S-Clarke

These stats totally backup what we are seeing - he doesn't seem to ever make any saves, any shot on target is a goal. That's why we don't keep clean sheets. I looked at him the other night and he looked like a midget in the middle of that goal, zero presence.

Not sure why everyone has got worked up about this, we'd be lapping it up if JWP was pulling faces and gestures to Zaha.

I'm waiting for the ''we have a log jam of players in the striker position'' line to be fed into the media.

You can tell we're heading back to small-fry territory when we have club plants on here.

If you don't mind, I'll prefer to wait for the full review from Sidney.

Everton want to sign Chelsea's Ziyech #ZiyechWatch That would be, in my opinion, a very tidy upgrade on a very average Gordon. Not sure why he has so many suitors.

Not just Pope, we could have also had Leno who has also had a decent season. £6-7m for him, signed by a promoted side so totally in our remit if we weren't so obsessed with 'sell on potential'.

Is there something I've missed on Bree? Apart from a little article a few weeks ago, I've never seen anything concrete - unless something has been leaked today? I'd say signing Bree is planning for the longer term, with the safe assumption that KWP is gone if we stay up or go down, AMN will go back from his loan and Lynco will probably head off to Brazil. And Tino is likely out for the rest of the season, and who knows what state he comes back in - so we do need someone in there with next season in mind.

We can't bring in anyone else from Arsenal, as we already have AMN - and that also means we can only have 1 more domestic loan. We still have the options of a few international loans if we wanted to go down that route though, we were looking at Jackson in that guise originally.

Who plays though? CB's up front? Right backs up front? Adams, Armstrong and Mara is all we have, and Armstrong isn't really seen as a number 9. Until we have replacements in those areas then there is not a lot we can do, really bad situation the club left us in.

To be honest I'm not sure what he can say, he's not going to throw our only strikers under the bus. He's going to show them support, it's the normal thing to do. The way this is managed by the club/manager is to replace those with better players and demote them to the bench, not throwing them under the bus before we have 'replacements'.

Feel sorry for the guy, we gambled with one of the positions we couldn't afford to gamble on. If we're not careful this is going to erode any potential he once had and we'll have another Gunn on our hands. I think there is something there, but he should be in the squad not a first choice. It's the default setting the club seems to run with, ''oh we got it right once, that must mean we've cracked the approach.'' - Cue lots of attempts to sign Tino's in multiple positions. Tino was a freak, to think we are now basing our approach on that one deal being success is just nonsense from the club.

Welcome home Shane Long.

I'm a Saints fan, I never get my hopes up

The prob is that our big buys have been largely shit, and that has had a knock on effect in future windows as we had no pot to piss in. We then decided to get clever, thought we'd cracked it and went all 'we can build a team of Tino's', and are now having to repair that. The players we signed in the summer aren't bad players in isolation, not at all, but the balance of the approach was all wrong.

Interestingly, Celtic have signed a new Asian striker this morning.

I'll be honest, I'm surprised at the views on Diallo. Whilst he broke up play and did read the game well on occasion, his distribution of the ball in key situations was simply atrocious. We need a hell of a lot better than him in there if we want to do anything of note at any level. I see some people claiming he was MOTM, shows how far our standards have dropped imo. He's really not good enough.

It frustrates me that our scouts haven't managed to pick up a player like that. Newcastle got him for £15m a few years ago (when they were circling the drain themselves), yet we spunked £15m on an horrendous Moussa. Our scouting over the last 5-6 years has been nothing short of a disgrace.

There is no rule advantaging the bigger clubs, don't be so silly. It was a clear disallowed goal for me, hit his hand because he was inept enough to cockup the shot in the first place. Re-watch it, it's obvious and VAR was never going to let that stand. Don't understand the interest of winning a competition? ''Focus on staying in the league'' - sod that, we're down anyway - let's try and win something for a change and have something to cheer, as supporting this club over the last 6 years has been truly soul destroying in the main

That one was criminal. It's a shame he's been hung out to dry like this, as he's put in a good shift for us in some good periods, but we've created an environment where he is literally being made the fool guy and becoming a bit of a comedy character and I don't think that's fair. Well done scouts.

Nice little trademark swing and miss panic clearance though.

Yeah, he's got quality. He kind of stood out alongside Diallo and even JWP in the sense of his agility on the ball and how keen he was to move it quickly, and able to move it quickly. He wasn't ''amazing'', but he was tidy and easily one of our better quality players. Doesn't say much for the rest of the squad mind.

At this stage I'd try and tempt Lambert out of retirement, he can even enjoy his takeaways at HT.

See, I don't understand this. We are as far away from a fantastic team as you can get, dogshit is closest. Having Lavia and Tino back makes zero difference to the lack of ability we have in the final third. We are rooted to the bottom of the league, lost pretty much every game we played last year and have started this year in the same vein. We are one of the worst teams in the entire country.

I thought we were very lucky it was only 0-1, Newcastle had at least 2 additional clear cut chances whilst we only had one. We had a period in the second half where we got on the ball and started moving it a bit, but that was pretty much it. The rest of the game was almost exclusively controlled by Newcastle and played at the pace they wanted it played at, we couldn’t get on the ball as they didn’t allow us the time on it. Orsic looked like a rabbit in headlights out there, not entirely sure why he was so bad. It was like playing with 10 men. Salisu had almost zero defensive cover for the entirety of the time he was on the pitch. Diallo read the game well and broke it up, but his passing and distribution is simply not good enough for any level of football and that’s why he can’t be starting for us. An accident waiting to happen. The defenders were both a bit calamitous tonight, DCC was poor on the goal – got too tight to a player who is 110% faster than him, and it was obvious what Isak was going to do. Braindead. The sending off was a case of taking one for the team, but he really didn’t have a good game. Lyanco just plays on the edge all the time, there’s nothing composed about his game. He creates chaos when he plays at CB and it panics everyone else. Decent shouts for Alcaraz who I thought was very smart for at least 60mins, playing deeper than I’d play him though – but he has a good touch, good agility, moves the ball quickly. The ball through to Adams was delightful. Equally KWP had a decent second half, Salisu had a good game at LB, Armstrong made an impact when he came on. Mara held the ball up well and brought others into play, but never looked like scoring himself. It's plainly obvious that we just don’t have enough quality in the final third of the team to really trouble anyone, it’s painful watching Adams miss almost identical chances every week. When we do somehow create an opportunity you know Adams will miss it, it even looked like he believed he'd miss that. The faith we show in him as a ‘number 9’ is entirely misguided and is used to cover up a shocking lack of scouting ability to find someone better over a period of 18 months. if we don't get a free kick on the edge of the box for JWP to score then we are pretty much nailed on to lose the game as we have no other threat. At least it’s only 0-1, the only positive I can take overall.