verlaine1979

Blimey, did MP really claim that we waited too long to 'react' in his MOTD interview? Delusional to think that there's no connection between your ability to pick up two late goals and the other team already being 4-0 up...

Spurs barely played above walking pace and still managed to score five. I hope two late consolation goalkeeping errors aren't going to falsely convince anyone that they can see green shoots of progress in the last 15 minutes.

Nonsense - we played without shape or intensity today (as we have all season), and Huddersfield could've been 0-3 up before we even had a shot on goal if not for Mooy having a poor game and FF tipping one onto the bar. A team with players of almost any quality can play with energy and organisation, and when they don't, it's really only the management that's to blame.

Nice to have the buffer of a goal, but incredibly lucky that passage of play developed as Huddersfield should've had a free kick instead of our corner after the blatant shove by Stephens.

He's had bad luck with his recent injury, but he plays in a position where the truly gifted tend to break through earlier than anywhere else on the pitch. I wouldn't write him off yet, but he'll need to start having a decisive influence on games by the end of this season/early next.

Sorry, that should've said 'fund' rather than find. Would love to be wrong on this, but with a debt acquisition that the new owners struggled for the best part of a year to pull together, I doubt any additional money will be forthcoming without the sale of existing squad members. After all, if you were lending against the club right now, our risk profile has probably changed somewhat since the start of the season as we're now only one game away from the relegation places.

Probably approving the sale of VVD to find January signings.

Since all Chinese acquisitions seem to have one thing in common - huge amounts of debt - it seems fair to group them together and ask if any have been successful.

The reason no one else is doing it is presumably because it's a huge risk. The interest rates when the Glazers borrowed to buy Man U were between 14-16% per year, so if the club doesn't do as well as expected, that's a very large liability to have hanging over your head. Presumably, if the majority of your money is tied up in a non-democratic country with a fairly punitive attitude towards troublemakers, the risk seems worthwhile in a way it wouldn't to someone whose assets are already safely established in a variety of rule-of-law respecting tax havens.

My assumption has always been that buying European clubs using debt and then using club income to pay off the loans is a good way for wealthy Chinese to establish sizeable assets outside of China without getting into trouble for trying to move their money out of the country.

If JWP was being talked up as one of the best/most underrated players in the league and an essential first name on the team sheet I'd call out the absurdity of that point of view as well. It's only the fact that Davis has been so mediocre for so long, and yet received such outsized praise that prompts me to say anything at all. I've got no vendetta against him personally, and in fact thought he was pretty useful under Poch, but since the Koeman years he's been toss and it's weird that he still gets talked about as if he's one of our best players.

He was rubbish three-ish years ago when I started this thread, and he's gotten no better since. Was horrendously slow, weak and indecisive today.

Davis is getting his lunch money stolen out there.

We're in absolute disarray at the moment.

I quite like JWP and rate him easily as high as Davis in what he's capable of bringing to the team. However, to say that the quoted characteristics could be applied to Xavi is crazy. Xavi was the heartbeat of that Barcelona team - he ran games from the midfield and probably touched the ball more than any other player in the league during his pomp. As the OP states, JWP is largely peripheral (as suggest by that average of just 18 passes compared to Romeu's 66) and almost never seems to step up and try to run the game with his passing (an interesting contrast with Hoj over the last few games, who has seemed determined to seize his chance by showing and demanding the ball much more than ever before).

A statistical model that suggests a team with a goal difference of -17 and only 10 goals scored should actually have a goal difference of -1 and 23 goals scored would appear at first glance to have some kinks that still need working out.

This is exactly the team I'd go with, assuming Austin can handle it. Let Lemina play a little higher than the other two midfielders and join in the press. Very solid through the middle + pretty much all the creativity we have in the squad out on the pitch.

Hoj looked superb again from what I saw. Seemed to be everywhere, and looked to play it forward when the ball was on rather than always handing it off to someone else behind him.

Davis's scoring record isn't a stat I'd be using to try and win an argument. And besides, I'd be more confident in a high tempo, forward-looking midfield without Davis contributing to more team goals than I would be allowing him to sludge up possession in the hope that he'll nod in another rebound from a JWP freekick at some point this season (as let's face it, he's not going to ping another one in from distance for another five years going on previous form).

This is the Saints equivalent of 'you always get a 7 out of 10 from James Milner'. A falsehood that has been repeated so many times that it's achieved the hallowed status of cliche. How exactly does Davis link the midfield and the forward line when he seldom manages to steel himself to trot forward more than five yards, and when he's so averse to turning on the ball that he'd rather pass back to a marked defender than risk looking at the open space behind his back? Hoj's performance against Everton was exactly the kind of dynamic, determined busy linking game that everyone claims to see in SD. That so many on here took notice and declared Hoj outstanding after that game suggests to me that we haven't seen someone impose themselves on the midfield like that in quite some time.

Based on recent performances, you'd get more intensity and forward passing from Hoj than from Davis. The idea that either of them is a DM is erroneous - they're both plain old utility central midfielders, so pick the one more likely to contribute to dominating the central midfield.

Hoj was better against City than Davis was against Bournemouth.

I'm pretty sure he cut inside onto his right three times in the first half yesterday, getting caught out on the third occasion. I'm not usually a fan of hoof it defending, but if you're the last man, don't chance it unless you have much better close control than the average CB (and haven't done it so many times already that your opponent can read/guess your intention in advance). I like most of what I've seen of Hoedt so far - wins more challenges than he loses and his distribution is generally excellent over both short and long range. Hopefully cutting out stupid risk taking will be something he adapts to quickly.

Bring on Lemina and Gabbiadini. Establish some sort of foothold in central midfield, where Bournemouth's weakness is being let off by the absolute poverty of drive and intensity from Davis and Romeu, and then take advantage of MG's superior movement. Austin and Davis to make way.

Perhaps, though neither Hoj nor Lemina has played excessive amounts lately? It may well work out - no reason Davis and JWP can't dominate at Bournemouth - but on performances over the last two decent performances, rotation is the only reasonable explanation for the choice.