The9

He's been doing bits with the main squad, but he's now back fully.

Mane can, and has. I really don't care if they say nice things to each other either. Rodriguez can play either side as well.

Not sure why, given that he was already at best 3rd choice when we signed Forster before Boruc threw his wobbler.

Yeah, that's true, but in context of the whole game even Tadic was decent.

It's a difficult one - we have Davis already as cover so there's not much point bringing in an old keeper unless they're obviously better than him (eg Cech, and we probably can't afford him), and Forster is already a young keeper with the other options also young keepers so I don't really see the point in bringing another inexperienced keeper in either. Plus we're unlikely to be able to attract a decent, experienced loanee keeper who is good enough to challenge Forster who we wouldn't just be better off getting in permanently. So not really sure what the best thing to do is.

Shall I couch it in the terms that Alderweireld reads balls in the air or on the ground incredibly well and is ALWAYS in position to clear them wherever they drop, forces attackers into mistakes with his anticipation, is an excellent marker with superb all-round positional play, very rarely makes errors with or without the ball and is the best passer of the ball in the back line, improves the players around him, and also fits into midfield fairly seamlessly (though he's not up there with Wanyama and Schneiderlin for whom it's a speciality) then? Fonte looks better for playing alongside Alderweireld because Alderweireld minimises errors in both of them, whilst Fonte looks better playing alongside Yoshida because Yoshida makes more errors than him.

Completely disagree. He is absolutely a class apart from any of our other players.

True, everyone was pretty good against Sunderpants last time. Not sure Djuricic is fit - also not sure he deserves another go - but it's typical that ALL of our numerous wide players seem to be off-form at the moment. Not including Mane in that as his best position is clearly in the hole behind Pelle.

Tadić was so bad at Stoke that I'd happily see him sit out the season. One backheel and a goal at Man U are all I remember of his entire season and he's had plenty more opportunities than Elia.

They're like a lovable little brother that wants to call us names, but I'm not going to pretend I'm not pleased they're up. That's because we get to get b0llocksed in New Forest pubs, patronise them and get an easy 6 points, just like in League One. The away match that season was one of the ones I enjoyed the most, along with Brighton (seaside, pubs and 3 points) and Orient (London pubs and 3 points). Unlikely to get them to beat in the League Cup next season if we make Europe though.

Not really, Suarez had just had a very successful World Cup, reaching the semi-finals (well, Uruguay did, he was suspended), I'm not sure how it can be seen as "luck".

Not sure why signing Heskey for £11m is seen as bad business, he scored 23 goals for them in 2000/1 and 16 goals the following season, then 10 and 12 (that includes International goals) despite playing in the same team as Michael Owen who was clearly playing as the more advanced striker. They also got half of that money back when they sold him to Birmingham in 2004. Christian Ziege was a German international who'd won 2 Bundesligas and a Scudetto , and (along with Heskey) won the League Cup, UEFA Cup and FA Cup in his first season with Liverpool. £5.5m was about the going rate for a player who was Boro's player of the season and they definitely wouldn't have sold him if it wasn't for a "compassionate clause" in his contract. Chris Kirkland was a highly rated prospect, a lot of money for a keeper but theoretically they're paying for 10 years of service - but he got injured and they got 25 league games in 5 years. If Forster's knee injury is serious in the longer term we've just done a lot worse there. Not really sure what the point is, but the 2000-era examples are RUBBISH.

"You're our second favourite club" is still my first favourite Bournemouth song.

Can we please just link the last thread on this?

He falls over a lot because he gets leaned on and shoved around a lot and he's of slender frame. He's more than happy to get clattered or make it look like he's getting clattered (tangling up with Spurs defenders in the box 3 times) to get a free kick and more times than not he gets the free-kick. He goes to ground pretty easily, but never without contact. Has he actually been booked for diving yet this season? I'd also much rather he went over than tried to stay on his feet and break a leg or cost himself a decent chance by trying to keep balance when impeded. Though hitting the ground didn't help Ben Davies avoid serious injury.

I'd keep Alderweireld at pretty near any cost, keep Elia if he's under £10m but only on a 2 year deal with a lot of incentives because I have a feeling he needs to be focused on improving to play at his best - and his best is defintely good enough if he can do it more often, and try and do better than Djuricic based on the little I've seen (and we've already got Gaston coming back for that role).

We don't play with 3 interchanging attacking midfielders supporting Pelle so he's got much less space to work in, but other than Pelle not appearing in wide positions, I don't see much difference in how Lambert and he play with their back to goal other than Lambert being better at protecting the ball and Pelle much more able to get in the box after he's laid it off.

Well yeah, and obviously they'll do that, which is why we needed to find other ways to score goals for a while and open up the possibilities so defences couldn't just mark Pelle or they'd run the risk of others scoring.

Easier for him to score early on when teams didn't know how good he was and weren't set up to counter it - once it became known that we were fairly defensive we tried the trick of shifting him deeper with Mane attacking the hole he created which led to Mane getting a few. Now they have to defend both those methods and it's created him a bit more room. Pelle's movement has been at exactly the same levels in the past 5 league matches, both the ones where he's scored and the ones he hasn't - he's mostly stayed out of the box, but it was notable that it took an early delivery of another striker (Long) to give him the service he needed to score the header on the weekend. Exactly the sort of off-the-cuff optimistic early delivery that we don't normally provide. It's impossible to get free in the box and create a chance if the ball doesn't come when you need it to - and if the weekend's offside stats showed anything, it's that we're not good at playing those killer passes when they have to be played.

I'm sure Pelle would look good in the Championship and League One as well. Lambert scored 17 in all competitions last season in a much more attacking side and taking all penalties and free kicks, Pelle has 17 so far with 4 matches left. Lambert also had spells of 5 and 6 matches without a goal last season, and hasn't scored more than once in any match since August 2012. Pelle's done that 4 times this season and most recently did that 2 days ago. Pelle's already at the level now that a waning Lambert was last season, and is likely to improve as he gets used to English defences - now they've had the time to react to his skillset. His impact in the first couple of months of the season shows how potent he'd be if it wasn't for teams choosing to nullify his threat.

Oh, and let's not forget that Ben Davies fell over at least 3 times, and Mason slipping gifted us the first goal...

The sprinklers have been on at half time often enough this season for me to wonder why they insist on running the big inflatable Veho balls/last leg of the relay straight at the one sprinkler pretty much every time I see it. What made me laugh was watching the match back and Michael Owen banging on about moulded soles and players not wearing studs when they were looking straight at the bottom of Davies' boot showing a hybrid of metal studs mixed with the fixed plastic studs in the middle of the sole and the heel. Not to mention that he wore Umbro boots, and at one point they produced a sole with a built in circular design to aid turning that was linked to an absolute pile of knee injuries, including at least one of his own.

The registration deadline is the closure of the transfer window in Jan (or Feb 1 this year), but as West Ham showed by signing an out of contract striker, you can add to it with Premier League permission if you have less than 25 players registered - but the out of contract signing new player rules and the "loaned out" player coming back rules may not be the same. He must have been registered to Saints before the start of the season in order for us to be able to loan him to Bournemouth in the first place, and they took over his registration until the conclusion of their season as a season long loan. There's also a registration deadline for loans (end of March) but that's only relevant if he isn't already automatically re-registered with us after Bournemouth's last match, which you'd think he must be under the nature of the registration rules. You'd think. But he definitely isn't named in our 25-man player list - and there's also a rule that says players MUST be listed if they are eligible for a club (and players out on loan don't have to be). It's why Barnard (or maybe it was Sharp, or Forte) was listed one time but wasn't another, depending on whether he was already on loan or not. I'm pretty sure that if we wanted to pick Boruc we'd be allowed to by the Premier League though. He's registered with us and there's scope to request additional players, as well as the GK situation being a little looser than the outfielder situation to begin with.

As I said, whether he can play and whether he should play are two different things.

Makes sense. In that case we said hi!