The Kraken

Whatever we think, he won't get one. The FA will say that the referee saw it and acted on it (by issuing a yellow card). That'll be the end of it. God bless the FA disciplinary system.

Is there anyone who has agreed with ferguson that the ball could have broken his neck? I must have missed that. Ferguson's reaction is over the top; he's right in a way though.

Remember Ricardo Rocha in the derby...............? That was probably different though.

I've made my mind up. Why are you being weird and trying to challenge it? My mind is made up. I think it was disgraceful; whether he meant to strike him or not. Williams entered into a thoroughly unnecessary action, and that happened as a direct consequence. It was an idiotic thing to do.

I said I was 50/50 whether he meant it. if he didn't mean it, it was still disgraceful that he took such reckless action when so close to the player. Just because he may not have meant it doesn't excuse it. Well, it might for you; it doesn't for me.

Doesn't really matter if he meant it or not. It happened. Its a bit like debating whether a defender meant to give away a professional foul; its still a professional foul whether he meant it or not.

I'm 50/50 on whether he meant it. That aside, it was an unneccessary and pretty sh*tty thing to do, and Williams should get done for it.

Hadn't seen it until just now; that's pretty disgraceful, really.

Well, this is just my opinion of course. But I thought we won those games in part because of the way Lambert played. Sometimes because of the goals he scored, or set up, or just his general play. And I don't think we have another striker on our books who is half as good as he is. So I just disagree with dropping him; or that he's the reason we're not comfortably in mid-table and we should therefore change. In fact I find the suggestion of it a bit bizaare. But there we go; like I said, that's only my opinion.

I just wondered how we won 4 games this season. I'm gla to have it pointed out the reason why; thanks.

Ah ok, got it. We've only previously won when other teams have switched off, or when they've been even more rubbish than usual. Got it; that explains things.

Will doing nothing also end in the same types of result as QPR away? Or Aston Villa home? Or Reading home? Or Newcastle home? They seem equally as valid as yesterday's result to me.

Hangeland absolutely destroyed Rodriguez in the home game; even more so after Lambert was substituted. Also I'm not sure what you're saying about Puncheon and Ramirez; why would they not be on the pitch against Fulham?

Who on the left? Its not quite that simple; we have no-one. I'd go with Guly left, Ramirez middle, Lambert up top. Not great but we have little else.

Its all very well saying Lambert needs to play less; it becomes a bit of a daft idea if the replacement striker(s) are not up to the task and we therefore significantly weaken ourselves because of it, all in the name of getting a prime 30 minutes or so every game from him.

God knows that didn't work. Even when Lambert did win a knock down it very rarely went to one of our players, they seemed miles away from him.

Unfortunately I think the loss of Lallana led Adkins to make a number of mistakes yesterday in trying to find the best way to cope without him: Decided on playing a 442. Playing Mayuka off Lambert; they've not really played together before and it showed. Plonking Ramirez out on the wing; it negates his effectiveness and I feel doesn't play to his strengths. I don't think we'll see that starting formation again any time soon. And I hope we won't see 442 again either; the midfield gets too overrun, and if we're going to have a £12M man lets have him in his proper position. I was also quite worried at the number of times we kept lumping up chipped balls to Lambert. It was obviously a deliberate tactic that we kept repeating over and over without really learning. Appalling distribution didn't help that, to be fair.

I'm aware he did that last season; but its no longer the case this season. He's made almost as many starts this season as he did the whole of the last one. Hence why i responded to your "Holt doesn't get that freedom at Norwich" comment. he didn't, but he certainly does now. Hence why I think its a bit of a pish analogy to use.

How Fonte missed that header is beyond me. Completely free, a rare decent delivery, and he spooned it wide.

Grant Holt's and Rickie Lambert's PL stats this season are identical; 15 starts, 2 sub appearances.

Maybe that'll provide a chance for one of their youngsters to come through....

After yesterday's game I'm genuinely at a loss as to what we expect Mayuka to do for us. As I say, I really don't like 442 and it seems we've only really played it in times of desperation. Its rarely been used as a first choice line-up, more when we have to adapt to injuries. Yesterday was a case of that. You're right that Mayuka was bought as a striker more than a winger. Unfortunately I think using him as such limited the effectiveness of Ramirez, just as it did when he was out wide against Reading. It was also noticeable that Schneiderlin was pretty poor in a central midfield of 2; thankfully Jack Cork had yet another solid game in there, but it was no surprise to see Morgan replaced. We definitely need to look at our options out wide in January; especially if the rumours that Lallana is out for 10 weeks have any substance to them. Yesterday showed we don't have too many systems to cope with the loss of Lallana on the left (althought I'd much rather we'd have kept the 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 whatever with Gaston in his normal role, Morgan and Cork together, Puncheon on the right and either Mayuka or Guly on the left).

Was there anyone clamouring for Mayuka to be played up front? Genuine question, I don't know. I'd have potentially made a case for him to play yesterday but not up front, I don't believe 442 actually works for us.

He really did, Roger. Lambert was average yesterday; but I blame our tactics of playing floated, chipped balls up to him and having no-one around him to feed off knock-downs as much as his own individual performance. Our tactics weren't working and we had no desire to change them. And the quality of balls into our centre forward were pretty appalling all day.

It was also quite possibly the most consistently poor deliveries into Lambert that I've seen to date. Just chipping the ball up to him, not giving him the opportunity of even having a running jump at the ball most of the time. Either that or failing to beat the first man from set pieces. Us using Lambert as an aerial threat is no new news. Teams worked out those were our tactics years ago. The problem for those teams was that its all very well knowing what we're going to do, stopping it is an altogether different thing. When Lambert uses his movement to drop off onto the full back, and when the ball is is played with a bit of pace and lets Lambert move on to it and attack it, then he's exceptionally difficult to defend against. Even when he's got 2 defenders on him. yesterday, the floaty wishy washy balls up to him were pretty average. What was also massively frustrating to see was the lack of players gambling in and around Lambert for those times when he did win a knock-down; there was no-one there to feed off him in any case. Quite how we kept on repeating the same old tactics time and time again was just beyond me. Especially when we switched to just Lambert up front, made no sense to me. Far too obvious, no variety in our play, and the actual delivery of our main tactic was consistently awry.