verlaine1979

Fans bleat about the sanctity of contracts when good players want to leave, so you can't have it both ways. The club messed up terribly in extending an already generous contract, but that isn't Forster's fault. I wouldn't take a pay cut either, so as long as he turns up and trains like the rest, it seems to me that he has just as much of a moral and legal right to his salary as anyone else in the squad.

He puts a shift in. We're a 'puts a shift in' team now.

That looks suspiciously like the old-fashionedest of old-fashioned 4-4-2 line-ups.

The situation hasn't changed since Koeman. None of the youth players are tearing up the reserve competitions, so the manager does the easy thing of sticking with the expensive senior/international players, knowing that the decision can't really be questioned by the executives above him who paid large amounts of money for those senior players.

Agreed, much more used to seeing that sort of simple shift, acceleration and cross from Tadic over the last few years. If Redmond switches the balance of his game away from safety first and does more of that then he'll be an important player for us this year. God knows we need someone to step up and take responsibility for making chances rather than hoping time after time that another delayed, booming cross from Cedric will somehow find the one Saints head in the box.

He should fire his agent if that's true.

Looks to have reasonable control but no pace whatsoever. Tadic was the similar in that regard, but it remains to be seen if he's capable of contributing anything like as much as Tadic did.

Klopp's has already won the Bundesliga twice (and reached a CL final with Dortmund). That's what his reputation rests on - not the jumping around on the touchline stuff. I get that lots of people dislike him, but at their peak his Dortmund team were absolutely superb and didn't cost a fortune to put together.

Moderately well. We played moderately well before that. Better than in other games, certainly, but considering how bad we've been for two years, that's not a great recommendation. Fact is we didn't create a lot before the goal, and once Leicester woke up and started pressing us, we had no answers. Moreover, when Hughes made his first move to change the game before the sending off, he made the wrong decision with his substitutions, as he's done in all three games this season.

It didn't lose us the game, but the Austin sub sums up the problem with Hughes. We'd lost energy and possession at that point, and the only way to get it back was to reinforce the midfield. Instead he resorts to thinking that bunging on a striker might nick us a goal. We looked alright in the first half, and Redmond and Lemina were both impressive. That said, once Leicester woke up they dominated us.

Hope I'm wrong, but in a game where possession is getting away from us and we need energy, that substitution seems mental.

Nah. Le Tiss was obviously a special player with incredible passing range and vision from his late teens. KDB went to Wolfsburg and was immediately one of the best players in the German league at 21/22. Giggs clearly could always pick a pass, and came to rely on his inherent skill more as his world class speed went (though let's not kid ourselves, he was a much better player when he was fast). I've no idea why this is so controversial - once an attacking player is in their early-mid twenties, in the overwhelming majority of cases improvement is incremental rather than profound. Redmond is now 24, and has a mediocre record at this level. In four year's time, his level will be mediocre plus or minus about 5-10%. As for people saying he bursts past defenders - what have you been watching for the past two years?

Exactly - Redmond made his PL debut at 19 and but for relegation his first season, has been in the top division ever since. Why anyone thinks he's going to suddenly develop pace and vision (the two things he manifestly lacks) at this stage is beyond me, since they're pretty much the only two things you can't teach.

Seriously? Sterling was already a more dangerous player than Redmond will ever be when he was still a teenager. They may or may not have similar deficiencies in decision making and finishing, but one of them has world class pace and the other doesn't.

He's going to be 25 before the season ends. He's not going to improve much from this point on - 25 isn't young in modern football.

He's going to turn 25 before the end of this season. This is Redmond's absolute prime - he might improve his game by a couple of percent here and there, but this is to all intents and purposes as good as he's ever going to get. The fact that we don't have many other options in the squad aside from him shouldn't distract from the fact that he's a huge downgrade in attacking productivity compared to Lallana, Mane and now Tadic.

It's a mark of how far expectations have fallen that we don't even need to nick a point now to register a crack-papering performance - a consolation goal against a side kipping on a two goal lead is enough. We played without a clue for pretty much the entire game and while I'm confident that a fit Ings will nick a few goals over the season, we looked miles behind Everton tactically and technically (even though they weren't particularly good). Maybe the missing players will transform us when they return, but I doubt it playing either this week or last week's starting formations. A good start would be getting three in the midfield to at least give us some measure of control in games rather than resorting to hoofing kick and rush.

Didn't Allardyce (who was in charge at WH when they were allegedly interested in signing Austin) recently say that the difference between Ings and Austin is that Austin's injuries are so chronic that he's not even able to train as intensively as the rest of the team? Would certainly explain why he never seems to reach the same level of endurance as everyone else.

I hope nobody mistakes the fact that Ings could've scored for us actually being competitive in this game. Dire.

Huh? Pelle scored 3 in his first four league games for us (6 in his first . I thought he looked rubbish that pre-season, but he was very effective once the league started.

It's more the irritation of it being completely obvious from the very start that he didn't have the money to take us to the next level (and potentially doesn't even have enough to keep us at the level we've already reached). The fact that the club mouthpieces are now happy to walk back the original claim about the reason for the sale feels pretty conclusive.

I see the rhetoric around Gao taking us to the next level/taking us forward has completely vanished now.

Also worth noting that they spent £35m bringing Luis back at the start of that season, but were completely open playing him in a back four. Playing a back five specifically enabled them to get the best out of him building from the back, without really having to rely on him one on one defensively. We, on the other hand, don't appear to be using a back five because it best suits our squad, but because several seasons of misfiring in attack have made our current manager especially nervous about conceding.

I acknowledged earlier in the thread that Sunday was Redmond's most effective game in a long, long time. Considering there was still precious little end product to show for it provides ample proof that I'm right about him. Moreover, Redmond wasn't so much beating people against Burnley as he was driving them back towards their own goal. Carrying the ball forward with purpose is something the team has lacked, so I'm glad to see it, but I've no idea what you were watching if you thought Redmond repeatedly beat his man and got in behind during the game.

Indeed - something made abundantly clear by how rarely Redmond takes on and beats anyone at pace (or by standing them up for that matter).