Saint Charlie

And we were clearly better than both last season.

Why? Also doesn't have to be cheaper, and thats not anything I have any control over obviously. Nor can I control whether we sell Long clearly. But surely that doesn't mean you cannot have an opinion or the whole Forum might as well shut down now because none of us work for the Club. We have a whole team to identify players, so why should I? They will clearly be watching player you or I have no knowledge of, so leave it to the experts.

****. Newcastle winner. They could catch us over the next 3 games.

Draw would suit us nicely in the Spurs vs Newcastle game.

WBA winning at Liverpool now and set to move above us. Pretty much just relegation candidates plus Chelsea below us now.

More for the summer but would be good to see what Ayoze Perez looks like in a decent side. Think he has a lot of good attributes ans plenty of improvement in him. Would only be possible of Newcastle went down and I guess bigger sides would be keen too.

Thats not for me to say, and is why we have a much lauded scouting setup. There are probably lots of players we are watching across the world who most of us have never heard of anyway so its futile naming people as I'm not privy to who we are watching.

Come again?

Reinvest in a different striker that the Manager rates and who is better than Long. As clearly stated in the title/OP.

Could definitely do with Newcastle staying down there as they will probably spend in January. West Brom won't go down IMO and Liverpool are winning that one now.

Keep the excuses for Long coming Davie...some crackers so far!

Give him another game versus Spurs and see if it was a one off or can be repeated...

Usually with those that settle you can tell they are just adjusting though. Like Mane, right from his debut at the Emirates he was troubling defendera. Sure it took time to stop diving and find consistency but his quality showed. Clasie looks too small, weak and slow to play that position in the PL. The Dutch league is poor as we showed beating Vitesse so easily. He may turn out to be good, but at the moment doesn't look like he will even cover half the gaps left by Schneiderlin - and his adaptation isn't going to happen any quicker if he cannot get into the starting XI. He has been injury free since the start of October and it wasn't like he missed 6 months anyway.

Plus in the summer he is a free agent and will have his pick of a number of teams on monster wages. No incentive for him to move in Jan unless someone offers £100k a week in a moment of madness (Newcastle).

SOG is an apologist for everything unfortunately. Which is probably more delusional than the so-called "bedwetters".

JWP onviously brought on for set plays by that stage. If Juanmi had come on it would have had to be for one of the forwards, and really at that stage could only have been Long. Don't think that sub could be overly criticised.

Not in Austin's interest to move in Jan as he will be a free agent in June and can negiotate himself a monster deal. His fee might be seemingly attainable but the apparent 80k wage demands he had in the summer surely aren't.

Haha. This time relegation would be disasterous!

He actually used to post on here. His username was Jeff Le Taxi.

You will probably get the usual stick, but thats largely correct. Got a bit too clever this summer with signings after the success of last summer. If ever there was a time to buy an experienced PL player, like Cabaye for example, it was to replace Morgan. We can't afford to wait 6/9 months for his replacement to get up to speed with the PL, if he ever does.

Loans probably most likely in Jan unless buying someone the selling club doesn't really want. Could also depend on Juanmi and Ramirez's futures in Jan. Gaston will be hard to shift on his money which probably restricts us.

Maybe our Schneiderlin replacement will start? Might as well at least go back to our supposed best lineup: ---------------------GK----------------- Cedric - Fonte - VVD - Bertrand -------Clasie-----Wanyama------- -------------------Davis---------------- Mane-----------------------------Tadic -------------------Pelle---------------

We need some points pretty quick to be totally comfortable IMO although certainly should be. All the teams at the bottom will spend in January given the huge financial impact of staying up versus going down.

Would Afobe really do the business versus the price he would probably cost? Hasn't been great this season and recently dropped by Wolves. Depends what sort of club we view ourselves as but seeing how high profile the PL is and how big the wages are I reckon we could get someone better. Otherwise play Jay Rod up top once he is fit in Jan/Feb because he is better than Afobe.

Bournemouth play nice football but their workrate is like ours was under Pochettino and is so effective. Also gets the crowd going.