If you keep the ball in the opponents half " flukes " tend not to be fatal. When you have 18 players in your own penalty area anything can happen.

Nail hit right on the head. Teams that concede regular in the last minutes of the game are lacking in either mental fitness or physical fitness, or both. Fergies teams scored regularly very late on because they had the physical fitness to play for the full 90 minutes and the mental resilience to keep playing football the right way under severe time pressure. They knew that five minutes is a long time in football and chances will come if you play your football and don't just keep lumping it onto the centre halves head from the half way line.

I agree. Nobody is above criticism in my book. The manager gets the pats on the back when things are going well, he gets kicked up the backside when they aren't . That's fair enough for me , any other way is just asking for trouble.

I've not got a problem with that. I'll just keep my eye on the stats for this season.

How many did we concede when that shyster Coyle was in charge that season ? I don't see the point of being economical with the facts. You're not a teacher are you ?

It's a bit of a pointless discussion because we won't be signing Allen any time soon. Having said that he'd be perfect to replace either of Smallwood or Evans. We don't want him playing too far forward, we want him getting the ball forward from the back third of the pitch to the front third. Feeding Dack and Graham. What those two ( Smallwood and Evans ) rarely do.

Tugay only got 13 goals for us in 270 appearances but I'd call him a playmaker. Allen's a class act at this level.

I didn't see the game but I agree with you about Joe Allen, just what we're short of.

In that case why don't you start a thread regarding goals in the first ten minutes ?

At the end of the season we'll see. At the moment not being able to play out a game has cost us 2 points already. I hope we don't need them come next May.

I'm not on about last season. The opposition last season was very poor by and large, it took most of them all their time to score at any point in the game. It's the seasons before that when we were playing at this level and conceding late goals regularly that worries me.

People who actually went yesterday are pointing out that the Evans and Smallwood centre midfield pairing wasn't too impressive. I've come to the conclusion that at this level you need more from midfield than they've got to offer. The two of them aren't going to contribute much going forward and if Dack has an off day we're struggling to create much. I know it's early days yet but we seem to have plenty of water carriers in midfield but no game changers. If this Scots lad is a game changer we should be looking at him. With a bit of luck we can loan some of our surplus water carriers out. Having said that there doesn't appear to be a queue forming to take them off our hands.

I'm not a fan either and I hope we can do better but if he does come in he's an improvement on Nuttall and probably on Samuel. I know I'm not saying much there.

You've got to draw the line somewhere. I think these days when you regularly get 5 minutes time added on that 85 minutes is about right.

Well you can never have too many hard lads. Ask Mark Hughes.

Several nails hit well and truly on the head.

Yeah, he'd a good spring for a short guy, as did Matt Jansen. He gave opposing centre halves plenty of grief in more ways than one. A Robbie Savage with skill.

I know that and we didn't play the two together.. We had Newall and Speedie. Heading ability seems not to have the significance it used to have. Modern football I suppose.

Or somebody with some pace who carries a goal threat . If I had a £1 for every time I've seen a team try to hang on for a win and then get pipped in injury time I'd be a very rich man.

I'm compiling a list of goals scored and conceded in the period 85 mins plus . So I make that we are minus 1 goal and 2 points.

One or two people will like the bulls eye logo. Something to aim at when their particular scapegoat is playing. It's still " putting lipstick on a pig " though.

That's just your opinion. It isn't a fact.

Last time we played at this level we conceded in the last 10 minutes of games regularly. In fact I think I remember seeing a league table were all the games had finished at 80 minutes that season, we were mid table ! Like it or not teams with a poor mentality concede at the end , teams with a good mentality score at the end. I call it the Venky's curse. It's been happening much too often since they took over. The idea of bringing Conway on to give Williams an helping hand is looking at the game through the wrong end of the telescope. You play the game out in your opponents half as much as you can. You bring a winger on who's going to give their full back problems not give him the freedom of the flank to back up his own winger. One thing you must have in that situation is somebody who can hold the ball up. Yeah, I know, it's obvious. You need a smart player who can buy the cheap free kicks that take you down the pitch and run down the clock. The sort of player who can take the sting out of your opponents. Taking both of our ball holding players off isn't the smartest thing to do. Samuel is not an hold up player, Nuttall is not an hold up player, Armstrong is not an hold up player, Gallagher is not an hold up player. I'll be keeping my eye on this thread. I'll see how many goals we concede at the death and how many we score. Last time we played in this division I'd say for ever goal we scored near the end we conceded six or seven. Anyway the clock is running, we are minus 1 goal and 2 points after today's game.

They've got a good manager though.

I'm not a Gallagher fan. He's just a bigger version of Armstrong for me. I don't get why people want to sign both of them. We need another Graham pronto.