The9

Jake Thomson is very happily leading Newport County back into the football league, I'd appreciate it if you didn't traumatise him at this important time. Though he did get dropped to the bench on Tuesday for their 6-2 win against Cambridge United, so he might not be in the best mood.

Quite.

Jack Cork has been terrible every single time I've seen him play anywhere other than centre or right midfield, including at right back for England U-21s. Now Lambert, he might make a decent centre back, and at least he'd get a game every match then.

Er, we already did that 3 years ago, do keep up. If you like I can dig out Redknapp's record with Saints, or Stuart Gray's, or Dodd and Gorman's, or even Wotte's for that matter. That's a hell of a selective memory you have. To take it outside Saints managers, how about Terry Cooper's awesome turnaround when Mick McCarthy got the boot at Wolves last season ?

That is the least funny "banter" I've ever heard. Essruu should sue.

Blimey, I agree with you. It is astonishingly tedious and head-slappingly unoriginal. In my experience it just gives Cardiff and Swansea's neanderthals an excuse to spout their equally tedious anti-English drivel as well.

Probably had copyrighted music in it.

When "Skate" and "Scummer" become religious slurs, I should think. Spurs fans are at least partially responsible for making this "acceptable" in some quarters by attempting to take ownership of it, I hadn't even heard of the term before I lived with a Spurs fan as a student, he was always banging on about it, but then he was a grade A cockernee wyankaaar as well as a massive bullsh1itter.

It's not a new thing, I seem to recall almost everyone in the 2000 (or was it 2001 ?) calendar was sold or out of favour by the time we got to their month. Transfer windows have made that a little less likely. FWIW I'd go for 4 : Fonte, Lallana, Lambert and Schneiderlin.

Funnily enough I thought Ramirez was our best player on Monday by some distance. Some of the passes didn't come off because teammates just didn't read what he was trying to do (eg Lambert on the one through ball), some were killer balls which were worth the risk of being intercepted, and a couple of others he was fouled and it wasn't given. He played one pass off the pitch but that was about it. He also moved well off the ball and his run for Clyne's through ball was excellent movement (if borderline offside, but not given). The last time he lost the ball before his inevitable Sports Science Comeback Precautionary Substitution it was a cultural thing, he went for a high ball and assumed the opponent would get called for dangerous play with high feet but we're not as hot on that as the rest of the world so whilst Ramirez pulled out of the high challenge, Halsey played on. On topic, Hammond would make our midfield worse not better, too slow full stop to affect matches, and a little too ponderous on the ball. He does play that defensive midfield role that we don't seem to have any more though.

Mayuka and Ramirez is my chosen 1-1, but we'll have to remember how to pass it on the ground to a striker first.

I was at the match, but Davie Provan's comment in the first couple of minutes about West Brom certainly having more protection for their defenders with Mulumbu and Yacob in front of them was probably the post pertinent thing I've heard on Sky's broadcast so far, having revisited the first 51 minutes yesterday. Watching it back, Mulumbu was fantastic, and there were a few occasions where he either got back or sat back, and cut out passes to our strikers near the box which if it had been the other way around would have necessitated our CBs breaking shape to close down the striker.

Why would you consider that the same ? If you replace a player there are 10 others on the pitch giving you the continuity from the last match and the underpinning ethos is likely to be the same. If you replace the manager, everything is different compared to the previous match, including personnel, training methods, tactics, formation, etc.

Assuming the reports of a "meeting" are true, it's a pretty solid signal of intent in Nige - for no other reason than the fixture list - if they were planning on bringing anyone in, now would be the time to do it with the fixtures getting (theoretically) much easier between now and Xmas. As it is, with all the tricky stuff behind us and a reasonable expectation that we'll start to pick up points, the next few weeks are REALLY going to heap on the pressure if we don't come out with at least 7 points from the next 4 matches. So far I've given Adkins the benefit of the doubt as I think the squad is not one of the worst 3 in the division, and we've been playing almost exclusively the top half sides, making our chances of success that much lower. If we persist with this form into the matches where we HAVE to get results then Adkins will be very lucky to be the one who gets to spend money on defenders in January. Basically I'm just hopeful that our tangibly error-prone defenders aren't given as many chances to mess up against the worse teams, or that we can hold together two successive halves of West Ham first half / Spurs second half competence a bit more often.

I think the point is that we will find out in the next 8 matches. By Dec 29th when we play Arsenal for the second time we'll have played everyone except Chelsea.

I'm still waiting for ONE instance of a strange selection, tactic or substitution that can't be explained by simple logic.

It would have been nice if we'd bought all of them, no reason why we couldn't have, either.

Having played 8 of the top 9, I will be massively annoyed if Adkins gets the boot before the Norwich match. If we've not picked up 7 points or more from the next 4 games, yeah, maybe we're just not good enough. As it stands at the moment, we're just not good enough to beat the teams in the top half, and I was pretty sure that would be the case anyway.

I voted for King Knut and Matt Le Tiss. One of them at least would appreciate being dumped out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but an oncoming tide to keep them company.

All I have to say about this is he hasn't made any decisions I can't see the logic of - I'd struggle to call anything a "mistake" so far, and the only criticism I feel is fair is our failure to recruit enough Prem quality players in the summer, which (apparently) isn't down to Adkins. You only have to look at the lack of depth to see we've got at best 1 or 2 options from the bench, and it's a 95 minute match at the top level. Regarding negativity, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't - ignore the people that thrive on negatively, they just drag you down. After Monday we'll have played all of the top 9 except one, and we've got 7 teams from 9th and below in the next 7 matches. So let's see how the matches up til 27th December go, and then if we're up sh!t creek THEN, we have the choice of swapping the manager or throwing a load of cash at it in January. I'm expecting us to lose to West Brom, btw, they're good down the wings and we can't handle that at the moment.

Anyone who actually went to Leeds yesterday have anything to add to the "Luke Shaw is better than Fox" argument today ?

Listening to the Leeds match, Guly's name is being sung very loudly and repeatedly in support of him. So it seems it's just bellends at home matches who are the problem.

I'm sure there are a few out there who actually DO think like that, unfortunately.

Yeah, his running is clearly far too well targeted on closing down opposition players who have the ball. He's got it all wrong.

That would certainly explain picking him for Sunday's match. Boruc did nothing remotely resembling a significant mistake on the pitch on Sunday. Even if he's not involved tonight, so what ? We've picked our then-second choice keeper for both League Cup matches so far anyway.