James

No team is owed anything but we are on course to barely better the record lowest points total of any team in the Premier League ever. Don’t think it’s unreasonable to be expecting better than that.

Lallana starts, good but why not use him in the more winnable game? Aribo doesn’t deserve to be dropped, bizarre decision that.

Here we go.

Archer!!

Don’t really get the team. Where is Manning playing? Seems unbalanced. Shame no start for TP after a very decent cameo.

Defensively all over the place here.

But he is a leader or something. The guy is crap, not PL standard. End of.

And there we go. Fuck off Archer, that was inexcusable and changed the game. Where was BBD for the pen?!

I hope that the plan is not to sign a right winger and play AA through the middle. The games when we played without Che and played AA through the middle didn’t always go to plan in the Championship…

As good as Fernandes may be I cannot fathom why we spent £15m on him when we clearly have no cash. For the price of him and Archer we could have had a go at a decent striker. God knows how we’ve ended up with Yuri Alberto on loan as the great hope.

I suspect the fact we are going for Alberto is because Corinthians are willing to do a loan deal. Genuinely can’t see any other reason for it as he looks, at best, bang average. Would rather get Josh Sargent or someone of that ilk. We’ve really had to do things on a shoe string this summer haven’t we? The places where we’ve spent our money are, with hindsight, a little odd.

Josh Sargent Evan Ferguson (loan) Eddie Nketieh (loan) We need a focal point relatively urgently or we are done. If we can afford a striker then let’s get Fraser and play BBD centrally. Stewart would be decent but he’s never fit and has barely played a minute for us. God we’ve really been fucked by signing him. What is it with SR and strikers?!

Glad to see we are giving a young player time before writing him off…

For sure but otherwise a very encouraging performance.

There are some seriously depressing posts on here. It’s disappointing to lose 0-1 for sure, especially given the circumstances, but most on here were predicting a drumming. if we don’t replace Macca we will go down, today doesn’t change that and hopefully RM can see it and we will push for a replacement. Overall I think we looked very very decent for large parts of the game today. A couple of additions to end the window and I think we will be just fine.

McCarthy is guff, we all know it. This club has a serious blind spot when it comes to keepers.

That’s Ross Stewart starting up top then I assume 🤣

Good stuff, clearly was never going to play here.

Not sure why it requires a super computer to say that the playoff winners are favourites for relegation….surely the playoff winners are odds on for the drop literally every season.

He would be a very decent signing. Is that reported anywhere or just a guess/suggestion?

I wonder why they put that out there shortly before pocketing £10m from us 🤣

I thought the whole idea behind not rushing him back from his hamstring injury (which I think happened after the Hudds game in November) was so that he could have a full pre season it’s surely seen as a disaster that he hasn’t had a minute? It’s hard to see how he can go from no minutes in a non-competitive to being in a PL match day squad… Getting Dean Ashton vibes here - ankle injury and just never made it back.

If Stewart really isn't fit for the start of pre-season then we can't assume he will play a meaningful part next season. I get that there has just been a post-season break but, if he really was approaching fitness at the end of last season, you'd have thought he'd have kept the momentum up over the summer to be able to play a full part in pre-season. 2 new strikers required this summer.

Yes, but that “navigation” is a step further than previous England managers have achieved. I suggest those that discount Southgate’s achievements whilst giving other managers a pass for losing to higher quality opposition take a look at who we could have played if prior group stages had been managed properly. Once you’ve done that, Southgate’s luck might not look so astonishing.

The difference is Southgate has navigated the group stages well and has gotten us better draws. You can’t give Capello a pass for losing to Germany when the reason we faced them was because we finished second. Southgate has managed to help us avoid that and deserves credit, it’s not all luck. As for the “super” Portugal team, not sure I agree. They were about as good as the Netherlands team we saw off in the semi.