Colinjb

Tower

Who looks at lime green and navy blue and goes: 'Nice!?'

That puts Woolston, Sholing.... and Northam perfectly in reach.

Wednesday 24th, 16:00-17:00 hours.

Well, we sacked Sturrock after a win v Blackburn.

I would like to try something a bit different against Stoke. ------------------ Austin -------------------- ---------------- Gabbiadini ----------------- ----------- Davis -- Ward-Prowse --------- ----------------- Romeu --------------- Bertrand* --------------------------- Cedric ----- Caceres - Yoshida - Stephens ------ ----------------- Forster ------------------- Wing backs for width with capable defenders with full back experience who can tuck in behind them. A strong central midfield with a creative outlet in Gabbiadini. A strong Striker leading the line to act as a focal point and pivot to bring the midfield and Gabbiadini into play while also being a threat in his own right. But of course, this will never in a million years actually happen.

I fear there is no smoke without fire. A shame. He needed and deserved more time.

One bit of further depth here. Pied is very much Puel's man, managed him at Lyon, Nice and now here. If Puel goes, would Pied wish to follow?

I can only comment as seen. I would be surprised if there were over 30,000 people there last night. Didn't hear the away end chant 'You're only here to see United' once.

This has been advertised on TV recently. Mainly trying to normalise the idea of hiring a hotel in the day by business people looking for a home away from home, etc. But yes, it's got one main purpose.

Many empty seats. Especially noticeable on the corners.

Did anyone at the game last night observe someone shouting 'Vote Labour!!!' in a very northern accent while walking through the crowds in the Industrial estate south of the Chapel?

I am wetting myself with anticipation here. Is the season over yet?

Something along those lines, yes.

We played ok, the worst thing about it last night was the frustration and angst from the crowd. Entirely understandable as Manchester United were there for the taking, but it did undermine what was a reasonable performance. My thoughts: - Boufal and Pied looked ok when they came on, Boufal clearly was making efforts not to over-do it after a bit of skill and Pied was eager to impress and showed a good turn of pace on occasion. - Gabbiadini was isolated, again. Could it simply be that people are now wise to him? We can criticise our poor finishing until the cows come home, but at what point do we look to our tactics and match preparation as reason for this? - Tadic, one of his better games. Some excellent link up play. - Targett, clearly bulked out a bit but without the attacking threat from Bertrand we were significantly weakened. - Stephens and Yoshi: Solid again. A perfectly acceptable partnership building there. Man Utd played for a point, they clearly had the quality to hurt us but were more concerned with staying free of injury and tidy. Not to detract from us though as we did control the game.

Absolutely, remember it well, hence why I asked. Also, before Birmingham in the Championship the heavens absolutely opened, a Steward I was friendly with confirmed that had it continued the game would have been postponed.

Superb!

Any chance of the game being rained off? It's not stopped all day here.

And with that, the lame dog can be finally shot.

The usual fluff. Actually feel sorry for Puel. I do believe he deserved another season. At least he should be afforded the dignity of seeing the season out before making the change early next week. No point hanging around.

No Pogba, No Ibrahimovic, focus on the Europa League final, likely to play their reserves/fringe players. I look forward to seeing how we fail to win this one. I have never seen us beat Man Utd in person, so apologies beforehand.

Worth seeing how some of the fringe players do, this game is the very definition of a dead rubber, so why not?

I doubt Craig Shakespeare would follow as things stand. Regarding Ranieri He is not the youngest, his success at Leicester will never be repeated and he has suffered significant failure in his career, Atletico Madrid, Greece and his second season at Leicester spring to mind. However: As manager of Valencia, Roma, Chelsea, Fiorentina, Juventus and Parma he has win ratios above 40%, nudging 50% on average. Extremely experienced and certainly more of a personality then Puel. I would give him a go.

If we lose Bertrand, Andrew Robertson from Hull.

Wide stripes then? hmmmmm. Under Armour are not afraid to be a bit out-there with their designs, so something a bit different could be on the cards I wonder.