shen

True, but it's his first proper appearance. I'm nervous that he'll soon stop doing it. But James and Ramsey have definitely increased the quality of our play, so there is some hope.

I'm disappointed at the lack of patterns of play, especially in the final third. When we play it out left, nothing happens. Where are the inside channel runs to stretch defences? Can we please have a striker with ANY presence? When we play it out right, we expect Fatawu to beat one, two or three men and pull off worldies. We HAVE to be less predictable if we want to have any hope of finishing top 6. I'm also starting to lose patience with Marti using failed players again and again. When he bigs up our young players, why doesn't he show some faith in them? Why can't we ditch Faes, Thomas, Hamza et al and give Aluko, Evans, Nelson etc a try? I'm sure they are far better trained in nice passing patterns, defensive shapes etc than our seasoned failed pros.

And it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

Oh Thomas, you have to hit the target dude.

The weird thing is, he's the one player I can see make a telling forward pass.

Oh dear Ayew.

Again, Ayew producing a bit of quality. It's a shame he has to take 57 touches first.

Ayew's been OK since coming on. Everything has to come from Fatawu though. No-one looks capable of making the right pass or making the right runs. So it has to come from some individual brilliance.

Impressive in this day and age that Portsmouth have 10 British players in their first XI.

Mike Vennart just uploaded an abandoned Oceansize song from the Self Preserved... album sessions from 2009. He added vocals to them this year. The last two minutes were actually re-used to create A Penny's Weight, which featured on the album. So nostalgic to hear "new" Oceansize!

Nigeria, Wow. Ended up winning against Group leaders Benin 4-0 leapfrogging them into second place, while also edging into the last runner-up playoff spot ahead of Burkina Faso on GD. If they had won just 3-0, I believe they would've missed out. You have to feel for Burkina Faso here...

Second place in that group is effectively knocked out, no? There's no chance they will be among the four best placed runnerups. Benin draw is enough unless SA romp Rwanda.

Job done. Unless the Greeks get their act together, I expect Scotland to ensure it comes down the last game. Even just a draw against the Greeks will give them a decent shot, because Denmark are vulnerable.

It's getting nervy. Denmark completely on top for 60 minutes, the Greeks reduce the arrears against the run of play and suddenly the momentum has completely swung their way. Vestergaard nearly scoring an own goal which was cleared off the line by Joachim Andersen.

Wow wow wow! The Faroes beat the Czechs and are one point off second place... The hell?!!

Andorra scoring two goals and about to get an away point. These hopeless minnows picking up points is refreshing!

That's an incredible result in the making!

I understand, but I'm wondering if it plays a trick on the mind that just because we spent big on a supposedly superior player in the same position, and that player still being here, makes some think it's not a priority to upgrade on Thomas or to address the issue. Obviously we would have had more room financially and literally in the squad had VK left this summer, but I recall people pointing at our full backs last season as a major weakness. And this was in a squad that was frankly performing poorly all over the pitch.

Would you also be saying that if we hadn't spunked a lot of money on Kristiansen? It's scary if we get promoted? It's the not-getting-promoted prospect that's scary, not having to replace players.

I mean, the Ballard and Azeez goals are up there, and they're both similar to the JJ and Fatawu goals so I understand them not wanting to only have one type of goal on the list...

Wow. That's too strong. If you do, you've got issues (or not enough issues!).

Well we did trim the squad quite a bit. Getting the kind of money we did for Justin, Coady, Hermansen and McAteer was welcome and probably unexpected. Securing Monga and Page also good for the future. Realistically we could have gotten rid of Winks, Kristiansen, Soumaré and Faes too, so not doing that is obviously a blot on the record. We were never realistically getting rid of Reid, Ayew, Daka, Skipp or Vestergaard. Considering no changes at the top were made, that's probably as good as anyone could've hoped for

Thomas was awful and tightly hooked at HT. Kristiansen was a bombscare and that failed shepherding almost leading to a second Wrexham goal was particularly embarrassing, as were some of his weak headers. But he got in the way a few times with some blocks and - this is the one redeeming thing - he made overlapping runs several times, which we so badly needed. But Mav, Ayew and co. never ever utilized him even though Wrexham had completely stifled us. Choudhury waited until the 92nd minute to go forward, which says it all. I want to focus on some of the positives, because there has to be some hope. Wouldn't mind seeing Aluko, but I'd also just like to see us use the strengths of our players instead of putting them in situations where they show their frailties.

As frustrating as it can be, he was the only one doing ANYTHING past the hour mark to penetrate. He made two deep crosses to Mav, one was picked wide from a few yards out, the other led to Ayew's final corner. Mavididi deserves a bollocking as do Winks, Skipp, Choudhury and Ayew for not adapting and helping out our front three.

See, to me it looked like we were far too narrow with both wingers looking to go inside rather than stay wide or run to the byline. With no overlaps (bar VK who to his credit tried but got overlooked time and again) or decent underlaps/runs into the channel, it make us very predictable. Double up on the wingers and stay compact centrally to not leave any spaces for the midfield or striker to run into. All that is left are difficult combinations through the middle like yesterday goal or the equaliser against Oxford. And we're just not good enough to pull that off more than once a game at best.