The9

If nothing else, at least this thread puts paid to all of the "we love the Football League" stuff that was being bandied about last year.

We're relying on Sunderland or Stoke losing to us, but that's about it. And to be honest we don't really need that.

Tch, if he'd gone in the Wigan end he could have got himself an FA Cup Final ticket for £65. Well, he could have last week, I'm not sure whether those tickets are still on general sale.

The Ramirez "issue" will be resolved when our dearth of striking options is addressed. Which if Cortese's claims of looking for a European place are to be believed, is likely to be sooner rather than later.

He's been playing against some decent centre backs recently who have (unlike Ferdinand and Vidic at the start of the season) been briefed on how to deal with him, specifically what to do when he drops into midfield. It was very obvious even against West Ham that they had a plan for him dropping into the hole and our forward passing infield has been pretty ineffective recently. West Brom had numbers back and space was at a premium, and Spurs are a good side playing well - and to be fair we still had the better of that game, because having said that, we're still getting forward out wide and are creating chances despite the limitations.

That's funny, I was about to have a go at him for interrupting the arguing.

Puncheon probably would have started on Saturday had he not been up all night for the birth of his child, so I'm not convinced about that.

The answer is to sign a more mobile, faster, more suited to the Prem striker and then use Ramirez in the position he's best at, with someone who can get on the end of his passes. This occasionally works at the moment with Rodriguez, but instead of picking out a breaking midfielder, he'd be picking out someone on the shoulder of the last defender - which would also create more space in the midfield for him to work in due to the defence's reluctance to play a high line if there was a pacy striker able to get in behind. It's the same discussion as last pre-season, and will be the same discussion next, if Lambert's still our key player. Players with his touch and vision are useful at the top level, but you shouldn't have to build the entire system around his weaknesses to compensate for them, and at the moment because we do that we're not flexible enough to take advantage against all teams. That's also why we lose to some less good teams and beat some of the top ones - because the system is suited to beating skilful short passing sides, but not so much hoof merchants.

If you can find anything from me suggesting anything other than "his skillset is limited at this level" from prior to 2012 I'd be very surprised. You'll also notice I don't think he's any worse now than some of his games in the first half of the season when he DID score. Unlike everyone else though, I accept that as a limitation of his abilities in the Prem and have done all along.

Which he's also been doing all season long, though early when Rodriguez wasn't in the side as often it was Puncheon going past him. FWIW I don't think anything much has changed, teams will have worked out what we do within 2 weeks of us doing it (and then again when Pochettino changed it). With sides tending not to get pressed into turning the ball over now they know we're going to do it, (they can switch play, they can use their keeper, they can knock it long, anything but give it away in their own half), we've been winning the ball high up the park a lot less often and that means Lambert's starting position is as link man 30 yards from goal rather than target man in the box with 5 teammates supporting. I mentioned after Arsenal away that if he gets left isolated without supporting midfielders he's not the kind of player that can create his own goals by beating players, and Pochettino's tactic of winning the ball as high up the pitch as possible supports that. It does of course leave us open to counter-attack and long balls, but we've shown since Pochettino came in that if we press for 90 minutes we get results, and if we don't, we concede goals and don't create enough. I don't think it's Lambert per se, it's the system which normally suits him not being used to it's full potential. Or he could be knackered cos he's a bit old.

Even stranger when you actually look like Hugo Lloris.

"This time of year" being days with a Y in, presumably ?

If we go down I'll have to question the usefulness of probability statistics, and that's about it.

Oh I see... NOW you all want to have a pop at Lambert ? At least I'm consistent.

Disappointingly given the circumstances, I'd only had 2 pints all day - possibly the only time since I've left that I wished I was going back to Newport for the night.

I'm delighted that Bale chose to ignore the pathetic, pandering "no celebrating against old club" nonsense that modern football has deemed appropriate. It sickens me that players who've chosen to move on somehow feel they are so important to a club's history that they make a point of pretending not to be delighted to have scored against them. If you're legitimately bothered, don't play at all. Failing that, stop pretending you're bothered and carry on regardless.

Really shouldn't type on my phone.

But you haven't.

I am also, safe as f'ck tonight, clart.

Yeah, I don't get how thick he comes across as sometimes either.

I haven't posted any results ? And... 50%, wow, great predictions. So... what you're saying is that in your scenario where basically all of the results had to go against us, half of them did. Forgive me for not having a breakdown.

I don't go in there because it's usually full of made up cobblers, but has the HCDAJFU thread got a list of these rumours and which paper makes them up ? If not, can we have a list by paper so we can compile a hit-rate for each media outlet and prove again that (IIRC) 20% is a fantastic accuracy rate for newspaper transfer speculation ?

No, but he's just using that to illustrate that even if we get stuffed we can still be safe with just a couple of other results going our way to underpin the point that 39 could be enough.

Well, next week the price will either be shorter, if we lose, or possibly odds won't be available, if we win, or probably longer if we draw. Obviously the odds on relegation will shorten the nearer to the end of the season we get without actually being safe. That still doesn't mean we're in any more real danger than we were than last week. In fact due to many of the teams around us drawing and not winning easier games than we had this weekend, even though we lost we're relatively better off because they've dropped points they were not expected to lose in many of the relegation permutations, and we've dropped points we WERE expected to lose. For instance, the stats suggest we're more likely to end above Villa than them above us, because away to Sunderland and home to Stoke is easier than home to Chelsea and away to Wigan, even with them having a 1 point start.