The9

Speaking of "money & medals", you talk about players staying if we compete for the title and Champions League, but N'golo Kante left the Champions and Champions League group qualifiers Leicester to go to 8th placed non-European qualifiers Chelsea... so what level of success are we going to need to achieve to keep those kind of players?

Even Ranieri is now saying "they had luck" last season when comparing the two. Tell us something we didn't know.

Anyone would think that Brazilian players moving to a country where they already speak the language would be some kind of advantage or something.

Chambers is better off where he is for us and him, yep, we can't afford him, and doesn't have the necessary mental qualities, respectively. Martina and Clasie are completely fine, Gardos won't go anywhere until fit or out of contract, Rodriguez... hmmm, does he need games for us or to go somewhere else to see if he's still got it?

Who has a significantly better win rate than Cedric.

Just weird, we absolutely slaughtered them for all but 15 minutes and they scored twice during 5 of those - the other 10 was the only period where we weren't comfortably on top. "Coasting it" we weren't, we just had awful luck with our efforts on goal.

Yeah, I don't think he's particularly great or anything at the moment tbh, and I have some concerns about our ability to coach improvement in young centre backs generally, but our policy (based on the Long signing) seems to be to sign players high up the list when they're available.

Europa League draw isn't until Monday lunchtime. I've had to block out two hours of my working day highly suspiciously due to the decidedly annoying scheduling.

We got the hardest team left in the last 10 in the pot, the next best was Rotherham at the bottom of the Championship (which would have been great for me as I haven't been). Though at the point we got drawn the selection of remaining sides was awesomely bad!

As it is I'm torn between Norwich away and staying with the mates we spent last new year with, or a possible Liverpool v Newport tie which has never happened before but also happens to be a whole two weeks before Liverpool v Saints in the EFL Cup semi. I can't actually work out what I want from the tv times tbh, can't imagine there's a way to do both even if they spread the games from Friday to Monday as I have no leave left unless Saints go out of Europe on Thursday.

All ties in with what Crab Lungs said in the summer - new deal offered, but he hadn't agreed to it. Makes sense for Saints to offer more money due to the new TV deal and pretty much everyone's money increasing, but not a longer contract, because we all know he's on the edge of the cliff as far as performance and recovery go. Overall I think we'll already have our Fonte replacement lined up (Wimmer makes sense in this context, but if it's him, it'll be a bonus if Spurs don't drop into the Europa League as if we make the round of 32 he won't be cup-tied then either even if he's played CL). Can't see us allowing Van Dijk to go in the summer unless the Fonte replacement beds in rapidly, we don't go offering long extended deals to people we are prepared to sell in the next year.

As opposed to the top clubs... where footballers earn even more obscene amounts of money blah blah... your logic is all over the place here.

Generally interesting, though I think the insistence on measuring purely by goals and assists is subject to all kinds of random factors and probably isn't a great indicator of "success" - even in a cohort that's been specifically chosen to be as middling and as consistent as possible. Dunno how else they'd measure success though. Wish I knew more about the specific tests too... Guessing there's a ton of this kind of stuff being done at the top level to get that competitive advantage.

Maybe he's stopped constantly turning into the nearest defender by taking a touch too far from his body and then going in the same direction every time? He was too lightweight and too easy to lean off the ball. Also we weren't inclined to build the team around him at a time when workrate was at a premium, which Boro are a bit more likely to.

It's because he isn't good enough to get in our team. HTH.

"Early"? I've had it booked since last May. Well, 16th or 23rd, only confirmed which a week and a half ago, hopefully won't have to cancel it, though I will then either get Xmas or the Liverpool semi booked off...

Current 3rd Placers in Champions League in Groups A-D as of right now: Ludogorets [5 pts] (with Basel 3-0 down that won't change unless Ludo concede two to PSG and then I don't know the tiebreak winner) Besiktas [7] (4-0 down to Kiev who can't catch them, and unless someone scores in Benfica v Napoli both they will go through at Besiktas' expense)... B Monchengladbach [5] (3-0 down so 3rd unless Celtic beat Man City - again, dunno the tiebreaker with BM) Rostov [5] (0-0 with PSV, if PSV score it goes to tiebreak between the two)

Quite. "Forster needs to be sold", FFS.

It was worse than Hull because we stuffed Hull and created loads of chances. I don't even know which Sunderland performance you mean? The one at the start of the season when the players were still learning the system or the one where our reserves humped them? Prague wasn't great but they'd beaten everyone else in the group and it says more about how good we were the first time. This one was pretty much what I expect from us when we go behind, we know how to pass a ball to kill a game but if we don't score when we've upped the tempo we just don't score. We've gone a bit too far the other way. Wasn't the shots on target stat I was bothered by, more that we also didn't have that many shots off target that looked like troubling the keeper. Forster's keeping error was just one of those things, thought it was a divot at first but found out it wasn't when talking to the match commentator on the train out of Thornton Heath of all things... the third goal was just a spawny deflection falling to Puncheon and we were screwed at that point. Having said that I put a bet on us to win at half time. But at the same time, it's hardly a surprise that the players are focused on Thursday and maybe a bit distracted, which is one of the club's biggest games of the past 15 years. I don't even mind losing at Palace if we get into the last 32 of the Europa League tbh.

It's a different kind of fitness - it was bloody amazing when I filled in at CB - after a few months of it I actually stopped playing altogether because I was getting unfit just playing at centre back shuffling everyone else around. What it does ask is that you have to be able to sprint upon sprint if you're under pressure and you don't get the kind of "I just won't do that" decisions you can make as a striker. You're much more reactive to the opposition, but again, if you can make play predictable and you don't have some maniac trying to run past you every 5 seconds, you can cover off most threats with anticipation, organisation and positioning. Obviously at the very top level everyone's got a level of fitness and the decisions have to be made much quicker, but it's still slightly less demanding if you're on top of it - and with the defensive shield we've got I can see how it might be a bit less physically demanding than some other positions. There's still a much bigger chance of getting tackled by a striker or backheaded in the face though...

Because they think the Premier League and EFL should have protected them from the owners their club selected. Rather than, say, the kind of due diligence that saved us from committing to Pinnacle.

He's young so his recovery is quick, defenders don't have to run as much as other positions if they're organised, they don't have to be quite so near their peak to be effective as creative players. All adds up to him being able to play more games. We rested him for the first two League Cup games nevertheless.

My benchmark for this kind of thing is the signing of Elia and Djuricic on loan in Koeman's first season. Puel would have plugged in the likes of Sims and Hesketh instead.

Ours got checked once which I'd say was pretty regular considering we were only there for two days. I quite liked their "open gate" policy and the bloke who checked had an ID badge which he showed us, and uniform. He was on a pretty quiet station though. Literally everywhere has a better run, cheaper to use, transport system than the UK.

It's not me writing off two legs of a semi-final a month before it's played...