[WakeyTerrier]

I've just noticed Coventry are at home to Rotherham tomorrow night and a Coventry win would leave us 7 points adrift of safety

[Devongone]

Before Saturday's game, which was entirely the way to guarantee relegation, your goals for and against columns were exactly the same as Wigan's but they had managed to turn that into 8 points more than you.

Shoring up a defence is a good thing, EXCEPT if you do it at the expense of entirely removing your own attacking threat. All that happens is that whenever the opposition does score, you lose.

[Lord Snooty]

We're not getting any big hammerings. Our heaviest defeats have been 0-2 at Bristol and 1-3 at Reading.

When Wagner was here, we won games by a single goal. I think it was a FL record for single goal margin victories. But every now and then we'd get a good pasting, for instance we got beat twice by Fulham 0-5 and 1-4. Therefore, we got promoted with a minus goal difference.

What we need to do now, is turn those single goal defeats into draws and the draws into single goal wins. Simples!

[theo_luddite]

Wigan conceded 6 of those goals in the the last two games before the weekend, so stats and all that out of context can be misleading. They've now conceded 8 in their last 3. We've only conceded 3 in the last 3 games but only picked up one more point. If's, but's and maybe's 3 of those Wigan points came from beating us 1-2, turn that result on it's head and they'd only two more points than us at the time. I know what actually happened, hence if's, but's and maybe's.

---

Carrick appointed as coach by Boro - cue comments about teeth and seats

[Devongone]

Chesterfield went all the way out of the league drawing and losing by the odd goal most of the time.

Wigan's points total tells you scrambling for 270 minutes and hurling blocking bodies around the box will earn you only the same as freeing yourselves up and aiming for the opposition onion bag in just 90 minutes of a win. If you attack it helps you to defend, doesn't it? When you know that if the opposition score you will probably be struggling even to draw, that's when mistakes happen, and desperation sets in.

It's a team game and everybody contributes to both attack and defence. When you play with fear, your greatest fear soon becomes your future. There's a time and place for parking the bus and it isn't against a team that is equally scared of losing to you. Why I say this is because I fear that the point will convince your manager that this is the way to go, and he'll find many Championship teams will be happy to win a boring game with a scrambled goal in the 78th minute.

[theo_luddite]

Didn't see Wigan do much attacking at our place if I'm honest, but they did enough to score twice.

Forest v Liverpool at the weekend - who did most attacking? Who Won?

[jjamez]

we didn't lose which is a big thing, but in the position that we are in, we can't be sitting hoping that we suddenly or miraculously hit a rich vein of form, nor can we expect other teams to lose/bottle it, we have to turn these nitty, gritty, shhittttyyy draws into wins.

i think its fair to say, the style of play has yet to be discovered, so too the right formation or line-up, under fotheringham I think we will have to get used to it, depending on how long he stays in the job, but even with a change we will still be yet to discover and in need of edging tight contests.

I make it we've had a couple of games with 4-2-3-1 or something of the sort, Reading away and boro away, Narcis used it against Cardiff at home, and a few 3-5-2 or something of the sort, yielding around 7 points in 6 games?

[theo_luddite]

Well one things for certain - we ain't getting those 4 wins this month I said we needed to get us up into mid-table obscurity.

Now, where's Accrington again???

[Devongone]

It isn't about attacking all the time, or who has most of the play, it is about attacking intent and feeling capable of scoring when you've got the ball. Forest looked capable of scoring against Liverpool throughout largely because of their centre forward. Nevertheless, Forest actually won, because Liverpool went out and lost.

Sides will occasionally just lose to you IF you can keep that clean sheet, and IF you carry enough of a weapon up front to score and take some weight off your defence. But if it is obvious you are quite happy with a snooze-fest blank score line they'll weigh up your lack of a killer punch and keep pressurising you until something, or someone, simply cracks.

All I'm saying is you've got to have a way of getting forward and making it plain that you are aiming to win. You have to win at least one game in every three from now on as an absolute minimum. Four points from every three games would make you safe, safe, safe. Two 0-0 draws and a 1-2 defeat and its hello Accrington, is Bumble coming to watch today?