Whitey Grandad

Thanks, I've just turned over in time to miss Mané's.

We have complete control of our borders now regarding no-EU people and a fat lot of good that is. If we left the EU and stayed in the EEA then the rules on movement of EU nationals would not change.

Leaving the EU would make no difference to the numbers of immigrants coming to the UK.

That's my point. If they'd moved up quicker then it would have been more obvious that he was offside. It wasn't obvious at the time and nobody appealed or complained. They just weren't concerned about the threat, not because he was in an offside position, they just weren't on the ball. The fact is that Mata was halfway between our right back and central defender and in quite a bit of space. True he was offside, but too close to leave to chance or to an assistant ref with the sun in his eyes.

...or Yoshida could have been a yard closer to his centre. Personally I would have preferred 3 or 4 yards nearer and a call to his team mates to get upfield quicker.

Just for the record: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-and-meaning-of-the-surname-Schweinsteiger-Is-it-considered-a-funny-name-by-Germans (I always thought it meant 'pig climber' myself )

Yes, for some reason after half an hour it became a case of pass it back whenever possible. It was always going to lead to trouble but Maya's mistake was an appalling lack of concentration.

No you're not alone. Pellè also scored two which I thought were more stylish.

So with Jose in the middle that just leaves the choice of right back.

How about his first-time pass out to the right wing in the move that gave us our second goal? (That onrushing Saint was Davis and he was 20 yards out)

I don't think it's a question of Yoshi not being good enough, although that can be debated separately, more that he wasn't playing in a familiar and well-drilled formation which meant that he wasn't making his movement and passing instinctively and this led directly to Mata getting between into the gap between him and the central defenders for their first and him playing the ball back into space.

Nothing beats a settled team, especially a settled defence.

That's like saying 'Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?'

Did I miss Fellaini? Perhaps he's had a haircut or something. Whichever, his choice didn't work out too well yesterday.

His performance at Watford had nothing to do with his performance yesterday.

I think that's going too far, our defence was dreaming at the time. Mata was ambling back towards the midldle of the pitch and so were our defenders. If Mata had been one step further on he would still have been picked out and the result would have been the same. The problem was that our back four were not used to playing together in that formation and there were a lot of misunderstandings.

Likewise. I was thinking of going but then I had a word with myself and wiser counsel prevailed.

He wasn't knocked, he slipped whilst trying to turn because he was off balance having been caught in the wrong position.

A couple more thoughts on yesterday: I thought our game perked up a lot when Long came on and his first time pass out to our right wing set up our second goal. The papers today are full of Martial, even calling him a '£36million bargain', perhaps ironically, yet Graziano also scored two goals without the benefit of a gift. I wouldn't make too much of the lack of an offside decision. It was close and the sort of thing that only gets picked up on the tele and during the game nobody even noticed it, none of our players appealed at the time. What was more significant was our slowness in getting back upfield which would have made Mata's position more obvious. He was ambling back in a great big gap between Maya and José and one of them at least should have been more aware of him. He was obviously going to be a target as soon as we lost the ball again (yes JWP, this means you).

Exactly. At the moment it seems that we don't have a first-choice right-back, someone whose name is one of the first on the team sheet.

What annoys me the most is that this game was there for the taking and we just didn't seem to want it.

I thought so too. There were a couple of occasions when I forgot Tadic was playing.

There were a few occasions in the first half when Maya chose to turn and pass backwards instead of going forwards. It caught up with him eventually.

Thanks. About what time? I was at the game and have just got home and am going through the recording.

When was this? I can't remember anything obvious.