stevegrant

The thing with United at the moment is that their big wins have come against teams who just seem to be a bit weak mentally when they go behind. West Ham conceded twice in the last three minutes, Swansea conceded three in the last ten minutes, Everton three in the last seven minutes, so as long as we can stay in the game, we've got a chance IMO. Despite the goal difference, I don't think they've been especially impressive for the vast majority of the time, but they (like us) have had a pretty kind run of fixtures to start the season.

Martina was unusually competent, Schneiderlin was mostly anonymous until he conceded the penalty to make it 4-0.

Martina against Rashford should be fun

Yep. A lot more than I expected, actually. Around £150m over the course of two years - of course we recouped around £160m in sales, but our signings while he was here all just seemed so much more sensible and carefully-planned.

According to transfermarkt.co.uk, Koeman has spent TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILLION POUNDS since he became Everton manager. He has somehow managed to manufacture a squad that has at least three number tens but not a single centre forward to finish off any chances that might be created, and the only player with pace has been out for more than a year with a knee injury. Baffling.

Middlesex are comfortably below us and also won't get anything out of this game, so I think we'll be fine. We've also still got to play Warwickshire, who look utterly hopeless and just want the season to end. They could be relegated this week depending on how the other games finish.

It's no great surprise that van Dijk is pretty rusty, that game on Monday was his first game for nearly eight months. Suspect he'll need one or two more U23 games (or behind-closed-doors friendlies, depending on the schedule) before he's anywhere near a first team recall.

Pretty ****-poor that they're playing a County Championship game at an out-ground in September. We'd have had nearly two full days' play at Lord's with its proper drainage.

All Companies House documents are free these days, I think.

Austin is excellent in the penalty area - if that is the sole requirement, someone who, when presented with the ball in the penalty area with a scoring opportunity, scores more than he misses, then he fits the bill. However, I think there's a pretty solid argument that teams at our level - and those aspiring to be at a slightly higher level too - require a little bit more of an all-round game from a striker, the ability to drag defenders out from their central positions to create space for midfielders to run into (yes, yes, I know...), the ability to hold the ball up and bring other players into the game, etc, and I think those facets of the game outside the penalty area are where Austin falls a bit short. If you could combine the finishing of Austin, the pace, aerial ability and general pain-in-the-arse-to-defenders of Long and the cleverness and subtlety of Gabbiadini, you'd basically have the perfect centre-forward, but that player would cost £90m in today's market.

Who did we replace Oxlade-Chamberlain with?

Literally nobody has said this. It is a fact that the original price for the training ground improvements was in the region of £20m, which incorporated a bit of leeway for variations on design and materials because it's pretty common to change minor things during the build process. It's also a fact that the cost ballooned and pretty much doubled - there are notes in the company accounts to this effect, I think part of the extra cost was to account for a big change in the new pitches, which would incorporate new, more expensive, technology. It is also a fact that there were a number of disputes with the contractors which resulted in significant spells of no work being done. If I remember rightly, the contractor was changed, which would have incorporated big termination payments, etc. As well as this big issue, there were a number of minor issues that just annoyed people and gave an indication as to how much of a pain in the arse Cortese was to deal with - while you may scoff with "oh, it's only changing the tiles, FFS", this costs money, and if you get a lot of those sort of situations (which he did), it starts to cost a lot of money. Why do you think he is on the radio today? It's not because he's a regular commentator on the football industry. Speak to anyone who worked at the club during his time there. Add various other purchases too. It would never have got to that stage. Pretty much. As with other key employees who have "left to pursue other avenues in their career", the public statements are written in a way to ensure that everyone saves face. Managers very rarely leave by mutual consent, despite what tedious club statements tend to say.

I'm generally reluctant to rely on the strength of one game to form an opinion one way or the other - Huddersfield did a LOT of running in the first hour of the game at their place, so perhaps them getting past him was a fitness/energy thing rather than an actual lack of pace. He certainly got past West Ham's midfield well enough on his debut, but their midfield looks even more pedestrian than ours...

After the Wolves debacle, I would be amazed if we try three central defenders again for a while. Considering we've not tried it yet, we could try playing Gabbiadini and Redmond in support of Austin. Gabbiadini has played that role before, so will be aware of the defensive responsibility involved, and at least you know that he will do his best to get close to Austin to give him some support. Maybe that's the way we get two strikers in the team, because we're definitely not going to be weakening the midfield by going 4-4-2 any time soon.

Chicken and egg situation. If you know you're struggling to score goals (or even create proper chances - we've had 11 shots on target in 4 league games this season, 2 of which were penalties), it puts more pressure on the defence because one slip-up means you're probably going to lose. On the flipside, if you concentrate too much on defence, then you'll never create enough chances to win games.

I agree that the squad of players, on an individual basis, is good enough. However, as a collective, there are some key attributes that we are sorely lacking. Most of them are athletic attributes rather than technical ones - on a technical level, I think we're pretty good. The only position where we are genuinely weak, IMO, is goalkeeper. Forster hasn't been of the required standard for a year now, and for him to have been rewarded in the summer with a contract extension (when he already had 4 years remaining on his existing deal anyway) sends out the wrong message that we will still reward failure. It's a shame that the money went mental in the summer, as Pickford would have been a good (albeit not infallible, as his mistake for Spurs' first goal yesterday shows) young acquisition. Forster has had no genuine competition for his place in the team since he joined the club. That is not a healthy situation. Defensively, I think we're fine. We have two international full-backs who, when they're on their game (Bertrand has been hit-and-miss for a while), are among the best in the league and suit the system we've played over the last 4-5 years very well. We'd have to pay big money to find better replacements for them. In the middle, assuming van Dijk gets his head straight and decides he's going to play football, we've got one of the best centre backs in the league. Hoedt has only played one game, looked alright yesterday, but can't really judge this early. Yoshida and Stephens are not of the same level as van Dijk, but have proven themselves largely dependable. Midfield is where it starts to get a bit sticky. As I said above, individually, we have plenty of good players, but for whatever reason they just don't quite work together at the moment. For me, the main reason for that is that we don't have enough variety. When we had a front three of Pellè, Mané and Tadić, we ticked all bases - Pellè had strength and aerial ability, so if we needed to go long, we could do, if we wanted to put loads of crosses into the box, he'd get on the end of them; Mané had pace, a fair bit of strength, plus an unpredictable streak, which meant that defenders were always kept on their toes; Tadić had a great understanding with both of them, and could predict with a fair degree of certainty that one or both would make the run that would take advantage of the gap he could see and play the ball through. Without Pellè and Mané, we've lost so much creativity and variety. Tadić only really has Gabbiadini to look for, and while his movement is good, it's easy for defenders to track one runner as opposed to two or three. The midfielders we have just don't provide the forward movement to fill that hole. Redmond is good on his day, but those are still frustratingly inconsistent, Boufal has all the talent but a distinct lack of decision-making awareness, and the pair of them plus Tadić are now guilty of slowing the play down when in attacking positions waiting for more support, only for that support never to materialise. Up front, Gabbiadini and Austin will score goals with the right service - they need pace around them in order to get that service. At the moment, whoever is playing up front for us gets left far too isolated because the midfield doesn't get close enough to provide any support. There is a lack of pace throughout the side. Our full-backs are reasonably quick, but don't make the run beyond the opposing full-back often enough to take advantage of it. Hopefully Lemina offers us a bit of speed and strength through the middle, because while Romeu is reasonably strong, he's not very quick, and tends to render his skills less valuable in the second half of games with all the bookings he collects. As much as he deserved his Player of the Year award last season, Romeu's not as good at the physical stuff as Wanyama was (when he could be bothered), and he's not as intelligent on or off the ball as Schneiderlin was. If the club expected him to fulfil both roles simultaneously, they got it wrong.

It would be interesting to compare the statistics for the number of shots from distance opponents are attempting against us now compared to, say, this time last season, and the same period two years ago. I'd be amazed if other teams weren't being instructed to have a pop from distance, in the knowledge that Forster is so slow to react to them, that there's a strong chance of scoring from it.

Well that went better than expected Extraordinary innings from Afridi (about bloody time), but the bowling tactics from Derbyshire were odd to say the least. Bowling spin at Afridi (exactly what he wants) in the powerplay, then when they bring the seamers on, they just bowl length at him when he's already got his eye in. The first time they bowled a proper bouncer, they got him out, but he'd already scored 101 at that point!

We've already seen them given against Stephens for a near-identical scenario up at Liverpool last season. Perhaps slightly fortunate that the referee looked to have 4 or 5 bodies in the way so there was no way he'd be able to see it clearly.

Rose: 22 Bakary: 19 Jones: 19 Cook: 19 Wood: 20 Rowthorn: 18 Little: 20 Slattery: 18 Barnes: 20 Johnson: 18 Afolabi: 17

He does, but ultimately the manager's influence on the pitch can only go so far, and unfortunately dropping Tadic for wanting to take penalties (even if it goes against team orders) is probably going to MoPe cutting his nose off to spite his face - for his many faults, Tadic is still one of our most creative players.

I would assume that there is some sort of defined hierarchy for penalties. On Saturday, Gabbiadini looked like he assumed he was going to be taking it, and didn't seem overly impressed with Tadic taking the ball. With the second one, Austin clearly just got to the ball first, so while Tadic is on the pitch, it seems as though it's going to be a playground-esque "first to the ball gets to take it" situation, which obviously bodes well I know Steven Davis isn't the sort of player who's going to rant and rave at team-mates when he's wearing the armband, but I do think the captain (whoever it is at that moment) needs to step up and be assertive in that situation and go with the instructions that have been issued before the game.

Zabaleta's been at a big club for the last however many years getting away with things like that. Absolutely no way we get that decision in the 91st minute against Man City, Chelsea, etc, but a game against West Ham is relatively out of the spotlight so the referee doesn't have "****, I'm going to be analysed to the nth degree by Gary Neville on Monday Night Football if I give anything contentious, so let's just give nothing all afternoon instead" in the back of his mind.

I won't be abusing him, unless his performances indicate a player not putting in the effort. On the flipside, I sure as hell won't be singing his name either.

Anyone who was on it last year will have been automatically resubscribed