Columnist Antti Heinola picked a fine night to return with his knee jerks, left to reflect on a dire defeat to Wolves at Loftus Road on Thursday night in this week’s piece.

Perch

By many accounts he was lucky to stay on the pitch on Saturday, but if he's trying to get himself suspended so he can have his feet up over the busy Christmas period (and don't think players don't do that), he's timed his run as badly as his idiotic tackle last night. Rare is that a red card to a home player is not greeted with absolute fury by the local faithful, but here was that rare beast. A red card you couldn't argue with.

And yet still, some blame has been placed elsewhere. One fan on here said it was Chery's fault because of a poor flick and Perch had to do 'something'. Well, yes. Stand his ground and not dive in two-footed when a player is closer to the halfway line than the penalty box. Act like you remember the stupid yellow card you got earlier. Newsflash: players give the ball away all the time, especially in this league - most of the time his teammates don't panic and launch themselves dangerously into a mindless challenge. Because that would be stupid.

And then Ian 'you won't catch me shouting at referees' Holloway blames the ref for the first yellow. Well, I'm not going to deny that last night's ref was boring, relied on guesswork, refused to allow the game to flow, was overly officious and generally making sure his face was on TV as much as possible so that he can take screengrabs and impress girls with it on Tinder later, but the rules are pretty clear this season. Abuse to officials is a yellow card. It might have been harsh, but we don't know what was said and the fact remains if Perch had just shut up and concentrated on playing football, he wouldn't have got that card. Blaming the ref is pathetic, I'm afraid, when Perch has no one to blame but himself. Perch cost us the game. That's the end of it.

Round Holes

But even if he did cost us the game, there were plenty of others queuing up to do likewise. Starting with our manager. 'At last!' went the cry. 'Round pegs! Round holes!' Apparently no one quite remembered Bignot, Palmer, Santos, Rose etc at CM. Or Santos up front. Or Biggie at left back. Or Gallen at right wing. As with JFH, though, Ollie had his reasons and had to cut his cloth as best he could. But he was up to his old tricks again last night. If JFH had started that formation with that personnel I suspect this board would have exploded at some stage last night.

Firstly, I'd love someone to explain what kind of formation we were playing, because I could not work it out for the life of me. After all the reports about people 'knowing their jobs' against Norwich, I felt possibly only the centre backs really knew what they were supposed to be doing last night. It looked like it would be 3-4-3 again, but Hall, without any doubt, was playing in central midfield. No idea why, when we had at least two actual centre midfielders on the bench. So it was four at the back then? Except on one side Perch had Chery in front of him, while on the other Robinson - pilloried by many - had... well, no one. Mainly because Hall, Sandro and Luongo all seemed to be playing in exactly the same position. Chery was neither a number ten nor a right winger. It was, even before the red card, a complete and utter lopsided mess with no width at all with which to supply our two strikers. The sending off might make the headlines, but I've no idea what was going on even before that.

It's funny - JFH was fired because the overwhelming belief was that this side should be challenging for the play-offs. Two defeats in and now it's the players who aren't working, who aren't good enough, who aren't leading properly (as if we weren't relegated twice and regularly shat on when Hill, Derry and Barton were at the club). I sorely want Ollie to do well, I love the man, on a personal level the greatest football moments of my life have come from him and, once, in front of him (I happened to score the best goal of my life in a friendly match in which he was on my team a few weeks after our promotion) - at least he might, I hope, get a bit more patience than JFH did - although, I doubt it, as there are already rumblings from some quarters.

Sandro

I won't waste too much time on him, because he clearly wastes very little time getting, you know, fit. If this tosspot had ever played three decent games in a row for us I could understand the frankly idiotic calls for him to be included in the side. But he hasn't. Ever. Had. Three. Decent. Games. Has he even had one? I don't recall it. A couple of 7/10s maybe.

And last night was just more of the same Sandro. A couple of big flashy hardcore tackles to get the crowd purring, but other than that poor distribution, poor positioning and most of all a total lack of fitness that saw him drop out of the game completely 50 minutes in. How is this even remotely acceptable? Ollie said he had to take him off because he couldn't do 60 minutes. So why play him then? Why? What was he going to do in those 60 minutes that was so special? Especially when we have a young, hungry central midfielder with a fantastic attitude and a great engine doing sweet FA on the bench who very clearly needs a solid run in the side in central midfield.

I get that Ollie is going through a process of giving everyone a chance, but this was a terrible, terrible selection that cost him dear. If you pick him, it means you have effectively lost a sub. You have three, now you have two. And because Perch got sent off, he was left with one unenforced sub with which to try and alter the game. It is madness. And what do we hear? Luongo is too lightweight because he doesn't make one or two bone-crunching tackles per game that get everyone roaring - even though he won the ball four times as often as Sandro last night.

And Ollie's explanation of Henry for Sandro made so little sense to me. I thought the booing was outrageous, but to some degree it was understandable when Cousins was left on the bench. What we needed was legs and dynamism, not yet another player on the pitch who doesn't want the ball and won't take responsibility when he does have it.

Chery

No, it wasn't his best game, but some of the stick he's receiving is getting a little silly now. Partly it's because some people seem to think other people think he's a great hero. I don't think anyone does. He doesn't even have his own song yet. But, in a little over a year, he's managed 14 goals and a lot of assists. And a lot more assists that have not been converted by our less-than-confident strikers. One of the positives towards the end of last season was the partnership between Polti and Chery - the way they linked up, the way Polter made space for Chery, the way Chery could find him, as he did so well v Norwich the other week. Now that relationship is almost as dormant as the Mahrez-Vardy one at Leicester (Mahrez has not found him with a pass since late September) because they play so far apart.

Last night, thanks to Perch, Chery had to drop incredibly deep to get the ball and, along with Luongo, was one of the only sparks (apart from Robinson's hopeful throw-ins) that looked like it might start a fire in the Wolves half. Yes, he gave the ball away a fair bit. But he was *trying* to make something happen. Trying to find a decent pass. Trying to unlock their defence. He was taking responsibility, even if it failed more often than not. And he was forced to have to do it from his own half most of the time, partly because of a poor selection and tactics that should have Bosh going mad about 'how to set a team up,' and partly because we were down to 10 men.

At the moment, I think he's trying to carry our team on his back, and he shouldn't be. He should be part of it, part of the threat, but he's trying to do too much, to play the killer pass too often and he's also playing too deep for someone who can be so effective when he has the ball at his feet 20 yards out.

Smithies

A howler at Ipswich, but one of his very few in his 11 months between the sticks for us. And as against Ipswich he was the difference between a defeat and an absolute shellacking. At least 4 tremendous saves, that might have earned us a point had Lynch been able to sort his feet out in time. At the moment, he seems to be nailed on player of the season. Who else is there? What he does particularly well is stand up and make himself big - three saves came from him not over-committing and simply filling up the space the striker had to aim at. After Tom Heaton was beaten so easily v Spain the other week, I have to ask how long we might hold onto him - he's better than at least a third of the goalies in the Prem.

Lonergan

Oh for a brief moment I thought it was happening all over again! The great Lonergan, how I love him. There was a time where we pretty much put two or three past him every time we played him. More importantly, he was in goal for Preston when we beat them at LR 4-0 in 2009; when Dex scored a late winner to make it 3-2 in 2008; and also earlier that year when we were 2-0 down in the 90th minute and Ainsworth and Dex both scored in injury time to grab us a draw. 'Andy Lonergan, it's happened again!' I was desperate to sing. But then Lynch missed his kick, and Lonners' nightmare was over. It had all looked so perfect when Ikeme got that injury. Lonny must have been bricking it. Oh well.

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Patrick added 19:07 - Dec 2 Think you're being very harsh. Very disappointing result, but I saw a team putting in a fight and trying to play some football. The whole match hinged on a (so called) experienced player having a brain f**t (which he seems to manage in every game, mostly getting away with it) and the rest of the team having to dig in and try to make up for it.
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Tomo_5 added 21:41 - Dec 2 Agree with Sandro... Agree with Perch.... Agree with formation.... The difference between us and Wolves was they seemed to be able to penetrate our box and give themselves good shooting opportunities. Whereas we relied on dead ball situations and slowing the ball down when we had opportunities to run at their defence. We were by far the better team in the first half, even when James Brain Fart Perch got sent off. Second half though we looked stretched and easy to dominate especially through central midfield. Every time Henry comes on I know we've lost.... So Karl but too defensive and passes the ball backwards more than forwards. Try playing backwards, you may be more useful...

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timcocking added 01:04 - Dec 3 Utter nonsense. You think a human can bottle up all emotion and injustice like it never happened in the heat of battle and just smile without saying something to the ref? Bullsh!t. Players with that little aggression in them would never make it as a professional footballer to begin with. Maybe if doctor spock was playing, but not a human being. That first yellow for dissent was a complete fcuking joke. All these ludicrous yellow cards just another way they are destroying and ruining football.

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timcocking added 01:07 - Dec 3 Overwhelming belief we should be challenging for the playoffs? Lol. Is there even one of us who thinks that?
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