VectisSaint

In other news, Boruc and Surman on verge of going top of the Championship.

I suggest you stick to the day job But, if you really want a corny song, how about to the tune of the Rupert the Bear TV series (I know, very sad, any street cred I have is now completely gone and I hate using the word Rupert on here, the Bearsy bro may also have a problem with this, if so apologies) but it fits perfectly. Toby, Alderweireld, everyone sing his name Toby, Alderweireld, everyone come and join in all of his games. I'm sure if we all donned ginger wigs, or santa hats and waved big foam hands at the same time this would get the stadium rocking.

Didn't realise that he was now playing in Serie A for "Genoa Cricket and Football Club" after a season and half of loans in Spain. Not exactly set the world alight, only played 3 so far this season.

None of the above actually won the Europa League, therefore the simple little plan I outlined does not apply. Under the new rules you have to win the Europa League (from this season) to qualify for the Champions League. There is nothing gained for being best loser.

I'll bow to your expert knowledge of such things.

Still a decent team if it includes Davis (he gets results with Norn Ireland with worse players around him than those). Perhaps you were meaning to play Kelvin in MF.

So get to the Group stages, finish 3rd and go on to win the Europa League. Then qualify the following season for the Champions League as Europa League winners. Simple. Glad thats sorted. Think its more likely we wil bring in a couple of players in January to reinforce what we already have. We clearly have 2 or 3 positions where we need to improve our strength in depth with players that could slot in, rather than as squad players, GK, CF and AMF. Wouldn't be surprised to see Cork and maybe JRod depart to make way for some new signings. We will not go out and spend 30m or anything like on one player, no such player would have the impact that the OP seems to desire.

Yes, but hardly worthwhile is it. If he could make it that far then why not just wait another 3 games and the suspension threat lapses anyway. Seems more likely that he would get booked long before the Burnley game. If it was down to me I would tell him to take off his shirt when he scores his 3rd goal against Leicester on Saturday and get it over with. Then tell him never to be so stupid again.

Mick stayed loyal for a few seasons after we were relegated despite the constant threat to his England place a a result. In the close season before the 1977–78 season, Channon left his beloved Southampton — still in the Second Division to join City for 300k. He never really settled and City struggled and he happily returned 2 years later. To suggest he left in the manner of Lallana and the other recent deserters really is quite an insult.

So what's wrong with Forster, no team spirit. We need to know.

OG(1) against Sunderland was pretty special. The rest of his hat-trick wasn't much though.

Just like 4 goals conceded after 10 games last season was ridiculous? It is the one stat where we are actually marginally worse than last season. Of course after 10 games things started to go a bit pear-shaped in that regard.

Last season after 10 games we had conceded 4. So that makes Forster slightly worse than Boruc in that regard. His kicking and general distribution is a huge step up on Boruc. But I have no idea yet about his shot saving capabilities. He really hasn't made any top drawer saves because he hasn't needed to, our midfield and defence restrict our opponents to one or two shots on target per game. Yesterday I think Hull had one scuffed "shot" on target, how can you judge a keeper when he has so little to do in that department? We could have played Gazzanigga yesterday and the result would probably have been the same. I'm not going to knock Forster but there are some valid criticisms, he definitely does look a bit nervous at times, and is a little slow getting down to low shots occasionally, hardly surprising for such a big guy.

I would think a red and black striped shirt would be more likely. He will return to his spiritual home when the Cherries are promoted.

But as I said on a different thread we still have to play 4 of the bottom 6 before half way.

Odd thing is we have played more than half the teams once now, and yet we still have to play 4 of the bottom 6 before we get to half way. Apart from Chelsea all the other big teams are still below us, some a long way below. The Manc derby could be quite useful to us, a draw would probably be a decent result for us in our quest for Champions League qualification :-)

He could dream of playing there this year, if Liverhampton play their reserves against the Cherries in December.

Fitting to get another win on All Saints Day.

You do know that you don't wear black armbands for Remembrance Day. It is All Saints Day though.

Maybe he's been down the pub.

We need to get him off and replace with Long.

I guess the MLS has dispensed with the offside law if that's the case.

This. The press and many others fall into the trap that we lost the core of our team. But this is patently not the case. SRL is the only one who left initially that would really be considered "core", and to be fair he was probably near the end of his career anyway, as Liverhampton now know. We did well to find a great replacement (Pelle). The fact is that we retained the core/the spine of the team, Schneiderlin, Wanyama, Cork, Davis and critically Fonte. I would have included Boruc, but most hacks seem to not have cottoned on that he is no longer playing for us (and probably never will again). Keeping the core was crucial (throw in Clyne as well but I don't consider FBs as core/spine) and we are really only evolving from last season. RK has moved on from Poch's style and made us more of an attacking side while maintaining/improving the great defensive qualities. Steve Davis has been transformed by Ron's style and is now crucial to our attacking style, he has also enabled Schneiderlin or Wanyama or Cork (depending who is playing) to have more freedom to get forward and as a result has added to our goal threat from players who previously were not goal threats at all. Bring in Tadic for Lallana and to be honest the former is more creative than our erstwhile skipper, a very good find by Ron. We were almost equally successful last season with Poch until the injury/suspension crisis hit in November last season, whether we will turn out to be better this season depends to some extent on whether we get a similar crisis again this season. If we can avoid then we can prove to be quite a lot better than last term. But our achilles heal will continue to be our small squad. Interesting that many people are still praising the academy (rightly) but don't seem to have noticed that we don't have any academy players playing any more (OK, JWP is injured), and no-one 21 or younger!! Reed and Targett are obviously on the fringes, but currently that is the extent of the academy input.

Wear a Santa hat as well, for Turkish' sake.

Would just sing "Toby".