (ruthless) or a Rodgers (bottler) in terms of having the ability to see the job through to the end. Blind faith gets you nowhere. If this guy fails to get us promoted with this group of players, we know which category he will fall into. Judgment is suspended. The heat is on…

Maybe conceding those two late equalisers to Ipswich can be considered a factor