CanadaSaint

Among the many things that are confusing about today's events, I find myself wondering about this: Why, if Cortese really was working his notice period and expecting to leave, did he bother to pick a very public fight with the referees' association and the Premier League? Could it be that he still expected things between he and Katharina to be resolved? But could the eventual loss of public face associated with the Clattenburg exercise have convinced the Liebherr side even more that Cortese needed at least some supervision?

Ohio, I think the Nelson's still there, not sure about the Old Mill, but I sh*t you not about the Croft. I headed there for a pint and came out with a chocolate bar and a lottery ticket. This stuff makes the loss of The Empire pale into insignificance. Best not to think about it if you grew up there.

Sure, the save was great in a reactions kind of way, but getting a hand on that last-minute cross (which neither Kelvin nor Gazza would have got near) may have been just as decisive.

That's you, me and (I think) Hamilton who grew up in Hythe and ended up in Canada. Clearly, we knew that 'progress' would see Hythe High Street being closed to vehicular traffic and The Croft ending up as a Tesco Express.

What drives me nuts about the rule is not just the fact that different referees interpret it in different ways, but that the same referee interprets it differently from game to game. Even if there's an inherent unfairness in the interpretation ("Ref, I was just protecting my face/nuts"), I could deal with it as long as there's consistency. With all the referees' meetings and the supposed assessment & feedback mechanics, it's infuriating that they're no closer to consistency than they were five years ago.

Not much point in the "Who we miss most" debate. We lost a lot of key players at and around the same time, and that hurt us in a lot of ways. I don't think Schneiderlin has been the same player since we lost Wanyama, which means the protection (and cover) for our back four fell away badly even though Cork has played competently in his absence. And we haven't pressed anything like as effectively as we did a few months back. We need that early season group reunited in a big way.

I've felt for some time that MP wasn't as pleased as he claimed to be about Rickie's England call up and instant success; MP wants a more mobile front, and the England thing made it much harder for him to move the club (and the fans) on from a Rickie focus. It's also been fairly clear in recent weeks that Rickie's body language paints a picture of a player who isn't as happy here as he once was. His inability to forge a partnership with Osvaldo hasn't helped his case with the club brass because they really need Osvaldo to succeed here, given how much we paid for him. Any suggestion that he could double his wages and enjoy a more focal role at West Ham, in the twilight of his career, could make for an unhappy player if the club holds onto him against his wishes. But West Ham won't pay us anything like what we (the fan base) think he's worth because they know his career horizon isn't long. They'll throw the money at the wages side of the deal rather than the fee side, and I can see the club's hand being forced on this one. Much as I'd hate to see him go, I think he probably will.

Nonsense is what comes out when someone gets an urban dictionary for Christmas. I do watch each game closely and I think there's been little or no sign of the prima donna syndrome with him since his England selection. In fact he dives far less now than he ever did.

No he wasn't spot on. I haven't seen any noticeable change in Lallana's on field behaviour since his England selection. But, regardless of that, it was a potentially inflammatory comment that Clattenburg had no business making. At what point should we decide to stop taking the crap that Clattenburg has continually thrown in our direction with dubious, potentially match-deciding penalties and now insulting personal remarks? With hindsight, as I said earlier, I would have preferred that the Club voiced concerns about Clattenburg based on a number of incidents - and done it in a less public way. To keep taking his crap without a whimper is the non-option for me.

My broader concern on this front is the lacking ability of our goalkeeping coaches to address known weaknesses in our keepers. Boruc continues to exhibit an over-confidence that can border on criminal casualness and can cost us goals, Davis remains vulnerable at the near post and less than convincing on crosses, and Gazzaniga has actually regressed quite significantly since his early days. Granted, the first two are seasoned professionals who could fit into a "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" category, but their weaknesses are addressable, given focused training. Gazza's regression in areas such as reading the game is a larger indictment of our goalkeeper coaching.

Absolutely. Regardless of the outcome of our complaint, A) we have made it clear that we view Clattenburg as someone with an axe to grind against us/certain of our players, so appointing him to any more of our games might not be a prudent move, and B) we have registered another strike against someone who has had problems of this kind in the past. Regardless of how trivial the comment was, he has no business making inflammatory remarks like that in the heat of a game. Given what's come to light about "the (supposed) comment", I would have preferred it if we'd included the Lallana incident as part of a package of concerns about Clattenburg's officiating of our games - a culminating incident rather than a standalone one.

Always a possibility with that kind of stick-together fraternity, but my hunch is that it will work more for us than against us. I couldn't stand Dermot Gallagher as a referee but I have a much higher regard for him since he moved to a TV role, and it's actually quite comforting to have him there because he is willing to call them out when he thinks they're wrong.

Hopefully, the least we get out of this is that Clattenburg is appointed to a lot less of our games, ideally none. It's not that the rest of them are buzzing hives of refereeing efficiency but that Clattenburg does seem to make regular attempts to decide the result of our matches, and not in our favour (Norwich, Arsenal, Everton). Just as hopefully, the other referees will no longer see us as a team willing to take bad decisions in the nuts without a whimper.

For me, the only way we can compete with teams with Chelsea's kind of talent pool is to play our high-tempo pressing game, coupled with lots of off-the-ball running and rapid ball movement. One key component of that team concept (Wanyama) is injured, and another (Schneiderlin) was off the pace today. As soon as I saw Ramirez in the line-up, I was pretty much resigned to a loss. For all his undoubted skill, he's not strong on consistent, off-the-ball running and he often wants too long on the ball; his presence certainly brings some dimensions we lack, but it also damages our ability to press and play quick feet-to-feet passes. When we took Cork off we were set up to try to play a high-skill team at their game rather than ours, and the outcome was inevitable. I'm very interested to hear why Shaw was taken off. He could be genuinely injured or ill (again), or MP was keen to see how we'd fare without him, because he might have his eyes on a big cash inflow at the start of the window.

He's still the jewel we always thought he was but I think he needs to work harder at recognizing when an attack is starting to break down so that he can get back in time. Since the Newcastle game he has been caught upfield a little too often for my liking, but a lot of this "reading the game" stuff will come with more experience.

We miss Schneiderlin's tracking back soooooo much, and taking Corky off made us vulnerable to that.

I agree with that, and I'm not sure he should be doing it regardless of his performance. He's not the captain, and even if he was he should only do something like that very infrequently and much more discretely than yelling it from the pitch. But the part that troubles me most is that this reaction was not just a reflection of Rickie's views on Jos's performance in the Spurs game, but of Rickie's views of Jos as a PL player. It has built up over time, as it has with us, and there's an underlying questioning of Pochettino's decision-making - a rather open questioning of it. He wasn't, I suspect, calling for Jos to be pulled just because he was playing badly, but because - in Rickie's opinion (possibly shared by other players) - he shouldn't have been out there in the first place. I'm looking beyond Rickie's actions on Sunday and thinking that they might be an insight into something deeper. Rickie's head didn't seem to be in it on Sunday (not for the first time lately), and I still have the picture in my mind of him trudging off before anyone else, head down and looking quite depressed, after our excellent performance against Man City; he didn't even acknowledge the cheering crowd as he left. Whether this is just a Rickie issue remains to be seen, but this is not a good sign.

Absolutely right. Especially in goal, where there's nowhere to hide while you're trying to figure things out. What concerns me most for Gazzaniga is not so much the form as the regression. That's what can happen when you over-expose youngsters, which is why I have real concerns about throwing Cropper in there.

He did do reasonably well for a time, and earned some plaudits on here. You can't consign his history to oblivion the way you did with yours when you changed your user name.

That's exactly my concern. Gazzaniga looked quite confident in the early days, and that helped him to perform reasonably well. Now he's scared spitless and it shows in everything he does. Sure, it could be argued that Cropper deserves a chance, but the last thing we need is for his confidence to be shattered as well at such a young age. I don't think MP has much choice but to grit it out until one of the senior keepers is fit.

If he can consistently demonstrate the art of timing his run to beat offside, as he did once today, he could become quite a striker.

What "purported dressing room unrest"? Unless I've missed it, yours is the first mention of anything like that.

I know what you're saying. To me it's all down to poor reading. He doesn't time his advance (if he makes one at all) and ends up trying to dive from a standing position. The right way is to time your advance so that you can convert your forward momentum into sideways momentum (i.e., the dive). Doing it that way extends your reach by 6-12", but I don't think anyone's telling him this stuff. Not that they should really have to.

Against Villa Yoshi got done on Agbonlahor's fast break and I'm pretty sure that Fonte would have been done by it too. Apart from that, Yoshi didn't play badly in a team that generally played well - especially as he's been very short of game time, so - to me - he didn't deserve the abuse he received on here. As far as today is concerned, I'd discount most of the poor performances in front of our back four because their emphasis switched from playing their normal game to keeping an eye on the inevitable problems that would come from the Jos/Fox partnership. And, with Lovren playing on the other side, there was no real balance or solid positional play at the back - all compounded by a lack of confidence in the guy behind them. Until Spurs equalized, I though we looked quite good.

Well, that would be two half-fit players on the bench today - Fonte and Yoshi - who would have been immeasurably better than a fully fit Jos. I would be surprised if Yoshi is unfit - he hasn't had much chance to become so, but I guess he may be on the way out of MP's reckoning. I'm finding some of MP's thinking harder and harder to understand with each passing week, but still support him.