James

Nobody is saying that is a bad thing, read the posts properly. They are just saying that trying hard and being a nice guy seems to exempt him from criticism (in a similar fashion to Shane Long). He was ok today but wouldn't agree that he was one of the best players on the pitch.

He's got a decent enough scoring record from midfield, certainly superior to JWP and Davis when it comes to putting the ball in the back of the net. I mean obviously I'd like us to sign Sigurdsson, he'd be perfect for us, but it isn't going to happen. My point is more that we could do with a no.10 with more goal threat. Doesn't have to be Armstrong but it looks as though he's available and seems the kind of player we might go for.

I don't remember any Puel performance with that level of high press. We won the ball in the Swansea half countless times and always looked to play the ball forward rather than sideways or back. Don't remember much of that at any point under Puel and I saw almost every game. Our best performances were away where we sat back and hit teams on the counter. It didn't work at home so no goals. Today was chalk and cheese as compared to Puel teams.

You're right he did but so did Stephens who let Abraham go for their only chance of the first half. I think the objection on here is that Stephens is almost universally praised as having had a good game whereas Yoshi is criticised. My observation was that they both had their moments (Stephens was guilty of overplaying at times) and we will definitely be punished by teams who have more attacking quality. We've got to find goals soon as I can't see us keeping a huge number of clean sheets. West Ham will pose a much greater threat.

Not sure we will get a striker of sufficient quality to displace Gabbi. We could do with a goal scoring midfielder to replace JWP. Someone like Armstrong from Celtic would be ideal I think.

Redmond is a bit lazy with his distribution I think. There were a number of times he got into good positions and then over hit a cross or under/over hit a pass. There was one in particular where he absolutely fired a pass at Cedric and we lost possession because Cedric couldn't control it. Strikes me as a lack of concentration as he does have the ability but is incredibly inconsistent even when it comes to doing the simple stuff.

Excellent summary, mirrors my thoughts perfectly. Much to be positive about but failure to score again is a bit worrying.

That was ridiculous. Might as well make it a non-contact sport. Ref was pretty bad today but it's Mike Jones and he isn't a very good referee.

Even against a side playing with absolutely no ambition we had a few wobbly moments at the back. We've got to address the goal scoring problem asap but I'm not quite sure what we can do without bringing in new blood and I don't think we will do that. We played much much better today than under Puel and I much prefer the way we were setup but if you can't score the end result is the same.

Completely agree. So much better than Puel's turgid, negative cr*p. Shame we can't finish our dinner.

Did you watch the game? It was far from atrocious and Tadic played very well. You really are clueless.

Agreed that some of our play was absolutely first class. However, this set of attacking players don't appear to have the composure required to hit the net regularly. Some of the misses were unforgivable.

Wow that really isn't good. We had a clear problem last year, we haven't addressed it in the summer and so can't be surprised at this.

Can't miss that many chances in this league. Same problem, same players.

No chance. It was about a yard away from him. Can't give those.

Not sure what we can expect. Same players that couldn't score goals are on the pitch today. Much better performance mind.

Playing much more attractive football and seem to go forward with a lot more purpose and press but just can't score.

Called out Charlie Nicholas for saying that both Saints and Liverpool should let VVD and Coutinho leave as they'd handed in transfer requests and then saying that there was no need for English clubs to introduce release clauses (like Spain) as clubs could just refuse to sell... There was also some back and forth with Thompson but only caught the tail end of that.

No Hoj on the bench...

They are, without doubt, the most deluded and self entitled set of fans in the country. Haven't won the Premier League ever, last won a major trophy over a decade ago and behave like a club far above their current station. Last week they were going to win the league because they beat Bayern in a meaningless friendly, this week they are being outplayed by Watford. The inconsistency of comments on the Coutinho vs the VVD situation is the most annoying. It's literally the same situation, was good to see MLT pointing out some of the hypocrisy on Sky this morning in front of their big club biased panel.

It's absolutely ridiculous. How they can get away with effectively endorsing breaking the rules on live TV is beyond me. Completely unprofessional. Whilst we have all these so called ex-pro experts showing disregard for the rules then they will never be properly enforced.

Jamie Redknapp: "call Van Dijk and add an extra £20k to the contract". How about first putting a bid in that's acceptable to his current club you humongous cretin?

Sky saying Lemina will start.

Our central defence was pretty bad under Poch but I'd say the midfield and attack were both comfortably better than what we've got now. How anyone could argue that the Wanyama and Morgan shield plus an attack of Lallana, J Rod and Lambert isn't better than what we've got now is beyond me. We arguably had better full backs under MP too. Our squad was a bit thinner under MP but ultimately the quality of the starting XI was better and we still had players like Cork, JWP and Yoshi in reserve. Two of those players are now starters...