CanadaSaint

Sure, our striking has been woeful but by the time the chance comes the defence is usually well set, or all we've created is a split-second, "snatch at it" chance. The whole concept of "early ball" seems foreign to us because we spend too long playing laterally across the midfield. Most of Pelle's time is spent shuffling across the edge of the box in response to the shifting pattern of midfield. He seldom gets the chance to attack a space as he was earlier in the season. It's great to see Clyne and Bertrand pushing forward but if we do it every time - and do it early rather than late - we lose the surprise factor, we kill our own chances of a Mané or Elia using his pace against the full back, we force ourselves to play back or inside due to the lack of space out-wide, and then the lateral passing starts again. We've become easy to defend against, so we can look good without achieving anything. We've opted for ball retention over incisiveness and it's killing us. We've lost our early-season goals from midfield, in part, because we crowd ourselves out of the danger areas. Not only have we killed our own offence around the opposition "D" - we've become vulnerable around our own defensive "D". Coutinho and Berahino had time and space they shouldn't have been granted, and that weakness alone may well have cost us six points in two games.

The "D" and the area around it is killing us at both ends of the pitch. We've stopped defending it well, despite having Schneiderlin and Wanyama to do so, and two vital goals have gone in from around there in the past two games. At the other end we don't attack it well and we seemingly have nobody capable of shooting from there. It's not a fannying about space, it's a space where you shoot hard, low and - above all - early.

I remain unconvinced about Forster. Sure, Coutinho's shot was a cracker but it was in as soon as he decided to go for it with the wrong (low) hand. Could he have saved it with the high hand? Possibly, but that was his only chance.

They all look to me as though they don't want to be there (less so in Rickie's case), which could mean that it's the club's idea for defusing a situation that might not work in their favour.

Not even close. Dreadful tackle, but the first point remains.

It's funny how we each see the same thing differently. I hate bad tackles and don't think they are spotted enough or punished adequately. However, in that particular case (and I've only seen it once) I thought Matic came from the side, Barnes didn't see him and caught him on the follow-through after clear ball contact.

I'm not sure they can overturn it, though, because no bad tackle excuses violent conduct. They are two separate incidents. No matter how bad the tackle, they can't let the players exert their own retribution.

If Matic got a straight red, isn't he out for the game against us?

I agree with Turkish, too. He looked "tuned-out" to me in the Sheffield United game - even kicked the ball away when he was already on a booking, as though he didn't care any more, and he hasn't been very convincing since. At least, not by his own high standards. It's almost as though he wants to make himself appear dispensable, which he'd probably only do if he knew that things were already sorted with his next club. Not that things like that go on in football.

Forster didn't just scream in the referee's face - he leaned his head into him and I had a dreadful feeling for a moment that East was going to pull out the red. We've seen that done in player-to-player situations so Forster was dicing with death.

Several of the referees in recent weeks haven't used their guide dog pass, so perhaps he could get in there.

Apart from being so wrong on a factual level, and even ignorant, it is a mind-numbingly stupid thing for Pochettino to say if he still has hopes of signing Schneiderlin. I'm not sure anyone in the club would give Pochettino a spot if they had the measles.

So, it seems to me that there are three "ifs". IF the borrowing club wants to sign the player. We obviously do want to sign Toby. IF the loan player wants to stay. Toby has said he does but, as players always do, put the "we'll wait and see in the summer" rider on it. IF it makes financial sense for the loaning club to make the loan a permanent transfer. In this instance, they must set the repayment penalty and the agreed fee against either what they would have to pay to replace him in their squad, OR what they could get for him if his value rises during the loan period. This is where thing might get tricky because Toby's value has surely increased significantly while he's been with us - and some big clubs have "middle of the back four" issues. The cynic in me suspects that, the way football is these days, there might be a fourth IF. The last one would revolve around how the player's agent can influence the deal to maximize his cut. I'd love to see us keep him but that's a lot of IFs.

I think there's absolutely zero chance of that being rescinded because they can always fall back on the "reckless" angle. Magnified by the fact that Oliver is one of their very few "up and coming" referees, so they'll stand behind him. Still, Targett is an adequate replacement.

When we brought Mané on for Reed, we didn't just (fatally) lose a key element of our midfield cover. We also marginalized Elia because he didn't seem to know where to go after Mané's arrival. That really was a very,very bad move - and I think most on here saw it that way at the time. Amazed that Ronald didn't.

That recipe was set the moment we took Reed off. When Mané was warming up I was sure that Tadic's day was done and shocked when he pulled off a key part of the midfield cover.

I felt at the time that the substitution was a mistake - Mane for Tadic I get, not Mane for Reed.

They had their warning, didn't heed it, and paid the price. A threat known all through the division.

The thing that tickles me is this: Looking at the weekend's results we could say that every single result has gone against us, while, two years ago, we'd have looked at exactly the same results and and said that every single one has gone our way.

My feeling exactly. The thing for me is that he takes quite a long time to get himself set for a corner or a free kick but lacks that time for composing himself in open play. On the good side it's a coachable issue rather than a permanent weakness, and I'd expect it's something Koeman & Co will address in time. He's an excellent reader and gets himself into good positions (not so easily taught), and he could be sitting on 6-8 goals now with that issue addressed.

Broken ribs are usually six weeks or so.

If there's a silver lining to what, for me, is a very dark cloud, it's that our main rivals for positions 3 and 4 (bar Spurs) are still in a demanding competition that they have a very good chance of winning. As well as hitting fixture congestion and picking up injuries. After Churchill lost the 1945 election his wife said "Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise." Churchill responded "Right now it's very effectively disguised." I feel the same way about losing to Palace today.

Further to the suggestion I made earlier, about Koeman cooking-up something on a tactical level to cover for the weaknesses of fill-in players, does anyone else feel that Bertrand plays a rather less adventurous role when Gardos is in for Alderweield? Gardos has done pretty well but he's not on the same level as Toby for game-reading and composure under pressure, so it seems to me that Bertrand stays back a little more. There so many clever subtleties to Koeman's coaching.

I thought he was tremendous yesterday. Newcastle never (legally) got to grips with him, and his range of touches and layoffs - especially the chest passes - is arguably even wider than Rickie's. I think he's hit the woodwork six or seven times in the PL so he's really not far off the top of the scoring charts. The goal issue is not as big of a deal this year as it would have been last year, because - even though we don't have J-Rod's goals - we seem to be getting so many more goals from midfield, and he plays a big part in that. It will be interesting to see if he can get the best out of JayRod in the same way that Rickie did - assuming that JayRod comes back the same player as he was when he was injured.

Nails it for me. All I'd add is that Koeman seems able to make excellent line-up and tactical adjustments within games, not just for them. That makes the concept of "best team" even more redundant (no disrespect intended to the OP).