CanadaSaint

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).

Thy would be much better players under Koeman and the Big Boys would be throwing wads of cash at us for both of them. Seriously, though, I think Koeman would cook-up something on a tactical level to cover for their "inadequacies", while Pochettino needed them to fit into his system, inadequacies and all.

You are missing the point. Some people took issue with what I said (you being chief among them) but just as many saw things the same way. I didn't say "Poch never really developed players" - I said this in the original post and clarified it later: If those players really did improve as individuals under Pochettino, as opposed to playing and fitting well within Pochettino's system, why have they had such a tough time playing as well at their new clubs? But that's all moot, really, because you've just agreed that "Koeman seems to have taken it to another level", which was the entire point of my post and Hypo's post.

You're still missing the point.

I suggested several weeks ago that Koeman was better at developing players than Pochettino, and some folks took issue with that. My point wasn't that Pochettino was bad at it but that he did it by forcing players to adhere to his effective but largely one-dimensional style. If we didn't play the press, the same players didn't look as good. If you didn't fit the style, you bench-armed a lot (JWP?). Moreover, some individual weaknesses remained weaknesses when he left - Lallana's final ball, our crossing, Wanyama's passing, Clyne's vulnerability to the high ball at the far post, strikes from midfield, anything to do with the keepers, and so on. We dropped a lot of points from winning positions. Koeman and his staff, on the other hand, seem to have made a number of individuals better players. They seem to spot the mistakes in positioning, technique and tactical contribution, and then address them - Mané, Fonte and Yoshida being good examples. This enables the players to still play well in different roles and tactical packages - even within games. We have more dimensions under Koeman and we're seeing more goals from midfield. We're better at protecting leads. And we're doing all this on arguably lower fitness levels - not a criticism, because Pochettino's demands eventually took a toll on the players in mid-Winter. For me, we're playing better and more varied football and we have a very good chance of sustaining it for longer. In fact we have already. Sure, Pochettino's a damn good coach but for me he's not close to Koeman on a number of levels.