IlsonDerby

Only game I’ve not watched either live or via a quick flight on Nord airways is Oxford away. What a match to bloody miss!!! I think those minutes watching them getting spanked by Crewe in the cup should count as double too 😂

They were honest last season - we had the highest wage bill in the division didn’t we at £17m. That is a budget to compete for autos in league 1. I suspect that we’ll have a wage bill of around £25m this year. The average being £31m but that’s distorted by the parachute payment clubs. It’d be a wage bill slightly over Preston’s which would seem about right considering our crowds are much bigger and our revenue streams are therefore bigger.

He was a top 10 player in the whole division according to whoscored. He showed what he can do at Charlton. Let’s get him up to them levels and enjoy him.

Not like our fans to write a player off without a fair chance 😂

That run of games under Clough when we had Bueno, Commons and Kuqi linking up before he s*** the bed and went defensive.

With Ipswich all but up I wonder if he goes in for Ladapo again? Wrong side of 30 isn’t he now but wouldn’t surprise me. I think we need to assume not every player we sign will be 22-28, as long as most are and we bring the average age of our squad down by about 2 years we’ll be fine.

Ebou adams a 8? What would a 9/10 look like to you?! 😂

CBT with a full Warne pre season under him could be very interesting. He’s got bags of ability - finished in the whoscored top 10 players in league one because of his output at Charlton.

What I noticed yesterday is that so many more people were already in their seats 10/15 minutes before kick off allowing us to build up the atmosphere organically. Usually it’s half empty until 2.55 and then everyone piles up as kick off is about to happen. I’d like to see that continue so we can keep building up that atmosphere. We’ll need it next season. We’re likely going to have a tough time up there. There’s no stand out poor sides and our manager himself has acknowledged our squad needs huge changes. They’re going to need us fans to drag them over the line.

I think had there been anything to play for in the last two minutes he wouldn’t have blown early - the crowd would have been told to move back and we’d have played it out. I was still shocked though when it was blown 2 minutes early 😂

Scab. Hopefully replaces us in league one this summer.

He’s done what was expected of a derby manager this season which was a difficult feat (when was the last time a manager lived up to the bookies expectations for us?) but his team expected promotion and a lot of fans expected the same so fair play to him. I’ve found the football to be tough to watch at times but at the same time I’ve loved the season as a whole. The downs made the ups that much sweeter and I’m willing to put the football down to pragmatism in the face of restrictions to how he could shape his squad. I’ve always said I liked him as a guy and now as a manager he’s achieved success with us too. Im now reserving judgement on what his football can look like until after this unrestricted transfer window where hopefully he will get in the profile of player he wants. I don’t expect even a top half finish next season I just want to see a squad beginning to come together and take shape with a younger profile of player and to not be a chance of relegation in the last match of the season. Fair play to anyone who never lost faith particularly after the Stevenage away performance. His staff and he managed to turn it around from that point and went in a run that would have achieved 103 points if extrapolated over a 46 match season. That’s incredible dominance. All derby aren’t we?

you’re as dull as anyone you’re criticising in this comment. Up the championship rams!

I think we’re in a slightly different position to those 2 clubs. Plymouth had to spend a chunk to just be as good as before due to loan players being crucial for their promotion. Sheff also didn’t seem to release as many of us and they had a manager change which would have messed up some recruitment plans. Im hoping we’ve had lists upon lists of available and suitable players for if we went up drawn up since September and we’ve been scouting and fine tuning those lists since.

Former ram from that time period who I’d be interested to look at: Emil Riis Jakobsen

GK: Wildsmith, Vickers RWB: Ward, Wilson, Nyambe LWB: Elder, Sibley CB: Cashin, Nelson, Forsyth, Bradley, Rooney, Nyambe CM: Thommo Wing/Attack: NML, CBT, Barkhuizen, Striker: Washington, Think it’s clear a decision needs to be made on Rooney - I’d like to see him loaned out to a league 1 club as I think waiting behind Nelson and Nyambe for the RCB role will limit opportunity. I’d like another excellent CB in to add to the quality of Cash and Nelson. I think we need 4 new CMs with 2 in the style of Ebou and 2 in the style of Bird. I think we need someone like Ebou playing every single match for Warnes style to work. I’d like 2 wide/attackers if real quality to be pushing straight away for a starting spot. I’d like 2 strikers of championship quality with Barkhuizen and Wash used sparingly to support up top but also with the option of playing a front 3 so only 1 needed for some matches. I think a minimum of 10 players capable of stepping into the first team. A mixture of honest pros needing a fresh start somewhere from the championship and some bright young things (Kane etc) from league 1 could go a long way to plugging these gaps with a few real high quality prem loans to finish it off. I suspect Warne will want 12 as he’ll want 3 strikers in and probably another LWB option. Id retain those I’ve put in the squad list above and release all others. Do I think Smith could do a job? Yeah. But he’s out of contract and could those resources be better used? I think so.

I suspect he wouldn’t feel comfortable telling you lot he’d turned one down to be fair 😂 I think he’d want some guarantees about who starts next season as number 1. I think he’s earned it but we know Vickers is Warnes guy.

We have been in the best form in the division comfortably since that defeat to Stevenage including finishing the last 6 games top of the form table too. We went up because of how many matches we won. This might sound obvious but what I mean is there were barely any draws. We either lost or we won and a win and a loss is better than 2 draws… We went up because of our defence. It is clear from watching and from the statistics that to succeed next year we need more goals. I’d imagine the recruitment team are aware of this and I’ll be excited to see who we manage to bring in to fill these positions. Anyway some interesting tables: Image 1 rates us as the best team in the league based on whoscored metrics (along side posh) which shows just how good Pompey were at grinding out results when it wasn’t going their way. Image 2 just shows the impressive number of wins be the very high number of losses. I wonder if a team has ever gone up automatically with 10 league losses before? Image 3 shows the xG created by all teams. Remember this isn’t saying that we should have scored X goals it is saying that we created chances of the quality that would on average return X goals but again you can see we are down to fifth. Final image is the league table from October 29th. Just goes to show that since that very very toxic night in Stevenage we have been an absolute force. Over 2.2 points per game and a goal difference of +35!

It was like a carpet! Some effort from earlier on in the season when the rain had ruined it. I don’t ever want to see any ‘bobbled’ miss kicks from our lads again 😂

Loved it. Just stood there letting the emotions run over me whilst the pitch invasion happened and then after I’d taken it all in we went down on to get a photo with me mum and dad on the pitch. We stayed on there for the bounce and celebrations and then left. One little issue - if anyone knows the 2/3 fans that went to the Carlisle fans giving it the big one (not those that were applauding them) just clip them round the tabs. Idiots. Just won promotion and they want to head over to the away fans giving it w anchor signs.

Dunno what people are whinging about. The fans invading the pitch literally always happens for a promotion. We aren’t alone in doing that. fortunately only one tw4t went on before the full time whistle and our own fans got him off. It’d be lovely to see players and their kin celebrate. Hopefully they’ll do an event at pride park like when we went up in 07 for that.

Sat and cried my eyes out in the car on the drive when it was announced the sale of the club had gone through and we were saved. Was holding back the tears today. Felt so overwhelmed with emotions. what a day!

Daniel lad I hope you enjoyed it today up there. Heard a rumour we’re signing an N Blackman in summer - probably nothing in it 👀😂

And what a match it was - I hope you manage to keep up to date with it all without being at the matches. As pride park sang ‘d*dgy sticks are F’ing class’