James

That’s literally not the rule. What a joke. Embarrassing.

If VAR can’t call that as a penalty then it’s pointless. The fact it’s still responsible for these ridiculous decisions almost 2 years in is a joke. Game is gone.

It’s Mike Dean on VAR, enough said. The man is an utter cretin.

The club’s mouthpiece also said we were going to use the Virgil money to sign Walcott, Daniel Sturridge and Cenk Tosun (who, if I remember correctly, had almost signed for Everton on the day the article was published). The reality was we signed Carrillo and almost went down that year as well. It’s just spin - until the club actually stumps up some real money for some quality players who will help us out of this downward spiral - words are completely meaningless.

Surely Ralph can’t come back from that?

Shocking performance by Atwell but he’s an awful ref. Bet it barely gets a mention on MOTD. About time these big club refs got pulled up for blatantly nosed performances.

He’s absolute shi*te but appears that criticising him is sacrilege on this site.

Stephens has been a liability for ages. Not good enough for where we want to go. Idiot.

Completely agree, but if we'd have done the same transfer business under Hughes we'd be sunk for sure.

Its surprising as he looked decent enough for Basel in games against Man City etc. I was genuinely excited when we signed him but he's been garbage so far.

It is concerning that, if Austin departs, we are one bad tackle away from having to rely on Shane Long or an unproven youngster for goals until the end of the season. It's a risky business to slim down a squad that's as low on quality as ours. Our first XI is clearly good enough to stay in the league but beyond that we suddenly look extremely thin. Got to hope Ralph can keep up the intensity of performance from now until the end of the season - we've taken a gamble that's for sure.

Interesting timing but he had to go.

Agreed. Heads should have rolled in the summer but instead they patted themselves on the back and continue to serve up the same old **** to a long suffering fan base paying an absurd amount to watch absolute dross.

Agreed. A lot of them really don’t seem to care either. Exactly the same as last season except we might not be able to find someone as bad as Swansea to bail us out this year.

God that was absolutely pathetic. Keep up the good work on the training pitch Mark...

He took of Ings and put on the immobile Austin which killed all attacking momentum. That was a bad decision.

Poor from Hughes, Cedric and most of all Hoj. Going down on this evidence.

Nice to see him immediately berate Moi as well. He really does seem like a tit.

Hoedt with a nice sliding tackle through ball and then a woeful piece of defending from Cedric. The fact we were at one point worrying about him going to a big club is ridiculous. He’s terrible defensively .

Exactly, the myth that by playing Redmond we somehow benefit from a player with “direct running” is just garbage. The guy is a passenger.

Hoedt really is dreadful. Problem is this line up is so defensive we can’t put them under any pressure. As for Redmond, what on earth is he offering? A non entity.

Agreed. Will have to score 2 as there will be at least one clanger from these two. You’d have thought, given their respective performances in pre season, that Hughes would have seen enough.

Not really sure what Redmond has gone to deserve a start over Moi or Gabbi to be honest. Disappointed with Stephens starting as well, don’t rate the guy at all.

Some guy on Not606 saying that JWP is unhappy and wants the move so we shouldn't be surprised if he goes. Let's see. Can't imagine we'd let him go without using the proceeds elsewhere before the window closes.

Makes you wonder why, if we are so short of cash now, we spent a quarter of our budget on another keeper. Don’t get me wrong I’m pleased Gunn is here as he’s clearly highly rated but odd we made that move and now don’t have the cash for a forward player when we clearly need one.