Sheaf Saint

But still no PL goals or assists yet. For an attacking player, that is all that matters. Pace and trickery counts for nothing if it doesn't produce goals.

Sky News are "leftie Remoaners"?

I guarantee he wouldn't have that record this season if he was still here. He needed a clean break to get his confidence back, and playing in a decent team does wonders for that.

Yep, fair point. I guess the way the season has gone so far it's understandable that people will to try and find the negatives. I'm usually a pretty optimistic supporter, but I'm obviously not immune to that myself.

Remind me how many goals and assists he has so far this season please? He's just a show pony. Looks dangerous on the ball when he wants to, but offers absolutely nothing in the way of end product.

I know he messed up his last one, and his all round game has been dogsh*t recently, I grant you. But in a one-shot chance from 12 yards, I would still rather he was taking it than anyone else in the squad, except maybe Bertrand.

Not at that level, sure. But who else in the starting 11 and subs bench tonight would you have more confidence with in a shootout?

Happy we won, obviously, but sweet Jesus what was MH thinking? Takes off Gabbi and replaces him with Davis who has surely proven to everyone that he is not the right man to bring on when you are trying to defend a lead. Then goes into a penalty shootout having only made one sub and with Austin and JWP still on the bench. Bonkers.

Did our best to throw it away though

Well at least Tadic isn't still here to take one.

I stuck a fiver on them to qualify at 4/1 around 70 mins. Starting to wish I had taken the 25/1 offer of them winning in normal time now though. Can see it happening.

Inevitable wasn't it.

So Yoshida back in but no Vestegaard?

Makes me sad looking at that and thinking what could have been. That team would be challenging for the PL title.

It's purely because of his advocacy of Brexit and the perceived effect it will have on immigration.

Paul Golding - the illustrious leader of Britain First, convicted racist agitator and spud-faced coward who runs and hides behind police lines when confronted on demos - released a video stating his unwavering support for JRM and threatened anybody who criticised him with the full force of his regiment of knuckle-dragging morons. It's very telling how JRM remained completely silent and didn't even attempt to distance himself from it afterwards.

Yeah I realise it's a little ambiguous. I guess what I meant was players that have become important to the way we play; fans' favourites who we would be very sad to see leave. There are very few players in our current squad who I would actually be upset or annoyed about being sold/replaced.

Who is doing that?

Yes, I do. Well spotted

Yep. The table doesn't lie. After 7 games they have almost twice as many points as we do.

...that went on to be a real success? Our recruitment over the last few seasons has been so poor that it's hard to identify a single player in the current squad who has noticeably improved on who we had before and has reached "first name on the team sheet" status. My own thought is that it has to be McCarthy. But that in itself is pretty shocking as he wasn't even signed to be a regular starter - he was recruited to be back up to Forster.

I was wondering about this myself today. After the WC everyone was expecting Yoshi to become the lynchpin of our defence, yet he has been completely frozen out and the journos don't even bother asking about it in the pre-match press conferences. There's definitely something more going on that is being kept quiet.

This is what I don't understand though. How can a manager with MH's experience possibly rate Hoedt higher than Yoshi? It's bewildering. I'm not saying MY is amazing, and I also don't believe Hoedt is quite as terrible as some people like to make out. But anybody who knows anything about football can see that Maya is a far better CB, as well as being a strong character with leadership qualities that we sorely lack right now. There has to be something more to it than MH not rating him. He's by far the most experienced and accomplished CB at the club, but he can't get a place in a starting 11 that is leaking goals like a sieve leaking water. I think the fans deserve an explanation.

Possibly.

Apparently he was, but it was all done through a proxy so that he could deny any interest if/when it ended up not happening. At the time this was all going on, I was a briefly a mod on this board and was privy to certain information that wasn't made public at the time. One of the board admins had a private meeting with a very well-respected director at the club, who informed him that the interest was indeed from a party representing Paul Allen.