The9

I was more surprised that Mayuka came on for Davis when we were already 3-0 down, THAT was the ideal opportunity to get him on - though managers often don't like to bring young players on in losing situations, City had 9 men soon after and he'd have had plenty of space to try and make things happen without much hope of pulling the game back.

If you think Alderweireld in defensive midfield was weakening us based on that performance, I have to ask what you were watching. He was superb. Plus Reed isn't a defensive midfielder. Yoshida of course was his usual level, not good enough in that company.

He is talking b01110cks, but worth noting that we were (still) 2nd this time last year.

Ah, wondered what you meant - I didn't see it at the time. That's still a fair bit rarer than the gazillion variations of the home kit from last year doing the rounds, including the near-inexplicable "all white with blue trim" kit that Sunderland wore at Palace the other week (when they had a perfectly good set of yellow shirts sitting around from last season). Still wondering if we're going to be breaking out yellow third shirts for Palace or if we'll get away with the home kit (which Sunderland didn't) or navy shirts/yellow/yellow.

Does it? Why?

Advertising at every ground in the Prem, most of whom don't wear Adidas shirts.

Nice of City to pay us the respect of pulling Nasri for Milner as soon as they went one up. Though the ref was absolutely diabolical today, he'd already ballsed up 3 times by the time he wrongly booked Aguero for the pen they should have had (though he dived later and wasn't booked...).

But all these people have been telling me this feels so different to last season and how much more strength in depth we have?

Also Mexico, which is the same as Colombia away in terms of style (and makes a nice blank template for Photoshops)

A few more recent adidas kits for 2015, showing similar themes to previous designs with the band around the bottom of the shirt and the motif with the holes in it. Paraguay: New York City FC: Colombia (Copa America 2015):

Pelle's got some deep lines on his cheeks for a 20-something. And that's about the level of my interest in this thread.

Cork did pretty well in the hole for the 20-odd minutes he played it when he came on as sub earlier in the season (and scored), not sure I'd want him and his awful shooting in there for a whole match though, but if we want a combative midfield and Davis isn't fit then him, Schneiderlin and Wanyama would be the way to go, with them pushing forward in rotation to make them difficult to pick up. None of them are exactly through ball threaders, though Schneiderlin can pick a pass.

You can only beat the teams in front of you (and a lot of teams would take our comprehensive win over Newcastle given their recent form).

I'm talking about the squad and the player "role" pairing, not strike partnerships. There's never been any suggestion that we would play with Long and/or Mane up top all season, including the League Cup which would be the perfect time to try it out. Bit of a stretch to say Gallagher's injury has stopped him starting instead of Pelle (except maybe in the last League Cup game) and Rodriguez is a red herring until he actually makes a squad - do you see us starting with all 3 of Long/Mane/Rodriguez but neither Pelle or Tadic, because I don't?

I think we should leave some space for all the CL legends we'll be adding in the next 10 years.

They pair up as 2 target men in Dzeko and Negredo, and 2 trickier dribbling players in Aguero and Jovetic. So basically you've just shown that we need another "target" type like Pelle to give us the same variety 4 up top as Mane and Long are our dribblers. We have Gallagher, but he's injured and a bit unproven. The point is we already have a "Plan B", it involves completely changing the way we play. If we want to retain the way we play, we need a Pelle-style player. If we're fine playing in different ways then we can sign a different kind of player. Koeman not having dropped Pelle for any match so far tells me he knows what system works best.

I know, that was ART-level bullsh11t.

Absolutely, but the point is we NEED to have attacking options on the bench to maximise our possible outcomes.

Erm, but the point here is that we don't currently do that, as Pelle is in the side. Changing what we've been doing to great success for no reason, or because Pelle's injured, would probably weaken the side. Which is why there's a discussion about a like for like Pelle replacement (which still isn't Lambert).

You're asking Lambert to play defensive midfield? I guess he could do that as well as Gerrard.

Dakar in Senegal is 2700 miles away, that's nearer than New York and without any significant time zone changes. There are countries within UEFA further away than that (eg Azerbaijan is 2800 miles). The AFCON qualifiers which aren't in normal FIFA international slots (there are some) we're not even required to release players for, the rest happen in exactly the same windows as every other qualifying tournament and we have no matches in those timescales and even had 2 extra recovery days in this one. The AFCON was scheduled to be in Morocco, a whole 3 hour flight away, and clubs have negotiated availability around the Championships for years so they don't lose players for the "two months" people seem to flap about. If Senegal win the thing he'll be gone for around 5 weeks - including 2 weeks before the thing starts. Tournament is 17 January - 8 February, 3 weeks long. Ok, it's now in Equatiorial Guinea, but that's still 3500 miles in the same timezone and nearer than, say, Chicago. Basically, if Senegal want Mane from us for 2 weeks in advance of their opening game, he'll be gone by about Jan 3rd, depending on whether Senegal play on the opening day or not. Our fixtures in that period are: Arsenal H 1 Jan AFCON Join-up begins - may be negotiable FA Cup R3 4 Jan(ish) Man U A 11 Jan AFCON R1 begins 17 Jan Newcastle A 17 Jan [Lge Cup SF 1st Leg] [FA Cup R4 24 Jan] AFCON R1 ends [Lge Cup SF 2nd Leg] AFCON QF ends Swansea H 1 Feb AFCON SF ends QPR A 7 Feb AFCON Final Bearing in mind we're not even in the Lge Cup Semis or FA Cup 4th round yet, and Senegal aren't in the knockout stages of the AFCON yet, he might end up only missing 2 Premier League matches and an FA Cup 3rd round tie he might not even have been needed for. If they get to the Final, and we're still in the FA Cup and League Cup, and he leaves before New Year, yeah, he could miss 9 matches, but hell, we'd be in the 4th Round of the FA Cup and the League Cup semis for that to happen. In fact, if we can get Senegal/Mane to agree not to leave until a week before the tournament begins after the Man U match, we'd only lose him for the Newcastle match and, given travelling time, three cup games we haven't even qualified for yet.

You are correct, Bertrand is not permitted to play against his parent club.

He made a decision to come for it and didn't get it - I also think Alderweireld would have cleared it, but that's the decision he made, and it's not really a situation that occurs all that often to be concerned with - if he'd stayed rooted and Toby hadn't got there he'd have been criticised for that too. As for "never recovered", he made a load of clean catches in a crowded box after it and looked perfectly composed, before late on having to try and punch a ball from a cross when the striker was precisely where the ball went and he couldn't get to it - if he hadn't challenged for it they might have scored again. His worst performance was at Spurs, where he did look off-form, and even then he only conceded once. Oh, and Villa were going to play like that whether 1-0 up or 6-0 down.

Dunno about you but I want to win it!

We didn't need last night to know that. It's been patently obvious since Gallagher got injured that we don't have any direct replacement, I've been b1tching about our lack of depth for months when most others have been saying how much stronger we are than last season, etc. Tiredness has crept up on the whole squad and it really showed last night... good job we're not playing 3 top sides in the next couple of weeks, isn't it?