Chez

please do. but don't rewrite history. We signed two defenders. Do you blame Cortese or Adkins for not adding the extra defenders

I certainly want to see us pass teams to death and the folly of lumping it forward was shown yesterday as the West Ham centre backs eat that for breakfast, but when we break down possession in good areas we need to break with pace to take advantage of teams weaknesses. We failed to do that several times yesterday. They had had a slow midfield and slow defenders but we didn't expose it once.

oh I see. When you said "our one defensive signing" I presumed you meant players that are defenders. Silly me.

didn't we sign a defender five days later?

spot on. Massive call by Adkins, shame he was let down by the errors.

you seemed to have forgotten to state who you think should play there in the next game.

Is Shaw still injured?

no idea what you are talking about. Players like Theo, Bale and Chamberlian have brought in well over £20m in the last few years so more than paid for the youth system. Ward-Prowse is going to be worth an absolute fortune.

he has changed the formation in games on several occasions this season so he continues to show flexibility. Te fact is he has moved away from a 4-4-2 because he is worried about the midfield being outnumbered. He's spot on.

yeah maybe, but it perhaps is more of a 4-2-3-1. Either way it's Adkins selecting it and with no influence from Cortese.

How much does it cost us?

Adkins is playing 4-3-3. It's his choice and it's possibly the right choice (certainly we were cut to ribbons by Wigan and Everton when we went the 4-4-2 route). He wants the whole club to play in the same formation to enable a seamless transition from one age group to the next. Makes total sense. How on earth does that equate to him having to play 4-3-3 because his boss told him to? It doesn't. It's ********. Cortese has no say whatsoever on the formation. Cortese has a say on players that come in. He has the final say, because he signs the cheques, but that is the same up and down the country. I'm not a Cortese fan, but to say that Adkins is his puppet is bull.

I'm not sure I rate him. He is too hit and miss. But when he plays well, that should be noted and yesterday he was probably our second best player behind Davis. Despite this I read on here that he was "poor" yesterday. The game is about opinions but I can only conclude that someone with that opinion is blinded by their hatred of him, perhaps because of that pompey goal . Also he wasn't selected ahead of Lambert. He played wide left as part of a five man midfield. Rodriguez was selected ahead of Lambert and I can half see why because he has done quite well and Adkins wants t reward that. He also offers a different set of runs to Lambert which perhaps Adkins was looking for. They have two or three big centre backs so the air route wasn't a good plan (when we went a little longer when Lambert came on it didn't work at all). I'ma massive fan of Lambert's all round game, so I'm not sure I would have made that selection.

aha. Bloody annoying.

True. I'm certainly not suggesting the atmosphere at our place is any better by the way. I just expected more from West Ham even against a no mark side like us. All seater stadiums have killed the atmosphere...

many don't care how he plays. They hate him and refuse to see any of the good things he does.

terrible atmosphere. What the hell has happened to football in this country?

Don't agree with this at all. Guly had a very good game. He wasn't poor at all. He worked hard and kept the ball well. He beat players with some excellent tricks. There was one terrible pass in the second half, but other than that his passing was good. There was also one terrible long shot. A poor choice. But those two things apart I'm not sure what else he could be expected of him.

This is how I feel. Just don't understand how we ended up losing 4-1. West Ham were terrible. Worse than last season.

what a load of ********

Totally dominated posession and played all of the football but we posed very little threat. when we had the opportunity to hit them on the break we were pondurous. Maya mistake for the second was woeful. i thought guly had a good game. one terrible pass second half otherwise very good. davis also played well. i thought clyne was not at his best.

To be fair he is a cb playing out of position

On train. any team news?

£1.25m (sizeable at the time) and a hefty wage and we got just 23 appearances out if him over three long years. Ripley was slightly more expensive, but we at least got 53 games from him. Both were major wastes of money

can't miss the opportunity as this always makes me smile