stevegrant

Much like the rest of the team, he has learned a lot since the start of the season. Of course he'll continue to make mistakes, nobody's perfect, even Sir Alex Ferguson continues to make mistakes with his team selections despite being the most successful manager in British history. At the start of the season, we'd go into games attempting to win them by playing our "normal" way, and then ended up looking clueless when that didn't work. 3-4 months on, you can clearly see differences in how we're set up on a game-by-game basis. For example, against Sunderland we put pace into the team having seen that they play a high defensive line to apply pressure to their opponents, so we utilised the long ball into channels with Mayuka's pace. Sunderland countered that in the second half of that game by dropping 20 yards deeper, so we then brought De Ridder on to attack the full-back. Yesterday, when I saw the lineup it looked like we were going for 3 central midfielders in an attempt to outnumber them, but then it became clear that Steven Davis was in there to play just behind Lambert. The system made sense but I probably would have put Guly in that position instead, and Davis was pretty ineffective there really.

We're experimenting with a few things over the next month or so to see whether the returns they produce outweigh the mild annoyance factor. At this stage I wouldn't expect them to be a permanent feature.

A word of warning to those who were still planning on using the tube to get to the game... TFL have announced which services they expect to be running on Boxing Day, and the Wimbledon branch of the District line (which includes Putney Bridge, the closest station to Craven Cottage) will NOT be running. The only stretch of the District line in operation will be from Ealing Broadway to High Street Kensington, which does include Hammersmith, which is at the opposite end of Fulham Palace Road to Putney Bridge, probably a 20-minute walk to the ground from there.

The effort of that advent calendar

Not much left at all in the Putney end, only single seats in covered sections (think the front 5 rows are uncovered)

I'm guessing that a lot of people who thought they'd only have a marginal chance of getting a ticket will have taken any SFC priority system out of the equation by buying a ticket in the "neutral" section.

I think I'd rather he was picked in the squad but didn't play, so his fitness levels took a beating.

From what I read, it wasn't that Taarabt particularly wants to go - he's not getting a game, so he'd just be sat on the bench for the whole time - but that if he didn't go he'd get a load of grief whenever he went back home on holiday.

19th January to 10th February. I'd imagine the players will need to be released by clubs up to 2 weeks in advance, but then when a team is eliminated (potentially as early as 27th January), they'll immediately be available for their clubs again.

A good point well made

Are you two done? Good.

Gunter doesn't even get in the team now, which is a massively damning indictment on his ability when he's being kept on the bench by Shaun Cummings.

Now is as good a time as ever to play Fulham, while Bryan Ruiz is out injured. In the seven PL games he's started this season, Fulham scored 16 goals. In the five games since he got injured a month ago, they've only scored 3.

Nolan was £45-50k, I think.

Er, it's blank... or perhaps that's intentional, because for "legal reasons", that's all they can say

Pavel Pogrebnyak will set a new record next season as the highest-paid player in Championship history, just edging out Nikola Zigic's £55k a week

To be fair, Neville's point was that 4-4-2 as a weaker side against a team that keeps possession as well as Arsenal is absolute suicide, not that the formation itself isn't suitable under certain circumstances. We've utilised it a few times this season with varying results.

Not sure you can necessarily take tonight's performance in isolation given the absolute car crash of an opposition.

£5 on Cazorla anytime and an Arsenal win at 4/1 £5 on Walcott anytime at 7/4 £5 on over 3.5 goals at 13/8 Tidy

Done and dusted tonight already

Is that the number of goals they're going to concede by the end of the season?

The difference between the two "performances" is that we looked reasonably well set-up but came up against a team playing very well and compounded it by making individual cock-ups. Reading just look hopeless from back to front.

South West Trains are running a Sunday service on New Years Day, so trains should be OK. BlueStar aren't running any buses, though.

DLR

Three years running... not even being subtle about it anymore, the greedy parasites.