Midfield_General

They’re second in the championship, not expecting them to be pushovers. Plus they’ve started Jonjo Shelvey who for some reason it feels always plays well against us

Looking forward to seeing more of The Duke rampaging down the left

In the last week I’ve watched Man City, Arsenal and Spurs all gift stupid goals to the opposition and go on to lose the game, playing suicidal passes from the keeper to a defender under pressure who then immediately loses it and they concede. If they can’t do it, what chance did we ever have? I really hope this mental trend is coming to an end.

Kevin Danso starting at centre back for Spurs tonight. Intrigued.

Apparently in between leaving Everton and signing for Tranmere he also played for Qianwei Huando, Kansas City Wizards, Chongging Longxin and Shenzan Pingan, putting him ahead of the later trend of players heading to China by about 20 years. Seems he was something of a pioneer (not just of dugouts).

Yep, he was 19, came on for Danny Wallace at half-time and scored the last one. Rideout scored two on his debut.

Rod Wallace on one wing, Danny Wallace on the other, Paul Rideout and Colin Clarke as twin centre forwards. Saints 4, West Ham 0, opening day of the season, 1988. Happy days.

Picture the scene: Leeds have choked the automatics yet again and, dispirited and under extreme pressure, find themselves having to grind their way through the play-offs, where, in the final, they face a rejuvenated, free-scoring West Brom. Goalless at Wembley with ten minutes to play, the ball is threaded through to Adam Armstrong who finds himself running clear in the inside right channel... Actually, if he was being made available, I'm surprised Leeds didn't snap him up purely to avoid that scenario - if they were sniffing around Archer then they must have been in the market for a striker. I wonder whether they're thinking they should have gone for the other one now?

No - I mean more don’t stand in their way if they want to leave, set a reasonable valuation and let them know we’ll sell them if that valuation is met but that if it isn’t then they’re expected to act professionally and buckle down as part of the squad. (Admittedly that is phrased slightly differently to how I put it first time 😛)

Sharp’s Law

Looking at the table, it’s not inconceivable that he could effectively have returned £100m in value to them by the end of the season!

Or just fuck them all off and start afresh, which I wouldn’t be against at all.

Yep. Clearly an excellent pro who always gives it everything but just doesn’t quite have the attributes to be a success at prem level - strength, height and composure being the main ones. He can’t complain that he hasn’t been given enough opportunities either, both as centre forward and coming in from wide across two prem seasons and various managers. He’s an excellent championship level striker. No shame at all in that. Albion should be delighted they’ve got him because he’ll bang them in for them. An astute bit of business for them, and makes sense for us too if he wasn’t going to play under Juric.

The sort of statement signing that really gives reassurance that we’re in great hands with Sport Republic. Pretty convinced we’ll stay up now!

And to think they said he was just on loan at Anderlecht 😢

Exclusive: I've been told Charles and Eddie will definitely both be here next season. You can trust me on this... would I lie to you? EDIT: Oh god this shit joke is going to sit at the top of the page now isn't it

Sad to see how JWP’s career has dropped off a cliff. West Ham don’t want him, he couldn’t even get in Forest’s squad, and now he can’t play for anyone else for the rest of the season. I know not everyone rates him but he’s a lot better than spending the rest of the season rotting in West Ham’s reserves.

Re Sam AA - are there actually any examples of youth academy players who we’ve ‘let go’ or sold for a small-ish sum in recent years because we didn’t rate them enough to keep them, where they’ve actually gone on to prove that it was a mistake to let them go when we did? i.e they have gone on to bigger and better things and turned out to be good enough to play regularly in the PL? I’m not talking about the ones we cashed in on for good money, or someone like Kevin Philips who slipped through the net 40 odd years ago, I’m talking in recent years. I’m not sure I can think of any. I’m not counting Tella as he was an Arsenal youth player and he didn’t join us until he was 18. Targett maybe? Generally speaking it feels that we do make pretty decent calls on who we let go if we can see they’re not quite up to it.

Bernard was absolutely appalling. I don’t think I ever saw him not out of position. Just used to stand around in random places looking confused while a game of football went on around him.

Jesus, someone get him a sandwich and shut him up. Interested to see if he actually is any good as a CB, as I hardly remember him playing when he was with us, and when he did it was out of position at RB.

Another positive of Welington looking decent is that it means KWP can move back onto the right for the rest of the season, where he should be and where he’s much more effective. Should make us much more balanced down the flanks.

Welington was a pleasant surprise. Very attack minded, worked hard, got up and down all day and doesn’t mind a tackle. Early days of course but on today’s showing he could do very well in the championship.

Spot on. We still can’t defend, but at least now when we get the ball in their half our players look to go forward and actually attack their box. We’re much more direct and we’re actually running at people, getting them backpedalling and at least making them have to defend, rather than that ridiculous bullshit of letting them sit comfortably back in their banks of four while we slowly and pointlessly knock it from side to side in front of them achieving absolutely nothing. It’s obviously too little too late for this season, but we actually resembled a sensible football team for spells today, rather than just lurching between the soporific and the suicidal like we did before.

That's my point - I'm not sure why either, because he looked to be putting himself about, winning his duels and doing fine, as well as winning the game for us with his goal, but look back through the match thread and he's getting all sorts of shit

Onuachu was getting stick on here, and my stream was terrible so it was hard to properly see what was going on, but in between bouts of buffering and hot grannies in my area it looked like he won more than his fair share of headers when it was lumped up to him, and just needed someone closer to him picking up the second ball a bit more. Plus of course he reacted well to knock in the winner. Looked like he did alright, all told.