sgncfc

Not really - because at some stage in the next 5 to 10 years or so both of these clubs will be relegated. As will Brighton. As will Bournemouth etc etc. And none of them will win anything in the meantime, or even get close. The "excitement" is in winning enough games to do it all again next season and go through the same purgatory. Then relegation is seen as a disaster when it's really just a part of the game. Then they have to bounce back or rebuild, demanding the return of their "rightful place" at the trough, and so the cycle continues. The only people benefitting are agents and players. The ludicrous reaction to the once mighty Man Utd almost succumbing to a good Champs team in a semi-final is witness to their entitlement. Embarrassed to win a semi-final? How patronising they are - all of them; Sky, the BBC, the FA and everyone associated with the incompetent officials. I said 6 years ago (to much ridicule, as I recall) that Championship clubs should have the option of selling their PL place on promotion to a billionaire club and I stand by that. The PL only want billionaire clubs and eventually that is what they will have. In the meantime, let's take their money, build facilities and communities and stay in the top 6 of the Championship where the football is at least interesting and entertaining (sometimes).

I don't think there has been a proper "pathway" for a while - we've only played youngsters when we absolutely had to. Even those we thought were good like Fisher get dropped after a couple of nightmare games and take months to reappear. For me, our under 21s should have capable deputies so that our playing style is consistent. Other teams are playing 18, 19, 20 year olds in one off games or small series of games because of injury or unavailability; we don't seem to do that. We just give them 10 minute cameos off the bench and wonder why they don't impress.

Bristol had nothing riding on the game; if they had, they wouldn't have played that way. It's why managers constantly go on about "being brave" and playing with "freedom", which Bristol did. Hopefully, Swansea weren't watching.

Back on topic......SVH was not, I don't think, brought in as a direct replacement in playing style for Idah or Sargent. I don't think any coach could look at him and think he could do that job. He is a very different type of forward and was I suspect an option for Wagner to play a different way - but, as we now know, his favoured way of playing started to finally click into place and deliver results as well as some performances. SVH simply doesn't fit that way - you can't just write him off as a footballer because his attributes don't fit slickly into a system; I would have hoped we would have learned from RVW and Becchio - both good footballers who we couldn't use properly at the time. Wagner is nothing if not determined. His one way of playing can quite easily be dealt with by mobile, quick players and a reasonably astute coach. SVH would need to be able to hold the ball up better and play as a target man to be of any real use; for the same reason, Aboh doesn't get on either. I read a very interesting article about why Steve Weaver is leaving, which basically said it's because our Academy teams don't play the same way as the first team anymore. Farke tried to change that, but it's slipped again since he left. What is the point of having prolific poaching strikers and ball playing centre backs at Academy level if they can't step up when they're needed?

Of course, it might also benefit the potential giant killers chance of a victory first time out - lower league sides invariably lose the replays - so they get a nice lucrative match in the next round.

Bit weird though that at the press conference Sargent was unlikely to play at all, then ends up almost doing his first 90 minutes for months. Mind games, justification for a bad call or sheer incompetence? I guess we'll never know. We got the win but not sure how you can say tactics were spot on when we could easily have been three down at half-time. The subs worked out for us, but that's not been a frequent occurrence this season.

As so many times before, last night's capitulation was solely down to limited tactical awareness from our coaching team. Can't recall how many times it's happened, at least a dozen over the season, but at 2-0 up when we again went backwards 20 yards with no "out"" forward ball after 60 minutes, the loss of 2 points was pretty inevitable - in the end, we were lucky we didn't lose all 3. I don't mind losing when it is deserved, but time after time after time we do the hard part, get into winning positions and then simply invite the opposition to take over the initiative. It's like we hand out a surrender notice and we contrive to draw or lose games we have already won. This manager is tactically out of his depth and proves it game after game. I genuinely wouldn't have him coaching the under 8s. He just doesn't learn. There is one way of playing and if that doesn't work we collapse - it doesn't matter whether we are winning or losing, his approach is the same. The only times it works is if one or more of our players does something individually outstanding. As a team ,we are hopeless tactically. 5 away wins all season is poor - especially when it should have been 9 or 10 with some pretty basic awareness. People on here saying he's done well to turn it around need to at least acknowledge that he took the team with 3rd highest wageroll in this league to 17th position and a potential relegation fight - the bar for improvement is very low, on that basis. The home form has improved, but it was hard for it to get worse than Blackburn; the away form is still atrocious. I'm sure he's a lovely man and is doing his best etc. but it simply isn't good enough and if Knapper has anything at all about him Wagner has to go at the end of this season, whatever happens. God help us if we were to get promoted and keep him in charge.

Apart from Gibbs for Barnes which, tactically, was the best substitution he's made in a year......

And I'll point out to you, yet again, that I haven't been wrong. When he's got it right I've acknowledged that; when he's got it wrong (most of his tenure to date) I've acknowledged that too. For every Ipswich at home we've had a Leicester away. And I still don't think he's yet proved he's the right man to deliver the kind of football we want to see as supporters of NCFC. Yesterday was a great day and he deserves all the plaudits he's getting. But it wasn't champagne football, was it? We competed with an Ipswich side who were nowhere near their best - unlike under Lambert and Farke when we destroyed them with front foot football. But if you're happy with that........

Let's not go overboard. Yesterday Wagner did everything right for the first time since he has been here - which included doing what he should have done last week against Leicester - putting on Gibbs to replace Barnes and getting Sara and our back four further up the pitch to stop Ipswich having so much possession and time on the ball. He responded to that brief period of Ipswich dominance and it worked - why he didn't do that against Leicester is still beyond me, but yesterday was Wagner's' day and he was, finally, brilliant. He has previously thrown away points in almost every other game when he didn't respond to that same situation when we hand the initiative to the opposition. Now he needs to keep going and be brave. I really hope he can be the manager we want and need. Ipswich were shockingly bad - but that was partly because we didn't let them play. I don't think they completed a pass over 10 yards until the 70th minute, which was also their first shot on target. We are definitely in their heads.

Depends which Norwich team turns up and whether Wagner has grown any testicles by then or not. On a good day, 3-1 to us. On a bad one, 3-1 to them.

You see, as long as we have supporters who believe this we can't really have any kind of an educated debate. Can I point out -again- what has been pointed out many, many times before. Wagner sets his teams up to defend narrowly, forcing the opposition to go wide. Given we have useless centrebacks and fullbacks which he pushes high at the same time, and who can't tackle and have no pace, why he does this is a reasonable question to ask. What it does is negate the quality we have in midfield and up front and show the opposition how to beat us by forcing them to play against our weaker players - how is that in any way sensible????? We have quality players - Sara, Saintz, Sargent and Maclean would all get in Leicester's team - but his tactics don't allow the team to play to their strengths. They barely played a forward pass between them today. Having seen it is not working, he could have changed it at half time. Any tactically aware coach would have done. He chose not to and we duly lost without raising any kind of objection. Away you go, Leicester, help yourself to the points (for Leicester, insert Middlesbro, Swansea, and several other teams this season and last). This is not management or coaching at the highest level - it's simply refusing to adapt your system to the players we have available and to the opposition we were playing. The only reason we are in the position we are in and pushing for 6th is because some of our quality players have produced in some games, despite the tactics. Oh, and because Gunn has made some extremely crucial saves - he's another who would get in Leicester's team. Clearly we are not getting rid of him this season but trust me, he has to go; the bloke is clueless. A last thought - if Maresca was in charge of our squad, it would be us winning the league.

Tactically, we set up to be compact and narrow. We forced Leicester to go wide, presumably because we knew we could defend then crosses and our fullbacks could keep them quiet. So, that worked well........ They were only better than us because we let them be - which is Wagnerball. That is his tactic. It was Middlesbrough all over again but with 11 men. Equally compliant and equally complacent. No b***s, no guts, no one caring enough to get in their faces at any point. I don't want to watch this garbage.

He's not shown any ability when on the pitch. Thankfully it's only a loan.

I think today proved that I wasn't though........🙂

Given that pretty much everything you post is garbage I take that as a compliment.

Pushed our midfield and back four 10-15 yards upfield before their "set". Brought on Gibbs for Duffy, put Maclean at CB and told Sainz to cover his winger and give MacCallum more support. Push Sara up and brought on Fassnacht for Barnes.

Excellent first 20 minutes. Just needed to get on their backs in midfield but we stopped playing. Sara, Maclean and Nunez all very poor. Should have sorted it out at half time but didn't. Back to earlier season tactical ineptitude from the coaching team I'm afraid. A chance missed. Our players are as good as theirs but ours were terrified and worryingly nowhere near as fit.

We don't tend to close down crosses - Wagner's method is to defend them on the edge and in the box. It's led to some goals conceded, but it leads to more being scored from us obtaining possession and breaking fast. The fault yesterday was midfield not cutting out the pass and then Sorensen not making the header.

Happy with a point, but I can't see Leicester losing this one. We need to score first.

I'm still not completely onboard with Wagner, though of course can only support the improvement he has made since he plumbed the depths. Since the Blackburn game when he most definitely should have gone, we had the Watford debacle, two 1-0 defeats at West Brom and Millwall, (points simply thrown away by inept decisions) and the dreadful Southampton performance. Recent performances and results are helping, but he still makes some bizarre changes even if he finally seems to have realised that putting players in their best position gets them playing better; and he's definitely not certain to be in charge next season regardless of what league we are in.

Well, I think it probably is their fault, but that's a different argument. I'm just reading that Manchester City, among others, have received a report from someone (their accountants maybe?) about whether they should stop selling season tickets entirely and treat each game for ticketing purposes as a separate event, like a concert. Given that online systems could easily manage this now, this is another real threat to the supporter. Only corporates and the very wealthy get to see every game, most of us save up for one or two games a season - is that a vision of the future of the EPL?

Do we know they don't have the resources? Every chance that McKenna will get a couple of loans and spend his £50m a lot better than Stuart Webber did. I suspect they'll make a decent fist of it - the way they play relies very heavily on a mobile 9. Hopefully they won't come after Sargent.

In my experience, Cardiff fans are no angels; in fact, I can't think of another set of fans who are so aggressive apart from Millwall at their place and the Serbian fans at Wembley who were just manic.

Would it be because Chelsea will pay them £30k a week to stay in a hotel in Huddersfield (or similar)?