Sheaf Saint

How about the hardest set of opening fixtures on paper in the entire league? Wolves aside, which games *should* we have done better in? Burnley? They're a well organised team who know well how to grind out draws, and better teams than us will fail to beat them this season. I'll agree these two things demonstrated poor judgement, and we all make mistakes in life, but come on - showing he "doesn't have a clue" is a ridiculous exaggeration. What about the tactical change he made at HT against Chelsea to get us back in the game? If you're going to criticise his failures then at least acknowledge his successes. Like Ducky you seem to be intent on painting an unfairly negative picture of him which I just cannot agree with. Yes, things *could* be better right now, but the way we're set up and playing as a team, which is the remit of the manager, is not our main issue.

If we were playing badly every week and getting humiliated time after time, maybe you would have a point. But we're not. Ralph may make one or two questionable selections, but overall the performances have been a massive improvement on the appalling dross we saw in the second half of last season. You go on about how we only beat Leeds because they had 3 key players missing, while ignoring the fact we've been without our best attacking player (Stu) since the start of the season and without our captain for the last two. We're playing OK. We're creating chances but not putting them away. That isn't Ralph's fault and it doesn't make him a poor manager who's been sussed out. If we weren't creating anything and getting carved open at the back then I'd be worried, but that just isn't the reality. The way you go on about it, anyone would think we were getting out-fought and out-thought every week. Ralph isn't perfect by any stretch, but I don't know how much more you can expect from him with this squad. If he was good enough to get this bunch consistently over-performing then he'd have been poached from us by now. I'll follow all this up by saying if we're still where we are after we've played everyone once then I'll be concerned. But I'm confident we won't be.

Not a campaign? How else would you describe your relentless berating of anyone who dares to have a viewpoint that differs from your rabid opposition to Ralph's tenure? Your hatred of the man has obviously made you so blinkered that you think people who, from what I can see, are objective enough to recognise the improvement in our performances and the mitigating circumstances for our current league position are some sort of deranged fanboys. Literally everyone posting on here who doesn't want him sacked has acknowledged his flaws and accepts there are things he could do better. You don't like him and want him gone - fine. We get the message. You don't need to bleat on about it day after day and use every draw or defeat as a stick to beat him with. Even when we beat Leeds you still got on his back and wouldn't give him any credit. It's getting incredibly boring now.

Yes.

So let me make sure I understand you correctly - not subscribing to your Ralph Out campaign means being an apologist and part of a cult, yeah?

I take your point, but he's only really deputising for Stu until he returns to full fitness. So we do have better alternatives. Given he's only a backup player and will be dropped as soon as Stu is ready to start again, I'd say his performances have been about as good as we could have expected from him.

0-4 at HT. OGS can't have long left, surely.

Please not Valery. He was hopeless against Sheff Utd last time out.

Ralph doesn't always get his selections perfect, but our performances so far this season have been as good as we can realistically expect with this squad. It's individual errors that are costing us, as shown yesterday. Sacking Ralph and bringing in Howe won't make Redmond a better finisher or Bednarek a better defender. He's got the squad he wanted after 3 years. Sacking him now and starting again from scratch would be madness. He needs to be given at least a full season with this squad before deciding on his future.

Fair points. Giving him his dues, his overall performances recently have been much improved. His assist last week, his early ball in for Theo's chance yesterday - these are the kind of things we have been crying out for from him for the last couple of seasons. Good on him. However, I won't apologise for berating that miss. You can't be missing chances as good as that in the PL and still expect to win games. It probably didn't impact the result overall because it was still 0-1 at that point and we wouldn't have then gone on to score the two goals we did if that had gone in. But imagine him missing that in the dying minutes of a close game with the scores even. Would we still be calling for people to go easy on him?

At least we didn't capitulate like Everton did. 2-1 up at home with 10 mins left and then losing 2-5 is unforgivable. Won't be long before the Everton fans turn on Rafa.

Their equaliser - no denying it was a superb finish, but by Christ that's poor from Bednarek to allow the shot. Really naïve defending. Draw probably a fair result as both teams had chances to win. I'm happy enough with 4 points from Burnley and Leeds, as long as we don't mess it up in the next few games.

That miss from Redmond was criminal. Imagine if that had happened with 10 mins to go at 2-2. Would he still have been laughing about it then I wonder?

So are we gonna have to take JWP of corner duty when he returns from suspension? Redmond's so far in his absence have been excellent. So very nearly scored from them twice last week, and did today.

I'm with you on this one Hypo. If you compare his spoken English in interviews to the language used in this tweet, it's a pretty fair bet he didn't write it himself. Not in English anyway. It's possible he wrote something in French and got someone to translate his sentiments for him I suppose, but I very much doubt these are his words.

Only in this case, it's not bollox - it's the very reason he left Everton and signed for us. He wouldn't have done that if he was happy to carry on playing U23 football, especially as bigger clubs than us were interested in him. He is very much in Ralph's first team plans. Trust me - he is and he will.

Small didn't leave Everton just to sit in our B team. He's very much our backup LB and if we were to sign another senior LB ahead of him now he would be back where he was at Everton with his pathway to the first team blocked. Not a chance he would have agreed to sign for us if he knew that was likely. Remember, he didn't have a pre-season so he's only just getting up to speed and hasn't completed 90 mins for the B team yet. Won't be long before we see him in the matchday squad, I'm sure of it. He's a very exciting prospect. Perhaps not quite at the level of Livramento but not far off.

Interesting. I expect we'll be putting most of it into a new keeper with Forster entering the last 6 months of his contract. That aside, what areas do we need to strengthen? As others have alluded to, we can pretty much rule out buying a new striker right now. AM - numbers are good but could do with a boost in quality. FB - good options on either side. No need to invest there atm. CM maybe, with only 3 senior players for 2 positions it only takes a bit of bad luck with injury to leave us relying on kids. Another CB perhaps? Hopefully Stephens will be back by then though so we'll have enough cover, assuming Lyanco is up to it of course.

5 years ago today. What a superb away trip that was. Disappointing result but we gave them a good game. I was slightly late arriving and only got there just before kick off. I will never forget the feeling of walking up towards one of the most iconic sports stadiums in the world and hearing OWTS booming out from inside it.

On the subject of in-ground entertainment, does anybody remember sometime in the late 80s or early 90s there was a falconry display on the pitch at HT and during a high speed dive / swoop one of the birds flew straight into the clear perspex of the dugouts and knocked itself out cold? Or did I imagine that?

Fantastic. The cameras showed them marching on the stream I was watching on saturday, but it wasn't really audible. It's getting close to 5 years since I've been to a game at SMS, and that has just given me goosebumps.

He got a yellow for it. So the fact that Dean had already blown up for an earlier offence clearly didn't prevent him from issuing a card at all. He just didn't deem it worthy of a red, apparently.

Sorry, yes that's what I thought you were talking about. Was Llorente on Broja any worse than JWP? Difficult to say really. It was a wild lunge that had no chance of winning the ball, which I don't think you can say about JWP. He saw Jorginho have a loose touch and legitimately went for the ball, and Jorginho then massively extended his foot to get the ball before him and planted it right in the path of JWP's outstretched foot. I think they were probably no worse than each other. I think a yellow would have been perfectly adequate in both instances. But the fact that JWP got a red and Llorente got no card at all highlights the inconsistency. Llorente then took out Moi on the edge of the box later on, and that should have been his second yellow. So JWP commits one late but not deliberate foul and gets sent off. Llorente commits two and doesn't.

I respect your right to hold a different opinion, but I'm curious to know how you conclude that a genuine but mis-timed challenge for the ball is worse than an obviously deliberate (and successful) attempt to injure another player?