Alanh

I'd be very surprised if we are in for Sakho. He always looks like a good one touch footballer when I've seen him. Can win a header, make a tackle or block and is physically strong, but ask him to take a few more touches and he looks less composed than Big Vic ever did. Given our style (for better or worse) of playing the ball around the defence, I can't see him fitting into our style of play.

If you're not encouraging 2 for 1 each time and also say that we can't always replace like for like in terms of player value (post 108), where else are we supposed to put the money than in the bank? This is a rhetorical question as I know that some of it was invested in extended contracts, infrastructure etc.

Benteke and Bolasie are just about the only attacking players who moved in the summer in the £25M plus range who might have come to us. The only reason their transfers happened was because Everton have a new owner and manager who wanted to splash the cash, and as a result Palace ended up being cash rich and could go for Benteke. I'm not sure either would have felt like value for money if we had bought them for the prices they went for.

But if every time we sell a player for £35M we buy two for £15 - 20M each surely we will just end up with a bloated squad, many of whom don't get enough game time, and block the opportunity for academy players. The decision in the summer about forwards was surely that Austin, Long, JRod, Redmond, Tadic, Bouffal, was enough bodies for the front three positions knowing that Sims and Hesketh were looking to step up from the academy. Injuries and poor form have made that decision look wrong, but I can see why the club made it.

Taking your logic of spending all of the money that we get from a transfer (ignoring staged payment schedules and performance related payments) means that we have to either try to buy players of a similar value to those we sell, or buy a number of players whose value adds up to the income from transfers. This strategy surely leaves us open to either stockpiling players or blocking the pathway to the first team for players from the academy. We use our Black Box to plan a long way ahead and as an example your could say that we wanted Bouffal to replace Mane. Puel says that we had tracked him for ages and we broke our transfer record for him. Hopefully he'll turn into a very good player for us, but he wouldn't be any better if we paid another £15M for him to make him, so why spend the money if you don't have to? If he turns out to be Gaston Mk2 at least we have some money in reserve to buy a replacement if necessary.

We never really did play a diamond this season. We've always had a midfield three anchored by a deeper lying holding player, and then three attackers with fluid positions.

I think that the club will be looking for a Fonte replacement next summer and so won't sell VvD and have a brand new centre back partnership. If he continues his form and attracts attention I think it's more likely he will go the following summer.

What do you want them to invest in which the current board haven't already, given the FFP prevents us from increasing our wage bill much above what it currently is?

A win takes a lot of pressure off the final group match so that makes sense, but with Everton, then Arsenal coming up in matches that we will want to win, I can see Puel continuing with the rotation policy. I would expect Martina, Yoshida and McQueen to come into the defence and JRod and Long to get a go upfront from the start. I'm pretty sure the plan will be to get a draw as a priority and a win of we can nick a goal or two.

You could say the same about almost all of our squad. With the possible exception of Forster, VvD and Romeu, we should be able to afford a player who is better than just about every other player for their given position. We obviously can't afford to do that across the whole squad and our philosophy is to buy promising players in who can develop and grow with us. My guess is that next summer we will again see us replace the players who leave and then improve squad quality in one or two areas.

Bit in bold - Long wouldn't have made any difference yesterday as there was no space for him to run into. Chelsea defended with two banks of 4 / 5 when we had the ball and were looking dangerous. Their defenders were good enough to block or clear pretty much every through ball and cross we attempted. Regarding squad depth, it is probably stretched as thin as we can manage at the moment but the upside is that we have learned that Sam McQueen has the potential to be a Prem quality player.

No problem, I hope the rest of your trip went smoothly.

Thanks, so nothing that you wouldn't experience in any big city.

I have read a few commets about the Central station and wanting to exit the station / area rapidly. Never been to Milan before so am interested to know what is so bad about the station / area as I'm arriving there from Bologna.

It always says on the 'could not deliver' note to go to the collection point 24 hours after you receive the note. That give the postie time to get your item back to the depot after he has completed his round.

Got a note this morning to collect from PO sorting office as I wasn't in to sign for my tickets when they attempted to deliver them this morning. Rest assured all those who are heading out to Italy early next week - the tickets are on the way.

It wouldn't surprise me if there are other. Sharing a cab to Bologna station might be an idea to save some cash.

Two of us also on that flight, back again the next day.

For me we have played a fluid front three all season and I haven't seen any positional rigidity to our forwards. During the Sunderland and Watford games the players seemed to struggle to find a rhythm and that might have been down to them being on a steep learning curve with the new manager. I think we are still playing basically the same system but are getting better at it.

We've been playing a front three which rotates all season. Tadic and Redmond have both played in the central attacking midfield position, and CA has played as a central striker. It changes during every match. Redmond seems to have more license to roam and the system asks the wider attacking players to track back when the opposition have the ball. When we have possession our front three are relatively narrow and the width comes from the full backs with crosses coming in from both sides, although more from the right it seems. Bertrand, Targett, Cedric and Cuco are the closest we've got to traditional, 'chalk on their boots' wingers. The guy behind you who commented about playing wingers on the wing was presumably referring to Redmond and if he's expecting the see NR hugging the touchline for the majority of matches any time soon he's going to be disappointed.

Best performance of the season. Loads of encouraging signs - we are creating lots of chances, our passing, when it is fast and on the ground is very nice to watch. Clean sheet was well earned by all of the back 5. We started pressing when they had the ball - something we hadn't previously done this season. The midfield worked as a unit for the first time. Shame for Redmond that he missed two excellent chances, but he got into great positions and on another day he would have scored one or two. Similar for Long and Austin, but Redmond's misses will get more attention because they were sitters. Great adjustment from CA to control and strike from the deflected shot for the goal. The regular routing of the ball around the defence while we are effectively taking a breather is the issue for me at the moment. We often seem to struggle to find a way to get the ball upfield after this type of passage of play, and can slow the movement of the ball down too much. We look a much better side when the ball is moved quickly. If we can get the transition from the possession game at the back to the attacking play up front sorted we will pose a threat to most teams this season.

Poorest performance on the ball of the season. Loads of heart but very little quality. We got lucky with Arsenals poor finishing on the day. We look bereft of ideas in the final third and the midfield is not shielding the defence in the way it did last year. Romeu had an excellent match but the other midfielders are getting passed through way too easily. Pen was debatable at the least, but I think we'd feel wronged if we didn't get it awarded to us in the same situation. Need to keep the players under control. Getting the back 4 booked in the same game and JWP after about 30 seconds on the pitch. Got to beat Prague and swansea now.

The last few posts illustrate how we are essentially playing 4-3-3 and for me the diamond concept is a red herring with regard to the actual shape of the team on the pitch. If the strikers and No 10 rotate positions as they did in the two home games you have something similar to when Poch had Lallana, Lambert and JRod rotating as a 3 up front backed up with a midfield 3 of Schneiderlin, Cork and Davis. We don't seem to have the same high pressing tactic, but other than that it's pretty similar.

Mourinho is on record as saying that he had a plan to buy four players this summer and that is what he has done - Bailey, Zlatan, Pogba and Mkhitaryan. He has also said that he works with a squad of 23 players - 2 for each outfield position plus 3 keepers. United have that in abundance. They have four (or more) CB's in Smalling, Bailey, Jones, Rojo and Blind (depending on how you want to classify the latter two). Based on that, plus their impressive academy they don't need to be looking at buying a 32yr old CB who is going to cost over the odds because of his recently signed contract. Stranger things have happened in football, but I'd be surprised if we received a serious offer for him from Man Utd.

Based on Saturday alone I saw more of a 4-3-3 formation than a diamond (compared to the diamond that Adkins used in the Championship). Tadic, Redmond and Long were rotating all game so I didn't really see one player playing at the tip of a midfield 4. Agreed that 4-2-3-1 makes a lot of sense with the players that we have. To play 4-3-3 we are going to need at least one more attacking player to provide enough strength in depth.