So, local derbies next season then.
That would be nice. No game on the South coast with more passion than that derby.
Very entertaining game at Portman Road this evening. Great comeback from the Tractor Boys to take the points but Bristol City will be wondering how they lost.
The Mighty Whites struggled to a 1-0 win at Elland Road tonight, against lowly Stoke.
We were careless in possession, not only giving the ball away endlessly, but also presenting Stoke with acres of empty space into which to play.
A poor performance, though we somehow managed to remain in third place, two points behind The Tractor Boys, who got their late winner in the 89th. minute, courtesy of Leif Davis, ex Leeds fullback, who we should never have sold.
Lucky, lucky Leeds.
M.O.T.
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Bottom of the Championship is amazingly tight. Rotherham are gone, of course, but above them there are only two points separating 16th to 23rd! There will lots of very nervy teams and fans.
Plus two assists one with his usual wicked left foot free kick - at £1m Lief was an absolute bargain. Seriously: Shaw, Chilwell et al - is there a better English left back at the moment.
Bristol could easily have won - first half they didn’t press but congested the midfield, put two on Hutchinson and Town couldn’t break the lines. After our first equaliser the game just opened up and with McKenna’s positive substitutions we took control playing much faster with crisper passing and runs against tired defenders.
This league is sooo tough.
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Apart from our finishing we were excellent 1st half & once again could have been out of sight. We weren’t, they had nothing to lose and bossed the 2nd half until our subs arrived. I think Rutter & Summerville are both carrying injuries. Another clean sheet saw us over the line. Given the start we gave Foxes and Ipswich we’ve done brilliantly to be in contention. Playing 2 defensive mids does reduce our creativity and leaves our front 4 to do all the fancy stuff. Plenty of points left to play for.
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MK Dons did us a favour tonight taking down Mansfield. Mike Williamson making a strong case to be the next decent young English manager. Impossible to be anything but nervous for Saturday though.
Championship appears to have arguably only 5 clubs playing for nothing at this point. Exactly why play offs were introduced.
Great draw for Bolton who finally crawl into a promotion place having pretty much blown their games in hand.
A quiet word for Charlton. The wrongly maligned Nathan Jones is unbeaten in his 1st 6 games and has pulled them from level with the 4th bottom team up to 14th and 7 points clear in under a month. Clearly a man who has no idea what he’s doing,
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Absolutely Mike, I am pleased for Nathan. He is a nice, genuine, passionate guy who, outside of Luton, was sadly out of his depth at Stoke & Southampton but here’s hoping that he has found a happy home at Charlton. I wish him well.
Hmmm, I wonder whether tonight’s game at St Mary’s will be postponed. There’s a major fire right next door. Four industrial units alight, 18 Fire tenders attending. Staff at SMS have been evacuated.
Some would say they were absent too in the four games we lost on the trot, back in the autumn.
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Saints v Preston NE postponed til another day due to fire near stadium.
Sincerely hoping there were no injuries.
Afraid I strongly disagree on this one. Stoke was and is on the edge of being a basket case club. Some jobs are simply not doable at a given moment. Regardless, managers need employment. The Stoke job remains one of them undoable jobs. Schumacher looks dazed in interviews at the moment. He’s hardly the 1st. O’Neill, Rowett and Lambert have all succeeded to a greater extent elsewhere but not at Stoke.
Same at Saints really as I noted on here at the time. Nathan was at fault not doing due diligence after his Stoke experience but it’s clear now that what was presented to him was to a large extent simply an untrue picture of the state of play/flux within the club.
It’s interesting hearing the leaks from those supporters group events that Russell Martin has attended. He’s worded it very carefully indeed, as you do, but appears to have expressed the view that had he joined Saints in the EPL at the point Jones did he cannot conceive of a different outcome.
Seen similar comments about our manager in some places. His time at Sunderland and Charlton is seen as abject failure. Hard to see any part of those clubs as functioning normally when he was there. No-one has set the world on fire with either since and the reasons are clear enough in terms of ownership etc.
I have switched over from the Norwich game after witnessing another act of unbearable stupidity from Sainz. One nil up and the idiot allows Howson to mug him into reacting. Now 2-1 down and a game we were dominating has gone.
I can accept defeat but acts of utter stupidity ( for the second time this season ) are something else!!!
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One of the photos showed the grass area - next to the burned out warehouse shell - where one of the “hot dog and burger” vans would have set up their picnic tables.
No tables……no burger van. And I was really looking forward to one of their hot dogs with onions, mustard & ketchup, following my habitual trek across the Woolston Bridge!!! 
- Hopefully Birmingham and Wednesday as a neat punishment for their idiotic owners.
Yes ! (Though no offence meant to fans of those clubs. Just that the owners need a kick up the …. )
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I know it well. You will want something sustaining when you get home if you have to walk the bridge twice per game!
Let’s see how we get on against Sunderland on Saturday. It’s the first time I will have been since Rotherham Utd.