Admiral Nelsen

Cardiff have defended very well and took their goals magnificently, but they've definitely had the bounce too. Take away the great saves and the strange Bamford offside, I've lost count of the number of times where the ball has come lose in Cardiff's area and just evaded a Leeds man. Cardiff deserve credit, but they had to ride their luck to win that game.

Not so sure, it's been a while since that's counted for much away at their place! Fully agree with the rest of your post. Whilst Evans is rightly getting plaudits, Travis again went about his job magnificently. That boy is a player.

We have three injured full backs who otherwise would have played. Bennett is a limited player, but is there anything to be gained by implying that he's so bad that he isn't up to being a reserve in the second tier?

Being generous to him, taking over a Tony Pulis squad with the remit of doing better with a reduced budget whilst playing more football was going to be very tough for anyone. Even so, we're well in the final quarter of the season and they're in serious danger of going down. Not acceptable for that club or squad.

Definitely turned out that way, but I suspect it was less him happy to sit on a contract, more him backing himself to win a spot back. TM has said on multiple occasions that he's not one to fully ostracise the players who are surplus to requirements, so it's possible that he was waiting for his chance to come around. It just turns out that it never did.

Jackson Irvine left Hull on a free. Pretty well stocked in that area & obviously wouldn't get in front of Travis, but still a good player at this level even if Hull have been appalling since January.

Proof of the pudding will be in the eating, but if it turns out that Dack can return significantly more athletic (seem to remember Robert Pires coming back from an ACL injury in a similar way) then it could be the difference from him being a very good Championship player, to one who is Perhaps a very optimistic reading of things, but it was only his sharpness that stops him dominating at this level. He definitely has the ability to play in the top league.

Agree that his best position doesn't appear obvious, but I wouldn't say that's because it looks particularly unsuited to playing in various positions. He reminds me a bit of Ben Marshall in his versatility & seeming lack of pace, but the only thing stopping Marshall being a brilliant player was his head. The fact that he's been tried in so many positions should, if anything, just be taken as a sign of his natural talent in my view. Not too dissimilar to Bentley, he might be a few seasons into his career before he really nails down a position.

He was interviewed about that on 'Quickly Kevin Will He Score?' (an excellent 90s football podcast) a few months ago. Apparently, there was an agreement with the England squad that if anyone scored a Golden Goal, the whole team would have run straight into the tunnel without celebrating the goal. Amazing to think how different football folklore could be based on such tiny margins.

Lenihan booked!

Little harsh on Samuel. Thought he fairly ineffective as an outball against Brentford, but that was a tough game and he did well in his previous two. In any case, I'm seriously bloody nervous now. Don't care how we win, so long as we do. COYB!

I know the score was only 2-1, but by all accounts they were battered against Hudds too. A team not exactly on blinding form themselves.

Lovely set of fixtures, that. Either drags them into a very catchable position or harms several of our other rivals. Possibly even both.

To a point it's poor, but it also suggests how much time we've actually spent behind in games this season, certainly in recent months.Since losing to Forest on New Years Day, the only time we've spent behind were the 25 minutes against Fulham. You're much less likely to come from behind to win points if you spend less time losing! Equally, if you play in such a way that you come out of the traps quickly and score the most early goals in the league, you're a team that is in more winning positions to begin with, so are much more likely to lose more points from these positions. Not saying the stats are meaningless either, or that we should be satisfied with them, but they are stats which are heavily context dependent.

You get silly results in this league. I think if we end up a couple of points behind PNE come the final whistle next Saturday, we're all licking our lips, even if it comes from drawing one of our next two.

No idea how to feel about that. Disappointed not to win from 2 up, but equally Brentford played well, were at home, and relied on a dive and goal of the season contender to draw. Would have taken the draw before kick off, the challenge is turning this into at least a 5, preferably 7 point week.

I've been, and may continue to be a Bell critic, but that was a very good 45 from him. I thought Buckley showed on maybe 3 occasions that he has the ability and vision to make him an exciting prospect. That said, this game may be dictated by how well we can perform out of possession. Would be surprised if he makes it through the 90.

Looking at Fulham at Ewood and now tonight, it's obvious that they have some very tidy players who can keep the ball, but if they lose Mitrovic then they're sitting ducks in the play offs for me.

We'll probably only know in a few weeks, but I'd say so. Really interesting one, as if we assume that we put the sort of form together that could get us to around 6th, then Fulham are on the cusp of being catchable, but equally we're just about catchable for an improving Derby. Given that we've got Derby away in a few weeks and potentially could face Fulham in the play offs, the best outcome is probably them kicking each other off the park!

I think the issue was more that he didn't come for crosses, rather than making that many mistakes when he did. He made a few like you say, but I think the extra demands that are placed on our defenders was seen as the bigger issue.

You may be right, but all I'd say to that is that lucky men don't tend to stay lucky forever. After a while the law of averages kicks in, and then it's only right to judge a manager on his record in those circumstances.

Duff yes, but as much as I love Matty I'd rate Bellamy higher. For the season he was with us I'd even put him slightly higher than Benni and Santa Cruz

I'm not sure I'd even go as far as that. The carrot for winning is massive, no doubt about that. But we can probably lose 3 or 4 of our remaining games and still have a good chance of finishing 6th. If we're edged out in our hardest looking away game, we live to fight another day.

I don't think these ideas are necessarily contradictory. Look at Brentford, they continually invest in good young project players and implement principles about how to play etc whilst occasionally selling the crown jewels for big money, then reinvest. You could argue this was the Hughes model when he was at Rovers.

More I think about it, the more this week coming looks quite a lot like the one a fortnight ago. A 3 game week, starting with a very tough fixture before a very winnable mid-week home game, before a tricky game to round it off. Like last time, 6 points from 9 represents a successful week as I see it. Brentford away is as hard a game on paper as we have left, so not a must win by any stretch in my view. It does mean that the pressure is heaped on the Stoke & especially Swansea games though. If we do win, then I'll believe for the first time that we're actually going to get in there this year and not fall just short.