verlaine1979

Movement up front has been really poor. Midfield eventually get impatient with no one creating an angle ahead of them and obligingly pop up a straight chipped pass for WH CBs to head away, setting up the counter.

I think they're fine things to have if the club is successful enough to be able to sustain them, but they certainly aren't what I'd have the CEO spend his time worrying about, no.

Modern football clubs acquire new fans and retain old ones by producing successful teams that play attractive football. Team does well and is fun to watch, more people want tickets; team does poorly and plays hoofball, fewer people want tickets. Loyalty aside (which the CEO can't do much to alter, since loyalty that only exists while the club are pandering isn't really loyalty at all) the contribution of other intangibles such as fan outreach and community spirit to the long-term future of the club is pretty much a rounding error.

As a fan, the only thing I care about is whether the team do well during the 90+ minutes of each game. Everything else is vanity.

I fully expect the new man to come in claiming that too much time has been spent establishing a coherent playing style for all levels of the club and professionalising the first team's various support structures, and that his energies will be directed more towards meet-and-greets with grumbling fans and loud-mouth local businesses.

Couldn't care less about relationship with fans or local businesses. Focus on running a professional and successful football club without mortgaging its future to unsustainable debt. Everything else barely qualifies as a nice-to-have.

Superb vision from Gaston.

Absolutely dire attacking performance. Witless.

The nutjob stream is actually an embedded frame of cdn.tiv.pw/stream3.html - if you view that, it's just a plain page with the flash video - no ads or anything else as far as I can tell.

Blimey, not even an illicit radio stream.

Couldn't get the ball off hazard all game, then same story once the Oscar and willian came on. Of course that's 130m of attacking talent mentioned in the previous sentence.

Lallana is good, but he isn't anywhere near the level of Reus, who is one of the world's top ten attackers. Moyes needs to make a statement of intent with a world class acquisition - Lallana isn't that.

Club surely bluffing on subject of whether we'll recruit anyone in Jan. Performance from 2nd string pretty much shambolic.

To be fair, I was in the process of writing a very whiney post, but that was superb.

Well done JRod - great decision-making and composed finish.

Haven't laid a glove on them so far. JWP pass-back our only effort on target.

Err, well at least we have a few genuine attacking options on the bench?

Tiote was excellent against Man U.

Exactly. Oh for another Brett Ormerod.

I'm afraid I have to disagree on this occasion. Although the stats state we had 9 shots on target, we didn't force Guzan into enough saves for a team that had 77% of the ball. JRod had two decent headed chances, both of which were from quite hopeful looping crosses, and Lallana had one deflected onto the bar, but aside from that we had nowhere near the attacking authority such dominance of possession should entail. Give any of the top 6 close-on 80% of the ball at home, and they are going to put 5 or 6 past you with ease.

We don't really have anyone who passes with genuine authority (with the possible exception of Lambert). When most of our players want to play a high-precision ball they have to take a lot of pace off it to get any sort of accuracy. JWP seems the most likely to be capable of it, but for obvious reasons lacks a bit of confidence for now.

Shaw's crossing isn't exactly Bale-esque, is it?

Wasn't mentioned in the OS article about injuries...

The most reliable way to create chances (other than the largely discredited pacey-winger-slinging-it-into-the-box method) is by engineering numerical advantage in key areas of the pitch. You can either achieve that by the opposition being tactically inept, or because your players have sufficient pace or technique to go round an opponent, taking them out of the game. However, to do that you have to be prepared to risk possession of the ball, which is something I don't see us doing much at the moment. We pass very well, but we generally choose very high percentage passes, and in midfield you very rarely see anyone try to commit an opponent before offloading the ball.

Same time last season West Brom were 3rd with 26 points and managed to finish 8th, so I'm not really sure why we got all the media attention we did (presumably because our flirtation with the top three was based on a core of English players rather than an exceptional loan) - still, recent results do suggest that while we're a strong side, the most likely outcome is a similar finish to that achieved by WB & Swansea last season.