S-Clarke

I think Pope had a crazy relegation clause in his contract which had that low fee, if that wasn't in his contract you'd have been looking at £25m at least imo. Cornet's was a release clause as well. I can see us generating at least £90m from just two sales, JWP and Lavia. We'll lose Salisu, ABK, KWP, Adams and the like as well - so we'll certainly be well into the £100m's of funds generated in my opinion. Add the £60m parachute payments and financially we have no excuse and we will be able to compete for the first two years, but using that finance correctly is what concerns me. Get it wrong in year 1 and let those mistakes spill over to year 2 and that's pretty much game over for us in terms of a top flight club in many of our life times imo. The gap will just become to big to bridge eventually.

Absolutley, if we go down to the Championship with the same approach then we'll hit the same issues. We struggled against Lincoln, Grimsby, Wednesday and they're in the league below. As it stands today I could see Sheffield United, Burnley turning us over without much hassle whilst we piss around with the ball in the back 4. We've spent the last two years frightened of our own shadows in the PL, seemingly believing we were 'lucky to be here'. Let's hope we don't follow the same mantle next season as if we do then we'll be doing a Stoke, Norwich etc - and underachieving in that league is the most depressing existence ever.

This is where meaningless passing of the ball in 'safe' areas of the pitch dilutes the 'true' performance, and can make it feel and look like we played better than we did. West Ham were happy to drop back and let us have the ball in front of them, and we're fantastic at passing the ball to team mates when we have no pressure on us. In terms of trying to win a game of football we were a disgrace.

Why do people think we have a cats hells chance of getting Potter? He'll wait it out until the summer and end up at somewhere like Palace, WHU, maybe even Leicester if they stay up with a temp guy. We're not even on his radar, time we woke up to that.

You can see us beating Man City just for pointless banter, not that it will change our trajectory as we'll drop one in against Palace the following week.

We have zero footballing intelligence in terms of how to break deep-lying teams down, we just cannot do it. 10 men Wolves stuck their players behind the ball and we couldn't even figure that out. You can put our 'proper' decline on the sale of Ings and then forgetting to replace him and thinking we can get along with Adams and Armstrong. Brain dead decisions. Ings was more than just goals, his movement and off the ball runs were intelligent and helped open space. The January additions came too late to muster anything meaningful because of all that went before.

You really do have to question people who continuously select Elyounoussi as our attacking threat and then wonder why we can't score. At least he's finally done away with Lyanco, but I'm still totally and uttery baffled by what managers see in Elyounoussi. Quite bizarrely I imagine he will have a lot of interest as a free agent in the summer, can't quite put my finger on why anyone rates him.

That was such a terrible game of football, West Ham were inept but just slightly less inept than us in an attacking sense. Nothing really happened did it? Not sure what this club expects with Elyounoussi in the attack, he cannot do it at this level as has been obvious for 4 miserable years. Stu is sadly done at top level football by the looks of it, his biggest strength was the carrying of the ball and his energy. There's nothing about him anymore. Mara just too raw to play a role like that. We basically played with 3 passengers in the attack in that first half and you cannot carry that in the PL and expect to score goals, let a lone win games. The only positive slant I can put on todays result is that it finally sticks a pin in it and makes the rest of the season pretty much academic, so we won't have the stress or worry about what other teams do or don't do in the next few weeks. We were done weeks ago if we're honest, but today was the day that I imagine even the players become pretty resigned. There is now no way out of this at all. The Sports Republic gamble(s) have failed worse than anyone could have imagined. I imagine the board will be getting excited about the money they'll bring in over the summer though, that should keep them with something to do.

I dunno who else you pick as third choice to be honest. Henderson, Pope injured. Butland, Johnstone, not playing. Forster is playing in the PL regularly right now, bit of a no brainer really. I remember when we had both McCarthy and Forster called up for England whilst they were here, there's nothing big club about it.

All of us is a bit of a stretch. Personally I doubt many of of us knew anything about him, bar his pedigree in Europe and Internationally. He was a punt at that price, there is something not quite right somewhere though - never been linked with any big clubs, only flatters of interest from WBA and Burnley in recent seasons (which never came to fruition either). Not quite sure what it is, but I have a feeling there is something off in his makeup which has put clubs off of him. We just panicked I think.

It's another game where we'll end up being on the end of the wrong result. It's a typical relegation season if you look at it, get surprising results against the teams you don't expect to get them against, but then throw it down the pisser in the games you have to be targeting. Even Fulham raised their games against the bigger sides when they tried, but failed, to stay up a few years ago. (Winning away at Liverpool for .e.g). As you saw against Leeds, Wolves etc - these are different games for us and we don't seem to have an idea of how to manage them. In these games we let these sides have too much of the game and ultimately the better quality comes to the fore. It's a strange season in that respect, as there is a lot of quality in the bottom half (Maddison, Rice, Harvey Barnes, Daka, Tilliemans, Soucek, Bamford, Zaha etc etc). The teams you'd expect to be down there, who have less quality on paper (Brighton, Brentford, Fulham etc) are well clear. That's why we're struggling big time imo.

Confusing post. We scored 3 goals, Adams and Theo from open play. I don't think you can look at Bazunu for any of the goals y/day, if you're really nit-picking maybe, but the first for example was down to a wandering Perraud and a non-tracking back Ely. I've seen Orsic play a few games, against Grimsby the last one, and to say he was inept is being generous. He's done nothing to get mins ahead of anyone else. It's another mysterious case of ''they're not playing, so they become world-beaters''.

If you look at our recent form in both performances and results, it's probably our best run of the season. But even our best run of the season hasn't managed to move us off of the bottom of the league, and I don't think we're capable of too much more than we're giving now. That probably illustrates pretty well how it's almost an impossible job for us to stay up. It's like our relegation in 05, the games against the teams around us have been tossed and that's what's done it. Points and wins against Utd/Chelsea/Spurs are all well and good, but when you blow it against Wolves, Leeds, Brentford then there is only ever going to be one result.

He's in the form he was in when he first came to us (on loan), the 18 months after that were to forget though. A nice last hurrah for him, he's certainly giving it his best shot personally. I reckon he'll retire int he summer so he's trying to go out with the biggest bang he can personally.

I thought we played really well today, competed and worried Spurs on a few occasions. The 2nd goal (from Kane) was a little against the run of play, and I thought 1-3 flattered them to be honest. Great comeback, great spirit. We benefited massively from the worst VAR call ever, but I'm not complaining. Doesn't really change anything in terms of our outlook, it's all but done in that sense. This is our best spell of the season in respect of form and results, yet we're still rooted to the bottom. It's nice to see game with us scoring goals in for a change though.

I think we've gone past worrying about what others do, we can't even sort our own shit out. Doesn't matter what others do now.

Somewhat agreed, but I won't be going in on him anytime soon. I reckon he's got genuine talent but you have to appreciate that he's come into a totally dysfunctional group, it's not amazing environment for anyone to flourish right now. People were burnt from writing off Mane too soon (I remember the comments after the Sheffield United cup game), so it would be daft to do similar here.

My faith went after last night tbh, I had a bit of a hope spurt after the Utd game but we simply HAVE to win our home games against the sides in the middle of the table (Brentford included). We had opportunities at home over the course of the season v Brighton, Forest, Everton, Wolves, Brentford, Villa, West Ham, Leeds - all those games and we haven't won any of them at home. We now need to realistically win every single home game we have left, which includes Liverpool, Man City, Spurs etc. If we can't win all of the remaining home games, then we will need to be getting wins away at Arsenal and Brighton. That's how tricky it is after last night.

This is just demonstrating how well the loan window works. He was clearly down the pecking order in the summer, whether that was right or wrong is up for debate, but rather than sit around as a squad player here we allowed him to get game time at Burnley - and it has risen his level. I thought he was ready to explode after a pre-season a year or so back, but it never really happened due to the environment here (chop and change galore). This has given him the opportunity of regular football he needed so bad. This puts us in a stronger position whatever the outcome. We either make a tidy sum on a player whose value has risen 10 fold in 12 months, or we have him next season and he tears it up for us. Whilst it's frustrating to see him perform there and not here you have to understand the circumstances are different, he'd have never had the opportunity here for the run he's had at Burnley.

Yeah I don't think he's totally terrible, but the drop off in quality when KWP went off last night was so evident. Our only threat was coming via him really during that little period after HT, the drop off to Bree was just enormous for this level. Luckily we won't be at this level next year.

I will always be baffled as to what managers see in both Diallo and Elyounoussi, I can only assume in training they do everything the manager asks like a good boy, but when you stick them out in the cauldron and up against 'real players', then they are simply hopeless. Too weak and no physicality for this level, it's plain to see. No level of training will change that, they will never, ever, ever cut it in this league or country. It's a shame we're lumbered with them. You watch us offer Elyounoussi a new contract in the summer just to rub all our noses in it.

He'd be a perfect Championship forward, would cause all sorts of chaos down there. Be interesting if he sticks around. Look at Daryl Dike at WBU for example, an absolutley awful footballer - but he's a unit, and is a goal machine at that level. Karlem Grant similar.

Doesn't this seem to be a reoccurring theme of every attacking player we've bought over the last few years? Start well, look exciting and then become this scared risk adverse player unable to make an impact. (Moussa, Armstrong, Diallo, Aribo, Mara...the list goes on.)

We Marsch on?

Let them enjoy their moment, the inevitable will happen in a few years and they'll fall back down to their level.