murphy

I thought the 'grinders' thing was Brian Little?

Loved Claridge and loved that team. My favourite ever era. A team of rag tag journeymen moulded into a well oiled machine. Unlike today - a team of rag tag journeymen moulded into a team of rag tag journeymen.

I hadn't noticed it until you pointed it out. Now its making my eye twitch and causing me to make an involuntary fist.

Cooper's recruitment killed us. His legacy is Ayew, BCDR and Skipp and no one will convince me that those signings were not as a direct result of his fetish for PL experienced plodders. We are worse now because the fight and the stuffing has been knocked out of us. That would also have happened under Cooper by now.

The club showed that it has effectively given up with the inactivity during the January window. Maybe it's a wise move at this stage rather than throwing good money after bad, but I don't think that our demise was inevitable given our squad. We were Championship champions and thus here on merit, we had beaten Bournemouth and given Chelsea a game as a Championship club. After losing Enzo, we just needed to recruit well and go into the season with a plan. I look at how Nuno has set up Forest as a counter-attacking side and feel that that is the way we should have gone. If you don't have the quality to go toe to toe, rope a dope is often very effective. If you're going to park the bus, Cooper style, make sure you have an outlet with pace (not Ayew and BCDR) add in some defensive quality (not Okoli and Skipp) and we might have been able to make a fist of it. As it stands now, the club has given up and the players are demoralised and beaten before they get on the pitch.

If you parachuted in a team like Yeovil Town to play this fixture, I think they might give a better account of themselves than we will. Do Yeovil have better players? No, but ours are completely demoralised and they are beaten before they set foot on the pitch. Any early season fight, which probably accounted for a couple of early victories, has been soundly beaten out of them. I actually think that we did Steve Cooper a favour. I think it inevitable that we would be in exactly the same position with him still at the helm but he has escaped the circus with his reputation actually enhanced.

It beggars belief and what's more, most of us (aside from those that always ignore the evidence and say "he hasn't kicked a ball yet" etc) could see it coming, because... well... they were either past it or nowhere near good enough and it was obvious. It's a bit like Newcastle coming to us at the end of the season and asking to sign Faes and Justin. Inconceivable.

It's not just the 9-0. You could call that an aberration, a one off perhaps, but that Southampton defence had conceded the second most goals in the division. So we went and bought 50% of it. Not only that, we brought the wrong 50%

What about the PSR shambles. Who's remit is that?

Wilfully being in possession of a criminally slapable face.

I wish they'd get on with it.

Over paying wages on mediocrity such that it has proven impossible to move them on. Giving in to Rodgers by abandoning a previously successful transfer policy and also giving in to him to appoint Congerton, a proven failure.

I think that the consequences of allowing players to run down their contracts and leave for free are greater than just the loss of transfer fee. Was Tielemans really giving his all in our relegation season? Too many players with their eyes on the exit door rather than the job in hand imo, thanks to contract mismanagement.

I don't know anything about his politics but as a special forces veteran he probably is more than a wannabe hard man. Anyway, regardless of whether you like him or not, I just want to see Wout Faes running up a hill carrying a telegraph pole whilst being shouted at.

Head bloke on the 'SAS - Who Dares Wins show. Would love to see him put our slackers through their paces. He'd boot them into orbit.

Thread title The Run In suggests jeopardy. Suggests we have a chance, like there's something to play for. Can we rename it The Last Rites or something?

We have lost 11 out of 12. There are 11 games to go. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that we don't pick up another point.

I'd appoint this guy

How can we be mid table championship when we literally just won the championship? The players are just gone. Shot to pieces.

"Less risk averse'. I think just 'risk averse' covers it.

Well while we're at it, there's that double negative there too. I wasn't going to mention it but...

I was offered a ticket for the game but unfortunately I'm rearranging my sock drawer tonight.

For me it's not about people leaving early, the wonder is that they turned up at all.

But on the other hand, maybe £2m Sensi would mean that we don't buy £25m Skipp.

Sorry, but that makes no sense whatsoever. If we can fend off buyers in the summer we need to play him. You don't loan out your best players.