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I’m willing to take pelters for this opinion, but I believe Simms will come good under Lampard. Looking at some of his goals last season, we need to put the ball into space for not just him but all our strikers. There’s also a credible long range threat that’s been present in his professional...

Keiffer Moore at 32/33 isn’t going to be high up the shortlist. There’s £15-16 million invested in strikers so the challenge for Lampard is getting the most out of them and any signings would be subject to outgoings. Torp has been a big miss in the games that the opposition plays the low block...

It’s these threads that expose how narrow our knowledge is on players. Players like Dolan and Darling are good players who are roughly the ‘right’ profile. I’d like us to utilise free agency and pick up some smart signings to bolster the squad. There will be players all over Europe who will be...

That assumes that was the plan. From the Sunderland perspective, they will be concerned that they couldn’t really get dangerous counter attacks on the go. Waiting for the opposition to make a catastrophic mistakes isn’t a plan. They know that they nicked the win and it really is as simple as...

This is a knee jerk response. To say they executed the perfect game plan is giving them too much credit. MVE’s suicidal back pass gave them a last gasp winner and even then Haji was prevented scoring an equaliser with a genuinely top class tackle from Jobe. They defended well and that’s the...

The relationship between the referee and VAR is all wrong imo. VAR shouldn’t refer the referee to incidents but the referee should refer an incident to VAR themself to ‘check their homework’. That way, the incidents that aren’t referred to VAR is down to the referee. As things stand, it’s...

Nonetheless, we lost and Notts County had only lost 2 games at home all season. I’m sure many people on this forum wrote us off back in 2018. My own view was that we needed to win at home. In reality, these nights are the big games where true heroes emerge.

That’s a given… I’m sure if you went back to the relevant threads covering the playoff years there would be a lot of similar opinions viewed then as there is now. I remember thinking we needed to beat Boro to go through in 2023 because we hadn’t won at the Riverside. We also got beat 3-1 by...

More of this optimism! No surrender up north!

It’s hard when a team puts 8 players behind the ball but I’d like to see us take more ranged shots because it can force defences to presses potential shooters and or a parried save causes chaos in the box.

How did Rudoni score his goal again?

We need to relax, we have a second chance on Tuesday. If form was everything, the tie would be done and dusted in our favour. Thankfully, Lampard’s post-match analysis was v level-headed. As well as Sunderland defended, they know the game didn’t go down that well and relied on luck to come away...

Sunderland’s home, away and head-to-head against us was poor… they still overcome that and there’s no reason that we can’t. We’ve won away at Sunderland a few times and they’ll be mindful of that and they have to deal with that whilst having the pressure of maintaining a lead. It’s the first...

Both Notts County and Boro were Friday nights! Some of the defeatism on here is a little bit much to be honest. If I was a gambling man crunching numbers, you’d back Sunderland to get over the line but this KO football over 2 legs and weird things happen.

We came close a few times where a kind bounce of the ball leads to a material chance. It’s a new game, we’ve put 6 goals past this Sunderland defence this year and confident we can put more past them on Tuesday.

Our away record in the playoffs is good. The second legs (that we’ve won) have all been midweek iirc?

We don’t necessarily have to win by 2. We can always force extra time and penalties. Lampard played some decent mind games post-match by sowing the seed of doubt for how Sunderland will approach the next leg. Do they keep with the same approach or do they try to kick on and extend the lead...

No to Liam Walsh. He doesn’t actually improve us and at 27, isn’t in the bracket of a development player. Plenty of better players out there and 3-4 CMs in our squad better than him.

Did this actually happen and was a serious post all along?! 😂

I hope it does go the same way as last night. On another night we break the dead lock and do not gift them two goals. I’ve seen plenty of talk about how their manager engineered a tactical masterclass… That’s a stretch. Sunderland defended well and we’ve made two errors that lead to two goals.