With midseason transfer business usually dragging until the end of the term, the club endeavour to continue vetting targets. Lately we’ve heard Leon Best from Coventry – scorer of a wonder goal v Pompey in their FA Cup replay earlier this week – and Wes Hoolahan of Norwich, an assiduous winger, ideal as a replacement for Adam Johnson should he naff off to Sunderland or Everton. Throw in a spot of QPR’s Wayne Routledge and you have enough chum to hold the baying mob, temporarily at least. Though descriptions of old Wayne as a ‘combo midfielder who can play upfront’ invoke inherent hatred derived from similar failed experiments – see exhibits Aliadiere, Emnes, and/or Tuncay.

Collectively, it’s enough to stimulate hope. There’s a distinct outline in the new vision – more spine, steel, focus, and discipline – less faffing about w/ pretty passing and precision movement, because we simply haven’t the resources or personnel to implement it. And Gordon Strachan keeps getting managerial work not just for his acerbic wit, but because his austere system that emphasises grinding and plodding and fighting really does work.

The usual suspects remain present: a worryingly thin squad; a sometimes-flagrant lack of purpose or intent; disruption of a tested formula – the supposition being that this isn’t the juncture to test a new central defensive partnership…we’ve yet to view the carnage, but the ever-reliable Gunner 71 was quick to point out how every breakdown was conceived through the middle of the park; compounding that was the absence of Gary O’Neil – his invention and will were sorely missed. Mark Yeates had a day so bad it will probably signal the end of Tony McMahon’s run in the starting XI…Yeatsie was so abjectly lost all day – West Brom terrorized the left flank so often it could have induced motion sickness for poor Macca. Gazza has been rumoured to be overly critical of the academy product – surely this will be his justification for finally dropping him.

The back-slapping is largely over…it’s getting personal. The papered-over cracks of the recently forged goodwill are beginning to fragment again – it was destined to happen when so much was invested in a subpar repair of the totaled wreckage emanating from last season. But we will continue rallying around the flag, no matter how many times it becomes riddled w/ holes, preventing proud flying.

Coventry next – a nice, normal week of training respite…