DJ Barry Hammond

I’m of the same mind. It is quite obvious that the squad severely lacks a potent threat - or even just cohesive figure - in the striker role and without that I challenge any manager to get a tune out of the remaining squad. Add in the huge fallout of love between fans / the club / players - which is arguably the biggest issue - whoever comes in has a massive and unenviable task on their hands. I do wonder if our fans realise how much damage the constant online social media negativity and criticism towards our own players is contributing to the ever growing mess the club is in - regardless of whether those sentiments perceived as deserved or not.

He’s had one game hasn’t he? True it was a win against Manchester City, but I’m not sure you can point to “look how that’s worked out” yet. 😂

That’s not necessarily the case is it. As an assistant, Kingy has to row I behind the manager, work to the number 1’s ideas and plans. Yes, an assistant can give ideas and advice, but they don’t have a large degree of say of the teams shape, tactical direction of players that are picked. It could be that King sees a significant amount of things he would do differently… but you can’t really go wrong with”no boss, your ideas are shit” as an assistant.

Just the players.

Team and manager under pressure. A stadium atmosphere that has the potential to become very toxic. And you want him to pack the side and bench with untested youth products, some of which haven’t even had a loan to at least experience competitive football outside of their age group. I’d say it would be really unfair on those youth players to put them in that position.

The thing for me is if you look at his general play as a winger… very little of that shouts “striker” to me - especially if you’re suggesting to do this in a single striker formation (or one with two wide players outside it).

Yeah - best return was 9 in 23 (plus 17 sub appearances) over 5 years ago for Montpellier. I also believe that his use as a striker tended to be in a pair at that time - mixed in with time on the left flank when the formation switched to a single striker setup. There’s a reason why a coach like Enzo utilised him solely on the left flank to great effect - that is his best spot on the pitch to utilise his skill set.

Mavididi is not a forward - and in a 3-4-3 like you posted, you need a link forward in the middle that brings the wide men into the game, who can then go and be a presence in the box afterward. Mav is neither of these things.

A significant change in structure like that needs coaching time to get it working correctly - especially with an already leaky defence. There really isn’t the time to do that; and I’m not convinced we have the personnel at centre half to pull off a three; you don’t really want any of Okoli, Vestagaard or Nelson being dragged out wide and asked to defend against skillfull and pacey wingers. Equally - I’m far from convinced that Mavididi has the skill set to play as the pivotal centre forward in that formation - and would be the perfect example of square peg in round hole you’re complaining about.

You what? What’s happening with Mavididi and Fatawu if we’re going 3-5-2? And when are you applying this shape change? At halftime, where up to that point we had looked really good in our original shape? I think changing formation to one we haven’t played or trained for, that also takes two of our most threatening attacking players out of their natural positions would be a very bizarre move for a manager to make.

And Shrewsbury at Wolves 😂

You make it sound so easy - but it wasn’t then and still isn’t now. To extend you analogy, if you win the lottery, but buy things your underlying income cannot support (big house, fast car etc)… you will still find yourself in a hole very, very quickly. And that’s the underlying thing this club has struggled with… even before King Power - it’s income streams are not strong enough to support a top 10 top flight position. This is not to absolve King Power and those in charge of the mistakes made… but equally I think some fans massive overstate the opportunity there was to become an “established big club”. Note when we won the league Newcastle and Villa were just re-emerging from their fall from grace and began to become major players for the league positions we wanted to occupy. Look at West Ham, who are going through similar to us - and even Stoke, who punched above their status for years before dropping off. Wigan and Blackburn are further examples to show that beating the odds against the monopoly clubs is very rarely sustainable. Perhaps the only club that has managed to survive above their original station in recent years is Manchester City - and that in itself says a lot.

4 points off the playoffs mind. Given the comments on here about the players at Marti’s disposal (including lack of a proper striker)… is he actually doing ok?

Apparently not

We’re going to shithouse this aren’t we?

There should probably be two schools of thought after todays insipid performance… 1.) We’re awful, is Marti the man to get us at least 25 points to get us through this horrible season (that would take us to 56 - so the magic 50 minus 6)? 2.) But also rather bizarrely, has he actually done quite well to get us to 31 points at this stage of the season with this horrible, totally unbalanced squad - given it feels like our next 10 point haul will be a long haul affair. I can’t see Marti staying in post much longer if performances like today continue, but equally I’m not convinced we have the right personnel to significantly alter the direction of our season.

Are we allowed to loan Brighton players now - have they forgiven us for messing around with Facundo? That said, we’ve had reported interest in Evan before, so if he is available I imagine we’d have another look.

Well - the away end as it is now (Ateyo Stand) used to house home supporters prior to the redevelopment of the South and Lansdown stands. There’s changing rooms underneath the stand and the teams used to enter the field from that very stand. Away fans used to sit at the opposite end, which at that time was little more than a shed - but boy could you make some noise in that end! Ateyo’s not too bad for acoustics either from memory.

Club Captain and lack of other viable options. If it was a dire emergency he’d play… but your not going to risk him, it’s been that way all season so far.

He ain’t playing twice in a week now. He may have been on the bench, but he wasn’t going to be used.

JJ was clearly shattered and with no Winks or Soumare the options were either Page or Aluko at right back and moving Hamza. The later eventually happened… but perhaps there was evidence of why Marti was reluctant to go with that change initially given I found Aluko to be a little too passive in his defending.

The weirdest thing about this camera ‘height’ is I don’t recall Ashton Gate having a stand as high as the picture suggests?

This forum wouldn’t have had this midfield 20 games ago either mind. I remember “Winks has to start” posts!

What I like most about that goal is Skipp going across to Fatawu afterwards and saying something along the lines of “that was ****ing brilliant!”

No way! There’ll be a Marti in thread at this rate 😂