The9

FWIW I can safely say the World Handball All-Stars from the past 100 years could parade past my house on the back of a truck with "World Handball All-Stars" on it, all with individual name badges, and I still wouldn't be able to name a single one of them. In fact we could probably play "World Handball Champion or north european farmer" and I'd probably get less than 50% right.

Mystery solved.

He's done three crossfield passes that haven't come off in the past 12 months. That's probably because he was told to stop trying to do it. Unfortunately some people ONLY see that and forget the fact he's been superb for us the other 99.9% of the time.

Or £28m without Townsend, right?

Well, I've watched the entire match twice, he didn't "bottle" any challenges, he wasn't given the run around all night - Midtjylland barely even attacked us for most of the game for a start, his positional sense was absolutely fine, and he's never offered anything going forward so that's hardly a surprise. He certainly could have done without slicing a clearance into his own box towards the end, and some dodgy crossing, but that still doesn't make him anything like as bad as you seem to think. He's not first choice, he doesn't deserve to be, but at the same time he's nowhere near as bad as some clowns are making out. Vignal played Prem football for 4 clubs and Champions League football for Liverpool and in Spain's Primera Liga, so could be worse.

Fair argument, but then one of my grandads (under no pressure from anyone) just decided to stop eating when he was admitted to hospital, pretty much has the same effect.

I had to laugh when I saw they were 3-0 down, even though it was bloody obvious they'd stage some sort of comeback. Ask any of them if they'd have been happy with a point at home to Morecambe at the start of the match. Also, there's not a great deal between anyone in this league, bottom but one no wins this season Newport only lost by 1 of 5 goals against 4 in 4 winners Orient (who are now 4 points ahead of Portsmouth after 4 matches, btw).

Your use of the 1- means everyone stopped reading right there, as you clearly have no clue what you're talking about.

Hilarious. We will finish comfortably above them.

If anyone knows random European footballers it's Crab "FM version with full skinning and all the latest player pics uploaded to his game" Lungs. Two of them do look like 2008 B Rabbit with beards though.

Seemed like a perfectly likely and rational explanation to me. What's weird is when people try to claim that anyone has suggests that must therefore be exactly what I think happened and that definitely nothing else could have. Anyway, when both Fonte and Pelle start tomorrow you can stop worrying about it.

Well at least you recognised it was the same argument. Did you see the breakdown of the Midtjylland match I did which showed that we're still playing the same 4-2-3-1 in the same way - except that Rodriguez played in the hole against them, and we didn't have any defensive problems caused by the AMs because we had Romeu and Wanyama shielding? Not sure formation is the problem with Targett trying to catch out the rest of the defence by crossing the ball for Midtjylland, Fonte nodding it directly to Sparv, or Caulker repeatedly heading directly to their players 40 yards from goal.

Clyne was particularly toss in that match.

From what I've seen so far, we need 2, at the moment we've got 1. Maybe we just consider Yoshida as RB cover now... Caulker needs more games in a solid defence but his presence is part of it not looking like a solid defence. To be honest, having seen us concede to Midtjylland with Romeu and Wanyama in front of Caulker and Fonte and some of the mistakes made, I could see why we'd want to strengthen or CB options - I suspect he's 3rd choice behind Koulibaly and van Dijk though, and of course without a team his agent is going to be happy to put word out that we might have an interest just in case it prompts someone else to make an offer.

He wasn't going to play often enough for us, and he didn't sign the deal we offered him. We would have done all this in the knowledge that Schneiderlin was going. Clearly Clasie and probably Romeu were on the radar long ago.

Wanyama is about 5 years younger than the others too. Different recovery plans seems the most likely.

No one has suggested it's "instead". The longer it goes on without him signing, the cheaper his wages will get.

I think you misunderstand what "doing things as a team" means. Unless you think we should get rid of the goalkeeper? The main reason (as usual) that this discussion has come up is because Wanyama hoofed a ball clear and we didn't have anyone outside the area at the time. I actually agree that Mane would be an ideal outlet, but I suspect what we do to defend against Midtjyelland isn't the same as how we defend other teams.

Because someone else might sign him in the meantime.

I think I'd rather have Vlaar than Gardos sat on my bench.

Massive overreaction.

They are two of our older players and they're also two of our most essential players who've played every minute, they may need different recovery schedules to the others.

Literally have no idea what would not have been learned from previous games by picking this side.

Pedlar. Just the one.

Koeman has said on a couple of occasions that it's the inability to get on the training pitch and work through things they've identified from opponents. But the travel also impacts on fitness levels, how quickly injured players can recover, and longer journeys (which we've not had any of yet) will have a fatiguing effect as well. Also, the level of performance required in L1 and Championship is far lower than in the Prem week in week out.