verlaine1979

You have a charmingly simplistic understanding of the world.

There's a bit of a whiff of Elyounoussi about him - just doesn't look like he thinks or moves quickly enough to make it in this league.

Ake, King, Fraser, Brooks, Wilson and probably Billing to start with.

He almost scored against Sheffield United - it's going to take more than that to make a convincing argument that he'll make the grade.

Is it much of a comfort to prove so conclusively that we only deserved to lose 3-1?

Where did they take their shots from compared to ours? Hoj had that scrappy attempt that was bundled away by the post with about five defenders in the way, but other than that I think the others were all from outside the box. Bournemouth finished better, but they also cut us open to create far better chances. If King wore boots one size smaller and VAR had done its job with their penalty claim, we could easily have lost that 5-1 and it wouldn't have been undeserved.

As above, a few decent moments of hold up play, but I've not seen anything from him to suggest that he's got what it takes to perform the Herculean task of outscoring Shane Long. His last touch before contact on the penalty was taking the ball out of play about ten yards ahead of him, so he was very lucky as otherwise it would've just looked like another passage of play where he lacked the pace or technique to create a chance for himself.

The problem with Hoj is that we can really only afford one immobile defensive midfielder, and Romeu has that spot sewn up on merit - he's far better at winning the ball back. Hoj just isn't outstanding in any area - he's not mobile enough to be a nuisance, strong enough to dominate or technical enough for the game to run through him. He's a solid utility player, but easily shown up by opponents with a better blend of qualities in their midfield partnership.

That's two Vestergaard has gotten away with this half. Dire.

Eh? We've had a go against a side that were 2-0 up and cruising at half time. Your verdict is missing some important context.

Argh, back to the bad old days of JWP leaning back on every shot he takes from open play.

Get Boufal or Redmond playing more centrally.

Eh? We've created almost nothing and conceded 2 (would've been 3 but for King's big toe). What's your standard for playing badly?

VAR has been very good to us so far this season.

He's quite clearly not a full back.

It's pretty weird. Left back is generally not one of those positions where if a player is only 75% fit you still stick him on the bench in case he can make a difference late-on in the game. Nor would you generally use an unfit player to replace an injured one or to shore up the defence if you're holding a lead.

Yup, despite managing once to get his head to the ball to positive effect, he can still be rubbish in the air.

Vestergaard is rubbish in the air. He's tall, but got absolutely no leap, so even when he wins it he never generates any power.

Are you also annoyed by Shane Long's facial expressions and habit of standing with his hands on his hips bemoaning cruel fate when he loses the ball?

Andy Reid - was really annoyed when Spurs nicked him on deadline day. Thought he was going to be our new Le Tiss.

Six years of scouting, and no one thought to check if he could run faster than JWP.

The Liverpool performance has been seriously overrated on here. It was 40 minutes of huff and puff against a team waking themselves up.

Keeper was at fault for their second as well - weak kick to a Liverpool player about 35 yards out.

On the basis of performances so far, so will we.

Nice Cameos from Boufal and Djenepo aside though, I thought we were dire. RH has to address the one-pacedness of his current starting line-up, otherwise we can look forward to the same turgid stuff every week, occasionally enlivened by subs if we're still in the game late on. Trossard was the outstanding player on the pitch, and didn't really deserve to be on the losing side. Wanting players to run themselves into the ground every week is fine, but won't get you very far if their top speed is about half that of the players on the opposing side.