egg

My feeling is that Reed wants a yes man and Hughes won't be a yes man. Talks about how to compromise on that won't be easy. However, any compromise on Reed's role won't be a bad thing and the longer this drags on my gut feeling is that Hughes is getting what he wants - if he didn't, instinct tells me he'd walk away and wait for the call from a club nearer his family base up north. I'm sure this will get sewn up and we'll have ourselves some stability with a manager who knows this league very well.

Hoedt. Bednarek. May not be anywhere near as good, but they're physical replacements. 2 strikers going will be replaced by 2 strikers. They be better, they may be worse. Even if worse, they are actual replacements.

Spot on. Bertrand hasn't been good and hasn't looked committed. Rose, when he's played, has. Bertrand's omission is down to Bertrand.

He did more in his last game to warrant a place than Bertrand has all season. He's proved he's back at his best, and his best is better than Bertrand. Southgate has gone with the better player, simple as that.

Agreed. Bertrand has done a good job of looking disinterested for large parts of the season wnd has been bang average. Rose's attacking play in the Leicester game was superb, and far better than anything Bertrand has produced all season. Young has been very solid. Understandable selection imo. Leaving McCarthy off the standby list but selecting a player who hasn't played for most of the season is just odd though.

Anyone thinking we'll go down is an idiot, and anyone putting cash on it deserves to lose their money. We'll lose, Swansea may win, but there ain't gonna be a 10 goal swing.

Hughes won't be cheap. He has a decent record on the whole as a premier league manager, and what he's done here is nothing short of remarkable. His stock will have increased further. Summer negotiations will be more us persuading him that we can match his expectations on and off the pitch rather than him selling himself to us. He's proved himself the right man so give him the job, and a budget to get the right players.

Wow!! Brilliant effort,great subs, superb. Credit to Hughes and the players.

Thanks for that insightful comment. Let me know when it helps change anything.

Truth is we don't know. The £100k reports seem credible to me, and I'm worried the arrogance of the club runs so deep that we either don't have widespread relegation clauses, or if we do the deductions aren't anything like 50% Either way, many many fans seem oblivious to the impact of relegation on the club. It'll be massive and difficult to recover from.

Good post. We'll slash lots of jobs, that's inevitable. On sales, we'll struggle to make money when offloading certain players. Take Forster. He's apparently on £100k a week for another 4 years. In other words £21m. We won't want to keep him. He won't want to lose any of that £21m. Nobody will want to pay him what he's on here, and his stock has dropped big time this season. If he goes for £10 million and gets £60k a week somewhere that transfer fee will go on paying up the balance of his contract and agents fees. That's before Carrillo, Boufal, Gabbi, and others who's values will have plummeted owing to performances this year. Relegation will have a huge impact which we'll only cope with if Gao turns out to be Markus mk 2 which seems unlikely.

To be fair Boufal was/is a good player, although he's been poor for us. Carrillo though is shocking, not one good attribute and our worst ever transfer decision in my opinion.

Plus agents fees, signing on fee etc. Scary bit is that we'll still owe millions next season on many of them, and stuck with huge salaries on them. Chances are we'll pay agents millions to move them on, more millions to negotiate their release from excessive contracts and in reality lose money from getting rid. That, or keeping hold of disinterested expensive players as per Sunderland, is the reality of relegation.

Looking that way. Was marshalling the defence today. Positionally good, and made some good blocks and tackles. I missed the first goal though so not sure if he could have prevented that.

I thought he faded and taking him off ahead of Lemina just about right but could have been one or the other, and the change of tactics was sensible.

Played ok. Keeper decent. Bednarek good, marshalled the defence and looked comfortable. Bertrand got forward well but crossing poor. Yoshida decent but looked all over the place for the second. Hoedt and Cedric not good. Romeu and Lemina did well after a shaky start, but Hoj faded and largely anonymous. Long was shlte, terrible touch. Austin shouldn't have started, you don't play a centre forward who can't run against a back 3. First 2 subs sensible although not sure why Bednarek went off. Can only assume it was cos Pedro on and Bertrand couldn't get up the pitch and we needed another forward to give the width. Whatever the intention, it killed us and cost us t second goal. Our goal looked like a foul on the keeper but I was up in the gods so couldn't see clearly. Fans were quiet throughout and why people boo players for keeping possession, then shout for a long ball, then moan when it leads to nothing I'll never understand.

Fair play to him for opening up, and even more respect for getting himself clean.

?That's the solution Hatch. 12 across the middle just to be sure.

People seem to forget that if we put another man up front we have to take a man from elsewhere. Our defence is shlte so 3 CB is sensible. Take one of them away then we lose that cover at CB and limit the ability of the full backs to get forward. We're also shlte in midfield and take a man out of there we'll get completely overrun and our shlte defence will be even more exposed. Short explanation is we're shlte but less shlte with extra men at CB and in midfield.

This. We have players who are shot of confidence, that's obvious and understandable, and gung ho tactics with 2 up top would have seen us torn apart in midfield and smashed apart. The players (well the ones that actually care) will hopefully take heart from a clean sheet and that's gotta be better than another game where we concede 3.

VVD. Players who want a move saw us hold him back. We get relegated, they get their move.

Because JWP has been sh:the, and Davis is about the only leader we have.

Yep, there's a few lads out there who don't look interested. Shocking.

Quite, I love a bit optimism but there's no substitute for realism.

You seriously think Giroud would have signed for us?! Anyway, all this 'we should have done this, we should have done that is irrelevant. We are where we are, on the verge of relegation.