The9

Two wins in the League Cup should do it.

The most entertaining teams don't necessarily get the best results.

Completely agree with this up to the word "Cedric". We've won a bigger percentage of games with Cuco playing than Cedric, and it's been very obvious this season that Cuco's instructions in some matches have been just to keep possession and not get caught up the pitch.

The Kenwyne-modelled one with the grey bits? Gecko will be pleased. They're the home socks though, the actual socks with that kit are red with grey.

They're fine after half 10 from Brockenhurst... in theory.

I was quite pleased, that went for nearly £50 more than the Romeu one.

No, unlucky for me it's not for sale. The yellow one they didn't sell from Newcastle away in Jan 2014 cost me loads, the European shirt they didn't sell this season cost me loads, this one will cost me loads.

There's someone that will like the 3rd kit, you can actually see the advert on the front of this one.

No, it's an engineered football shirt made of the same player-only material that the other matchday kits are. It's got a snowflake weave built into it which only the match-worns have, and the replicas don't. Not that there's a replica of this one. Having said that, weirdly my black training tee has the same material, but the red and green ones in the exact same pattern don't. They're not selling the shirt or shorts anyway, so what does it matter what it's made of? FWIW the red shorts have already been worn away to Inter, and the white socks have been on sale in SportsDirect since the summer, even though the first team haven't worn them yet (the U19s did at Man U on Monday though).

Just as it should be.

FFS, this is going to cost me a fortune. Knew they were going to have to create something new for the telly...

Nor more than one point.

Davis added a bunch of forwards passing when he got the chance and a couple of key passes we should have had shots on target from.

Champions League semi-final, French league winner, committed to bringing kids through, experience with a formation we clearly wanted to use, not asking to be paid top 10 in the world wages. To be honest with what he's already done this season I'm quite surprised people aren't giving him more plaudits. Opportunities for McQueen, Targett, Reed and Sims, nicely managing Boufal, very solid defensively despite rotating the whole defence at various points, sensible management of the squad through a frankly ridiculous fixture list and giving us the best chance to get results without writing off any competition. We are currently dull, whilst in the midst of a draining run of fixtures, and missed out on EL knockouts because we aimed to be one goal better than the third placed team and with the fine margins given... weren't.

We beat them by more, and that's hardly Puel's fault. Also, we've beaten Inter Milan, and Arsenal away, and he's only been here 6 months. What more do you want exactly?

A tricky one f'sure - it's on tv too, so I wonder if Sky will insist on a one-off third kit like they did with Newcastle a couple of seasons ago? With them wearing this: I can see us wearing some hideous combination of the home shirts, grey shorts and white alternate socks which the U19s wore at Old Trafford - if we don't have a new (probably white) thing planned. No idea, btw, just speculation based on logic - we can't wear too much red, or black... Maybe we'll get away with Bournemouth being made to wear an away shirt or something. They have an ugly blue one and a more ugly lime green/yellow one.

Indeed. Comical b011ocks from the bat there.

Any chance of sharing the minutes played by the Stoke players this season?

None have played every match, that's absolutely not the point. Redmond has played 6, with 3 of them back to back. Romeu has played 6 too, 4 on the bounce in the last 11 days. How is he supposed to maintain his usual level doing that? There's a core of half a team playing twice a week repeatedly, usually against opponents with more recovery time. Relative to the opposition they're likely to be more tired and less fresh. Half of the team in every match. Add to that additional travel and other teams having more time to plan tactics, and we're fighting an uphill battle to be creative or fresh from the start. Even so, today we needed to do things more creatively, more quickly, and even just more randomly to make something unexpected happen - we've got predictable as well as over-committing to the possession stuff. It's not unique to Puel, we lost to Stoke 18 months ago when they just launched stuff and made things happen in the box. We need the unexpected as well as a system.

I do hope we've got a plan to counter Daniels ambling to the edge of our box before we close him down this time...

One of the reasons I'm surprised Boufal is playing out wide so much.

We ARE currently dull and boring, irrespective of league position. It's almost certainly because the players are knackered, but even so. Maybe you can explain the relevance of league position to entertainment value?

We took plenty of players on all match long - Redmond, Boufal, Tadic all went past people - it's what happens after that that's the problem. I thought the subs were a bit samey too, Didn't need Romeu on there for the last 20 minutes, especially on a yellow and surprised he went like for like instead of bringing on an extra person to try and find in the area.

Or he could have scored twice tonight with anything resembling a bit of luck - the one that went through his legs he couldn't even see behind the defender, and had it hit anything he'd have scored. And that one against Hull that hit him in the face, yeesh. A little more concerned about our general movement in the box, though Long wasn't much better, and the midfield and full backs cutting back and waiting too long to play through balls and crosses have to take some blame. We managed to attack for almost 90 minutes without creating much. Still, it's hardly a surprise we're looking jaded after the 8th game in 26 days.

Oh we're dull alright - combination of fatigue, missing Austin's ability to find space in the box, some dodgy finishing and Stoke defending well equals the usual stuff.