S-Clarke

That miss is why he'll never be a top striker. No composure and he panics at chances, which is a disaster for a striker. Got no problem with his overall game and what he brings to us, but it's all pretty pointless unless we have someone who can score profiting from his hold up and hustling (As we did with Ings)

Crikey, that's a shocker. It was really innocuous as well. I don't think anyone will be able to top that for a worst debut. He has had bad knee probs in the past too.

It strikes me that Leicester got a little too far up their own backsides, thinking they are always going to be/should always be competing for Europe. That's not just their fans, but the club as well - a little bit full of themselves, like we did under Les Reed. Big wake up call for them now. What they're doing now is probably more their level, mid-table here and there and getting dragged into relegation battles with potential relegations. They're pretty much identical to us in that sense, they just managed to get success during that period that all other fans of of clubs at their level will never, ever experience. It's never nice seeing your team get trashed though, there does seem a bit of a toxic feel there running from the top to the players. Rodgers looks spent, so the immediate change is probably going to be a new manager. I doubt it will get them back to where they were though, that's probably them done competing in the upper ends of this league.

Officials are probably the right people to run it given their supposed understanding of the game and the laws, ex players would bring too much emotion into it. But sadly all of our officials are inept, so we're a bit stuck. I see people calling for ex players and even impartial non-football people, but this is just going to make it worse imo. Can we steal some of the European officials for our VAR? We seem to be using our VAR as a a retirement home for failed referees.

I'd agree, this is the wrong kind of game for Elyounoussi. We are going to be expected to be on the front foot here and he's not the player for that, someone like Stu has the legs to burst with the ball and open it up a bit more which we'll need. Edioze is someone to have up our sleeve to replace Adam Armstrong as the game stretches, hopefully he can have the impact Broja did against their somewhat slow defence.

I think that would just make it even more murky. VAR should be used for game-changing clear errors, penalties, disallowed goals, offside goals, foul play etc. That's what it's there for. If you start bringing it in for yellow cards and corners then you'll end up with 20 mins stoppage time and painful viewing. Half of the problem with VAR at the moment is the way the 'pro's meddle in decisions which aren't clear and obvious, which brings in an element of opinion from the referee's running it - and if it's clear and obvious it shouldn't be based on opinions, it should be clear to all. West Ham's goal yesterday for example, they shouldn't have got involved and should have let the on field referee to stand by his judgement.

A great article, really good insight and well put together. The Athletic will be tapping you up before long!

I actually feel more confident about this one than I did about Wolves. I always feel nervous going into games where a team haven't won in for ever, it's always set up for the inevitable. I think we can cause Brentford problems, they are susceptible to conceding chances, as we showed last season in that 4-1 (although the GK they had then was borderline a fan) We actually matched them last season and went 3-5-2, with Tella and Perraud at full back and it did work as we dragged them all over. The main take away from that game was our ability to break and break quickly, Diallo played slightly ahead of the two and you had the pace of Broja on the shoulder. They seemed to struggle with our energy and we sucked them in well. Tempted to throw pace at them. It's certainly not the game for a one paced Elyounoussi.

It had a nightmare of a day yesterday for sure, any surprise though given Dean is still involved? The problem is not with VAR at all, the tech is there and is useful, it's the people who are using it. Absolutley inept. I go back to the example from the CL and the Euro's, in the main VAR just happened and you didn't really notice it. Only in this country do they manage to make such a meal out of it.

I've watched it a couple of times since to try and make some sense of it, and I can't really! It doesn't look like he's sure what to do with it, he's caught in two minds and not set. But honestly if he just jumped and didn't try to move his arm it would have gone in, but he just got confused and didn't know what to do, and for a striker that's horrific. I could take it if it was ABK or Salisu, but not from our 'main' goal threat. He had a good game in the main though, similar as against Chelsea, but you just cannot rely on this guy for goals.

I don't believe anything that bloke says to be honest. Absolute bollocks.

Let's see how Mara and Edioze integrate into the team. I'd certainly have liked to have seen more of a 'seasoned' pro attacker brought in though, not necessarily an out and out striker but someone with genuine ability who can open teams up. Maybe Edioze can be this years Broja, albeit in a slightly different position. Our attack does make me very nervous though.

No idea how to get onto their Telegram, like you my invites expired and they're not forthcoming with new ones. Emails to them just get ignored, which is frustrating as you can never be sure if they're having problems or if it's your own end. It was a bit better today though, but it does feel as if it's on it's last legs similar to the SportsMania end.

Edioze and Mara? That's pretty much what we're pinning our hopes on for sure, one of those is going to need to be a Broja for us, otherwise this is going to be an incredibly infuriating season.

No one really stood out today, quite a tough one. KWP probably? gave us a decent attacking threat, but it wasn't a game full of much fun.

This was my fear really, in the PL against most teams you don't ever get many chances (especially against Wolves), so when you do get a chance you need to be clinical - but we don't have clinical players sadly, and that has been evident for a long time now. It was a good performance from us in terms of the control of the game, we defended against them pretty well and limited their out and out opportunities, but against Wolves our own chances will be few and far between but we had a couple of good ones. That miss by Adams was just diabolical but sadly this is what he does, he's good for between 5-10 goals a season but not much more, as he spurns chances like that. Elyounoussi in an attacking sense was diabolical. We were much better with Armstrong in that position. Moussa added some directness to our game as well, Aribo struggled a bit as the game went on. Diallo was as expected out muscled in the middle of the park really, that pairing never works. The positive is that we look tighter, we have better recovery pace throughout the team, but my fear remains - we don't have a game changing attacker to turn tight games like that.

Yeah you can't blame Bazunu, sadly the nature of the shot makes it look bad but it took an almighty bobble and just wrong footed him. He was already set at the near post, which to be fair it was going to head for had it not taken the bobble.

This game sums up the problem with Elyounoussi, the reason he was in the team against Chelsea was his off the ball work, which is ironic for an attacker really. When we play teams you'd expect us to have more of a go at, potentially on the break, he is not the right player at all. He's only really worthwhile for his off the ball work, but in games like this you also need an attacking edge which he just doesn't have the ability to provide (hopefully he proves me wrong). Aribo our best player in attack, but it's not too hard to win that accolade to be fair!

They're still around, but they've had an absolute nightmare with the service. We will see if it's any better today, as it was unusable the last time I used it on a Saturday. They don't seem to respond to people either, only as an acknowledgement of payment - so they're still there, but not offering any kind of support or status updates.

MOTM pickford, easily. You can quite clearly see Everton's style this season. Block, tackle, sit deep, hit teams on the break. Painful to watch, but it may work

That was a good read, thanks for sharing. We really wanted to totally revamp the attack by the sounds of it, even comments in there about us being happy to move Adams on at one point. I'm sure there's frustration that we're still kind of the same in that area. Those are always the most complicated and expensive transfers though! Hopefully next summer, with less to do, we can double down on our focus on the attacking third. Let's just hope we've got enough goals in us this season.

Yep, big blow. Really bad hamstring injury by the sounds of it. I reckon we'll see him back Arsenal home game at the end of Oct. Looks like AMN is going to get a lot of games early doors!

This wouldn't have happened had Leicester not grabbed Glover, but I wonder if this is another George Burley situation where we were happy to take the interest in him and grab the opportunity to change with a guy who seems to fit exactly what we are trying to do. Maybe the apatite for Leicester to sign Glover has been his ability to work on scraps in his few years here, as it seems like they're in that position now.

I think those fee's are even better than that, those are the headline figures if they achieve x amount with us - but Aribo for example only cost us £6m up top. I think Lavia was more around 8m and Bazunu 10-11 with add-ons. One thing that has impressed me as well has been the physical profile of our additions. They're all big, strong, athletic lads. We went down the road a few years ago of signing players because they could 'pass the ball', but often at the expense of being strong and quick etc. But at the end of the day in this league you need power and athleticism first and foremost, we went away from that with Elyounoussi, Boufal, Vestergaard, Hoedt etc - but we seem to have a side which can hold it's own now.

It was that January window where they had a bit of meltdown and signed Davies from Preston, who then never played a game and was sold to Rangers this summer. They got Kabak as well on loan, who was pretty shit as we saw at Norwich too. I don't think Marseille were looking to loan out Caleta-Car at that point, but he has been on the radar of top clubs for a few years now. In some ways this has similarities when we signed Lovren on the cheap.