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Great assist. How often does he put balls of that quality with his right foot in the 66 games he’s played for us? It’s not an unfair characterisation to say he’s the most one footed player in our starting lineup (forwards; Wright, EMC and Rudoni).

Don’t get me wrong, draws against Leeds and Boro are impressive but they’ve also drew against Plymouth in the stretch. They’re not winning enough games right now and it will probably dawn on them sooner rather than later. We’ve played the inform relegating battlers in Derby and they turned us over.

Why? They’re drawing games but only winning against the teams around them. The 3 games prior to that was two losses and a draw. A draw probably won’t help them out by the time they play us. They have Blackburn, Derby, Bristol before playing us and end the season playing WBA away.

Correct. Luton and Plymouth are 20th and 21st respectively in the ‘home’ table. Plymouth are as good as gone; they have Sheff U, Boro, us, PNE and Leeds. I’m hoping we relegate them and they get a surprise result v Boro.

When we’re possession, yes but in a set defence it’s a 4-4-2 most of the time. There are occasions where it’s a 4-5-1/5-4-1 when defending deeper in our own half.

Sheaf definitely lacked sharpness on the ball, he gave away a few basic passes but as you say, his work off the ball was generally solid and we picked up a lot of second balls. When people say ‘we need a ball winner’ the temptation is to think of a bruiser to put in big tackles in the middle of...

Felt like 5-6 minutes in real time. This is easily solved with a stopclock. Play-on unless it’s a serious injury and let physios treat the players on the pitch.

This is something JDS is doing and quite well to his credit and why he is keeping Bidwell out of the team. He’s operating akin to a LCM when we’re in possession and we’re seeing MVE do it more too, that’s how he got some decent shooting opportunities of late. Under Robins his position tended to...

Not necessarily, it’s ever going to be a fixed ‘traditional’ 4-4-2. The way play in a 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 leaves a lot of gaps between the lines because: - The CMs overlapping with wingers to create overloads - Grimes operates as a half back i.e. 3rd CB in possession - the WBs either overlap or...

If he adds more goals to his game, he’ll be a premiership player. He’s got it in his locker too because there were chances like Swansea away, Burnley (yes it led to a goal anyway and Trafford made a fine save) and Pompey at home there were a few chances he at least needed to test the keeper...

100%. In this stretch, we’ve got games v Hull, Plymouth and Luton so there will be a lot more games of a similar profile to last night. So having Simms in the box with Haji will be beneficial. I’m leaning to 4-4-2 atm because we’re a bit short on CMs with Eccles and Torp out injured.

I took my mate who was a neutral and he thought highly of EMC, some of his passes were a bit off but his dribbling was generally solid.

Haji could potentially play there, he’s good with both feet so could see some joy from him cutting onto his left foot before shooting like he did v Sunderland. We almost definitely will sign a RW in the summer if EMC or Wright is not a viable option. I rate Sakamoto but he’s not quite going to...

The could be said for Sakamoto tbf, he does tend to struggle against teams that put 10 men behind the ball. Sakamoto’s lack of a right foot hinders him because he always needs to get onto his left foot before shooting or crossing, generally speaking. Now compare that to Rudoni who has several...

With the current team, I do think that our best team is has Rudoni, Wright, EMC and Simms playing. Whether that’s a 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1, I don’t know. Specifically, given the volume of goals we score from headers, you want Simms in the box, Rudoni arriving late and Haji exploiting mismatches...

In my estimation, definitely not. The reason 5-3-2 worked so well is because Torp and Rudoni operated high up the pitch almost as if they were wide players (at times). There’s a reasonably compelling case for 4-4-2. Rudoni has most of his assists from the RW and keeping Simms and Wright up top...

I’m pretty confident we’ll end up playing 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 with a front three of EMC-Simms-Wright with the current crop of players. The Sunderland game looks more and more like a the exception rather than the rule. It is harsh on Sakamoto, but he’s also been a little bit cold after a good run...

Cardiff at home where we scored in the 88th minute. This was probably the biggest. As good as the other last minute winners were, they’ve steadily increased in importance as we’ve marched up the table. Last night, this fixture was our ‘easiest’ home game and one we needed to take maximum...

That’s a harsh way of looking at it. When you’re playing teams towards the bottom, they’re going to stick 10 men behind the ball and try to stop you playing. We created a few moments where we probably needed to be braver with our passing/shooting. We had two open headers in the box and failed...

I genuinely think we’ll extend his contract next season if we don’t go up. He’s a solid role player to have in the squad.