qwertyell

Like he famously kept West Brom up in the only job he's had in 5 years of semi retirement? Not sure the raw materials of an Allardyce side is there at Leeds. They can't defend for shit, the midfield is quite lightweight, and there's no-one up front to lump the ball long to - Bamford isn't particularly good in the air or strong. Time will tell.

Feel like it could be Scott Parker. He's got two teams promoted from the Championship, even if he hasn't been able to cut it in the Premier League yet. Young, but with experience - some good, some bad. Plays pretty decent football. Likes to dress up pretty on the sidelines. He's ticking a lot of boxes. Even got a 0-9 on his record.

Sounds about right for Twitter experts. Blackpool fans will tell you Patino is the slowest player they've ever seen and physically underdeveloped for men's football. An unholy hybrid of Elyounoussi and Jake Hesketh.

He was quite highly rated as a youngster at Arsenal. Played CM for England U20s when they won the World Cup. He just hasn't amounted to anything. Seemingly no drive to improve. I think his England caps were a result of a lot of injury withdrawals, and the fact that England have no left back options beyond Shaw and the perennially injured Chilwell, and Maitland-Niles happened to be filling in at LB for Arsenal at the time. I'm pretty confident he won't be playing for England again.

Think Leeds are one of them. Absolutely fallen to bits defensively, young keeper's lost his confidence, new manager bounce has been and gone. And their run in genuinely doesn't look like it'll provide any more points. I'd say they're finished for the season on 30 points. That's not going to be enough. Leicester, I think, will weasel out of it. Need to beat Everton tonight. Saints, Leeds and Everton/Forest, I reckon. Although Forest will buy themselves some breathing space when they beat us next week.

He's a massive West Ham fan. Might as well wait for that job to come up in the next month or so.

Since getting the monkey off his back by scoring his first goal against Man City - sometimes the catalyst for a striker to go on a bit of a run - Mara hasn't played a single minute. That was 4 games of classic man management ago. So I'd imagine he's due a random start out of nowhere. Probably at left back or something.

When there were rumours of Ings leaving, I said we'd be comfortably relegated if we ended up with Che Adams as our first choice striker. And here we are. Four transfer windows we've had to buy a striker worth a damn since Ings left. Ultimately, that's the major failure that's killed us. Can't win games if you can't score goals. Beyond that, relegation is just a matter of time for the likes of Saints. Unless an oil rich state buys us, we're only ever going to be spinning plates, desperately fighting against the inevitability of gravity. Any good players we sign want to leave us immediately (we even encourage it as a negotiating tactic: "join us and we'll be your stepping stone to joining a proper club"). Any good players coming through the academy want to leave us immediately. If we've ever had a good manager, they've wanted to leave us immediately. It's impossible to build anything, to have a long-term vision. So we just limp along, day by day, hoping to hang on at the top table a little bit longer, for no other reason than paying the bills. There's no ambition beyond that. No sporting ambition at any rate. It's hard to care too much. Certainly no-one in the squad does. We've been circling the drain to the Championship for a number of years. Perhaps we could've staved it off for a bit longer with better decision making from the top, but so what? We've got absolutely nothing to show for a decade in the PL. We haven't invested in the stadium or infrastructure. I don't think we've even finished the training ground. We've just existed, survived for a while, and then dropped with a whimper - and barely a player worth retaining. An entirely futile existence.

Only been watching sporadically, but seems like we're predictably inert in possession, toothless up front, and over stretched in defence. This season can't end soon enough.

Better than the other direction.

At least we learned that the "get it in the mixer for Onuachu" approach that so many seem to think is the path to glory is another dead end. Lumbering donkey didn't win a single thing in the air.

Exciting game. Hard to feel anything other than cheated by a squad that only turns up when they know they're in the shop window. No sign whatsoever of this fight last week. Suspect we'll do the usual and down tools in the second half again. Alcaraz, Lavia, Bella-Kotchap excellent. Both full backs really poor.

Would be more of a shrug.

Doesn't matter - the players and fans did the moment they hired Jones. Too late to turn the tide now. Half the squad have already planned their escape and are just going through the motions.

Tough on the kid, everyone piling in on him. I've been a critic, but it feels a bit indulgent to keep on kicking him now. It's quite similar to the Mara signing - neither were ready to play at this level, and the expectation was that the club were shoring up some talents for the future and would be bringing in experienced first choices in goal and up front, and it just never happened. These guys have been dropped in at the deep end in key positions, in a shite team, and getting absolutely buried for the club's negligence. That being said, I just don't see anything special in Bazunu's make up that suggests he's got a ceiling much higher than he's already reached. Experience isn't going to stop him being relatively small for a keeper with a weak jump/dive.

Everton and Leicester are probably the two we want to take with us as it sounds like financially they'd both be in horrible trouble and fighting less for promotion than simply staying in business.

Doesn't matter who leaves. None of them will be a loss. They've shown how much playing for the club means to them. Rip it up and start again.

Weak from Maitland-Niles, garbage from Bazunu.

I think they're both a little flaky - too early to call a winner. Arsenal's run in looks harder, but City's schedule is more demanding.

Yes. We'll take £10m-£15m to somewhat break even, with his contract into its final year. Chump change for any PL club, and he'll have admirers in France, Spain, Germany and beyond at that price.

Shame about the late concession. The boys haven't disgraced themselves at all. Which makes you wonder where they've been for all the winnable games they've failed to turn up to this season. A draw's not out of the question in the second half - City are a flaky side at times. Come on lads, nothing to lose.

8 game ban for Mitrovic. First game back: Southampton (a). I mean, we'll already be down by then, but fucking hell - just our luck.

We've picked up 11 points in 15 games (45 available points) since Hassenhuttl belatedly left. We're on course for 29-30 points in total. We'll finish bottom. Deservedly.

If only he could've thrown on Vestergaard and Jonno Quick. Pretty sure you need a bit more than a single attribute to be any good. Our tallest and fastest players have thus contributed the grand total of fuck all. No goals. No assists. In spite of their impressive tallness and fastness. Unforgivable indeed.

What does that even mean? We've had three managers picking the "wrong side" this season. What exactly is the right side from this squad of slurry? Everyone that doesn't get selected suddenly becomes a theoretical world beater - until they get picked and it turns out they're not. It seems painfully obvious that we're just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic at this stage. The quality isn't there, no matter how you configure it. Whether Selles is a long term bet as manager is a separate issue. But he's not doing any worse than his predecessors this season, which suggests the problems don't begin or end with who the manager is.