The9

What did you think he was trying to do, and what did you think he was doing?

There was a bloke in front of me on Tuesday who turned around to our group every single time Gaston didn't do precisely what the bloke in front of us wanted him to do with the ball. He also turned around after his goal to point out that Gaston's finish was, presumably, the sort of thing he expected him to do with every kick...

I'd have some of 2000/1, seeing as I was informed that we'd come in from 1500/1 to 150/1 having beaten Liverpool.

I was as disillusioned with football when we sacked Adkins as I was watching us in the first half on Saturday.

Yes, I really believe this. I am struggling to see why people are so excited about us not being very interesting to watch and not really being much better, if at all, than when we were actually interesting to watch. End of this season, if we're top 8, then we'll have progressed. At the moment, we're solid defensively and we had a good result at Liverpool, but the rest of it has been unimpressive and pretty much in line with the outright poor results of the last few weeks of last season, when we weren't playing for anything.

I didn't understand what you'd typed, to be honest.

I thought Davis was nearly as poor on Saturday as he was good on Tuesday, and he was pretty good on Tuesday. Davis misplaced a lot of passes on the weekend, but he has his workrate and play-breaking to fall back on. You're right to say Gaston's not lacking in effort or completely lightweight, but equally he can still improve that area a lot, and he does tend to glide into losing the ball which strength would help with, and is often sloppy in passing which is purely a concentration issue when he has the technical ability he does show. My view is that Gaston is excellent technically but needs to apply himself more and not doing so leads to mistakes, whilst, say, Wanyama has all the effort but is never going to be able to be a great passer no matter how he concentrates.

I don't think there's much difference in Gaston's workrate and Osvaldo's to be honest, they could both improve but neither are actually unacceptable.

I think at the moment he's been getting a rest having not had the past two summers off (like Yoshida) and I expect the plan is to pick him more regularly as a starter for home games when he proves he's worth a place. At the moment there are other more effective players ahead of him, but improving his fitness to support an enhanced workrate and maybe some additional strength will certainly help with that. Just look at how well the "get fit by working hard and then start games" worked for Billy Sharp in early 2012.

Maybe not call the thread "three years ago today..." then?

The OP can't even count to three correctly, let's not go nuts here.

This is part of the problem for me, we're set up well to get results against teams who expect to beat us, but can't break down teams who come for a point. There are a lot more of the latter than the former. So far this season we've lost to Norwich and drawn at home to Sunderland and West Ham. For "visionary appointment" and unquestionable success they'd have to be at least two wins and a draw.

The sword thing is fair comment, and there is an element of "they're down there because they've played the better teams", but they've only played Saints in 1 of 5 or 6 games so far - and in Sunderland's case it's the only point they've got.

1. Yes, the appointment is far from proven so far with the weak opponents we've mostly faced this season. If we're top 8 at the end of the season I think that'll show it's a good decision as Adkins might have only got us mid-table, plus Strachan used to say you've used up all your tools by Year 3 anyway. 2. Probably, not me though, I've missed a couple of home league games too. 3. Almost certainly. Could be worth a search.

You'll have to buy them first though.

You can believe what you like.

Oh, and as the offence under the law is, I believe, "drinking alcohol within sight of the pitch" you could always argue that as you were facing the seats behind you you weren't committing an offence. Best check the exact wording of whichever 1980s Act it was, the exact name escapes me for the moment.

You might also want to point out the numerous occasions on which they have failed to act on the smokers in the toilets which is equally illegal.

I'm still far from convinced we've progressed at all. The Liverpool result was pretty impressive, but the other 5 matches we've been anything but. Solid defensively but 38 0-0 draws probably gets you relegated.

His predictions for Sheffield United (23 positions below) and Portsmouth (only 16 places off his predictions) suggest he's not very good at this. I have a suspicion that we're better than Palace too

We are pretty focking boring to watch now though.

Quite. It's basically the opposite of last season, except we're not as good this season as we were crap last.

Honestly, I hate how dull we are to watch now. This is not how I envisaged "success" at all. Boring, boring and more boring. I hope we start playing well soon. Didn't mind the ball retention in the second half once we'd gone 2 up, that's exactly what it's for - but the first half was just draining.

No, no, that's everyone else.

Welcome to 2011.