Chez

shut up you twat

let me counter that with some other observations of his play. The chance for Willock just before half time was because he didn't track his runner at all. He just stood there and watched it. The sort of defending that gets you relegated. The third goal, he completely sells himself and is too slow to even make a challenge leaving us massively short. I'd argue he is being lazy there too. It was a nice goal and I know people seem to like him on here, but he should be criticised along with many others.

we had just got a foothold in the game. Fuck. Don't take your chances and that's what happens.

my god. Walcott dithers, absolutely terrible weight of pass, ely gets us back on track and adams cant score. Kind of sums our attacking play up in a nutshell. At least we are attacking though.

got some ball in midfield...but need the attacking players to do a little more.

nice forward pass by AMN. Bit of composure and decent weight of pass too - not said that often this season.

How do you miss that?

check out the tracking of Longstaff's run for that chance. Perraud just gives up. Fucking woeful defending.

we are shit. Everyone will blame Ralph, but fuck me, who is going to get tune out of this lot?

fucking hell Adams. So fucking lazy there.

How long is KWP out for? If it's going to be months, then could we possibly loan Wan-Bissaka?

revisionist poppycock. Broja was injured in the first couple of weeks, but he hit the ground running as soon as he got his chance, which was the Leeds game mid October, in which he scored the winner. He was excellent between then and the West Ham FA cup game, which was March 25th. After that he did little. But to suggest he was only good between Dec and end of Jan is bullshit. What was exciting to fans was that we had a genuine Premiership striker that offered pace, power, skills...the lot. Opponents genuinely feared him and were troubled by him simply because of his acceleration and ability to take a man on. We had a proper number 9 that gave our side an edge. What we have now is several mediocre forwards that lack any of the key attributes that makes a stand out forward. We actually brought a new striker in - Mara. So it wasn't the fact we failed to bring a body in, the problem has been that Mara has yet to provide anywhere near the same impact or attributes that Broja brought us. No resigning Broja to another loan was a huge loss. That doesn't mean he couldn't have been replaced, but he hasn't been.

When Ralph said KWP will be out a long time, what did he mean? 5 or 6 weeks or five or six months?

I have to say I loved his youtube highlight reel of three years ago. He bullied opponents in that video and he looked exactly the guy we needed. I think the €20m figures bandied about two or three years ago may have reflected the great season he had, but priced us out of the market. His struggles in the last two seasons eroded that value, but it may have helped us get a bargain. I'm still a little concerned about his lack of pace/acceleration, but most CBs are not quick, you just need to ensure that lack of pace is not exposed very often. I'm all for signing the highest quality youth and ABK proves it can be done, but adding an experienced guy like this seems a smart move.

Very much an upgrade, turning a weakness into a relative strength. The one hing I would say is Caleta-Car's lack of pace might be more exposed in a flat back four. Salisu is a bit quicker, but perhaps Caleta-Car is more composed and better positionally? Hard to say as we've not seen a lot of him, but he gets stuck in and has that `nastiness'/winning mentality that Fonte offered - which has been much needed.

He's chased his tactics, from the high press, high energy, try to grab goals early and then hang on for grim life route (which were widely criticised on here), to something more solid, less expansive, more energy conserving allowing us to press hard in the second half (which most on here demanded). If we had some more midfield dominance, and some flair, pace and goalscoring ability in forward areas, that approach could work a treat. Sadly, we don't. I've no idea what tactics would get the best out of the players we have to be honest, but that's what managers get paid the big bucks to work out.

Do we create three simple chances a game? If our strikers created chances for themselves, either through their pace, skills or arial ability, then you could live with them missing some of them, but if you have strikers that need teeing up, then you want those strikers to be pretty clinical.

He certainly did. Sadly we have yet to find his replacement. Armstrong just hasn't cut it. I keep reading how shit JWP corners have become, but from what I can see they are just as good, if not better, but instead of having Ings coming to the near post, beating the first man and heading into the far corner - making them look like great corners, we have players like Armstrong that simply don't do anything.

true. Although a striker that could actually create his own chances would help.

He scored 6 goals last year and 3 so far this (Che 7 and 3). Wonder if he would have had more or less opportunities to score if playing for us?

fair points, but Ings scored goals for us and we didn't create much more back then.

This is a problem. Our financial model can't allow players to walk on frees. I mentioned this during the summer, it's all very well not selling Salisu (to Newcastle when we had the chance) and Che (potentially to Everton), but with contracts running down we needed to get them signed to a new one this summer. But that's not simple. Both will have had their heads turned and know they could have got a a big wage elsewhere. Also, both will know the longer they hold out the more they can demand. When I suggested we might need to spend £100k a week, maybe more on Che and asked how many would be happy with that, there didn't seem to be many takers. He's just not worth that kind of wedge to us.

Wonder what the criteria was based on. If it was based on the points we deserved based on performance sand chances created, I'm not sure we would be much better off. If there was some grading depending on toughness of opposition...I'm not sure we'd be better off.

He is and it was.

Never understood how the skate Ward still gets games at this level. He's shite.