S-Clarke

He needed to get tighter quicker, at that point he wasn't marking anyone. it wasn't just a fault of him but a lot of our players just stood off of Spurs yesterday and let them ping crosses into the box from both sides or take a crack from the edge of the box. It was a very passive display from a team that is usually front foot engaged. If we went that way because we don't trust the defenders to play in a 'front foot' way, then given we still shipped 4 goals that's a pretty damming indictment on the quality of our centre backs. I include Salisu in that who has been nothing more than an absolute liability for months, more so than Bednarek. KWP had a bit of a bad one, not sure if he's been affected by talk of moves away etc, but he wasn't on it defensively.

That's the only logic I can put to it to be honest, an injury or something brewing on the transfer front. It's a shame we've gone into the season having to play Adam Armstrong in a position he can't play though, more square pegs even after spending £58m. Let's see how things look on Sept 2nd, as based on yesterday there is still significant work to do.

Yep, it's Wolves. They've had an offer in excess of £30m accepted. He's a Jorge Mendes client.

I found the distribution thing quite weird, in the pre-season games I watched that was one of his better qualities. ''At least he doesn't kick it out of play''. But straight away yesterday you could see he had more nerves and panic around his overall game, which contributed to rushed clearances. It seems to be a theme of all of our 'players' once they get into a competitive game, they panic and start doing odd things that they weren't doing in 'lesser' games. There is a huge mental problem with these players in my opinion, somewhat made worse by the haunting 9-0's , 6-0's etc. Panic and nerves are catching as well, it doesn't take long to travel around the side especially to the younger players. We need better 'established' players without a doubt.

And then subbing him at half time, only to replace him with a midfielder whilst leaving Che on the bench. Easily one of his, if not his most, baffling subs ever.

To be honest I'd have him over Bednarek. The problem with the Fonte situation wasn't the contract as such, it was our ridiculous approach to not replacing him in that window. As a token we bought in Caceres but then didn't play him. I would agree with others that we haven't had a 'leader' CB for many many years, that doesn't necessarily need to equal age and experience, but someone who can actually organise. There is talk about Bednarek and Stephens being experienced, but as defenders at this level they couldn't organise a defence if they were just defending 1 striker. It doesn't matter how many talented young players you add to that mix if the base experience is so terribly bad. I do think we need an established CB to come in, but I just don't see how it happens unless we shift at least 1, but the problem is no one wants them as they're shit.

I don't think we'll all of a sudden rip up the blueprint, we have targets and I'm sure those targets include the more 'experienced' and established players we need to add. I noticed Hudson-Odoi wasn't in the Chelsea team today, even with 9 subs. Not sure if he's injured or not, but if not that's quite telling. The guy needs to play, he'll get in our team every week and even offers the versality of playing wing back if required. So those are the sorts of opportunities that we'll see cropping up now in my opinion. The slight chink in our chances are Brighton, who are now flush with cash, and Chelsea wanting Leicester players who may be interested in those infamous 'swap deals'. Next few weeks will be interesting imo, for a change we're clearly going to be heavily involved in it.

There have been some big changes since last season though, coaches, players, options available (And more players to come). So I think it's only right, if they backed him in the summer, to stick with him through those changes to see what he can do. If he can't and in a month or two nothing has changed then we'll probably twist. But they've backed him for this initial period imo, I'm not sure we should expect him to go anywhere yet.

For a start they're engaged. I don't think they're going to start blowing millions and millions, but they have provided us the cash flow to be a tiny bit more flexible and move early in this window. Spending £58m before selling isn't something we've seen for many years, so there's clearly some intent from them. I liked the action from the summer with the backroom staff, time will tell if they should have got rid of Ralph or not at that point, but they didn't sit still. Joe Shields is also an ambitious appointment which I don't think we'd have done under previous ownership. Sports Republic make me more positive about our future, I don't think they're daft. They've got some smart people in charge in the footballing and business side and I think they'll give Ralph the opportunity to work with these changes, they're not going to react after 1 game. But there's clearly pressure on him now IMO.

Entitled to your opinion, I just don't get the point of doing it now. They made the call to back him with the summer changes, so they need to give him an opportunity to see those through and complete the recruitment.

It's clearly a club policy, not just from this season but it started from last year. I don't know if it's an instruction of sort, but the model seems to be...buy young, talented players for smaller fees, feed them up, get them to reach their potential and then double the money when we sell them. If we get it right it could be great, if we don't then we're only going one way. There is still room for more experience though, and I'm not talking 30 somethings. I want to see some players in the region of 23/24/25/26 who have a couple of league seasons behind them and I'm sure the club will sanction that should the right players become available. (As we did with Aribo)

Shifting the shit is the hardest part of it really, as we have found in recent years with Lemina, Boufal, Hoedt, Carillo etc. We'll probably have to give away Theo, Moussa, Redmond at the end of their contracts. Or do an early settlement or something.

I can see the reason why they didn't feel it was right to start ABK away at spurs, given that we had a young kid in DM, a young kid in goal. They probably didn't want to go all in with inexperience through the spine, that is the logic I can put and understand in regard to that. I'd have probably gone with Lyanco or Stephens instead of Valery though, but his pace in a 3 probably edged it.

I think I saw links to Boro more heavily than Watford, it was a loan but we wanted a fee. I think Boro went and got Forss from Brentford instead.

I'd say Valery was out of position, he's first and foremost a full back and a poor one at that. He can look reasonable at centre back if he's recovering/making last ditch tackles due to his turn of pace, but in the main his positioning and sloppiness on the ball isn't best suited when the oppo are on top of you like Spurs were. He's prone to panicking and giving it away. I'd argue that we should have started with Perraud, if he's only good for an hour then sub him at that point. I'm bored with the Moussa experiment, anywhere on the pitch. It's also a tiny failing of our transfer window that we've managed to go into the start of the season with players out of position. We should have sorted full back out before now imo.

Poch in? Do people really think he's realistic? He's just been coaching Messi, Neymar, Mbappe. Before that Kane, Son. I'm sure he can't wait to get stuck into it with Adam flaming Armstrong and Nathan Tella, with Moussa supporting them.

I think we need to bring some calmness into our game, not sure Lyanco brings that.

Massive game. Last season it took us too long to get a win, so if we can get that 3 points on the board 'early doors' then we won't have as much pressure going into Man Utd and Chelsea. I think with our current personal your line up is the best bet, but if we get a 'leading' striker in before this game then we can go two up top and drop Romeu. He looked leggy today I felt, which worryingly was how he looked most of the 2nd half of last season. Does make you wonder if he's starting to struggle a bit with the pace of the game nowadays. Ralph needs to keep it simple, all of this overthinking bollocks he's clearly doing isn't helping anyone.

It does feel a bit like that, never smoke without fire and there have been some persistent rumours in the last week or two. He played quite sparingly in pre-season and didn't even get on today when we had no strikers on the pitch. If it's not an injury, something is brewing. If we do sell him then it looks like we'll be signing two more forwards, otherwise we'd still be short and relying too much on Adam Armstrong, which we need to move on from.

I think the two 9-0's are haunting us as an entire club, some players seem to be mentally screwed. Bednarek has never been the same, he could kind of pass as a 'decent' CB but after that Utd 9-0 he is just a mess every single week. I think the chance to twist with Ralph was in the summer, but we stuck and decided to give him more tools in the shape of coaches and players (the player side isn't finished yet either). Time will tell if that was the right call or not, but I don't think we serve any benefit by reacting on the back of 1 game when we've made so many changes in the summer. We need a few weeks to see if there are any notable improvements which come out of these initial changes. If not, and we head into the world cup as a shambles, then SR have their next opportunity to twist and I think they'll do it if they need to at that point. Not before.

I do think our best 4 is KWP - ABK - Salisu - Perruad. Stick Lavia and JWP in front of them, Aribo and Armstrong in the 10's and then a toss up of who partners Adams. I think Ralph is onto a hiding to nothing if he keeps trying to persist with the same old failures. Moussa, Valery, Bednarek, Armstrong, Redmond etc. We've done a lot this summer but looking at the team we still have to put out, we do still have some significant work to do. But Ralph needs to stop making it harder for himself than it already is. Some of his decisions in game are baffling and they're getting worse. Sometimes the best rule is to keep it simple, especially when some of the players at your disposal are so incredibly limited.

Yep, agreed. I don't think we have the right players for it anywhere on the pitch. You need all defenders to be mobile really, Bednarek let's that '5' at the back down every time. And then we're having to shoehorn players into their unnatural positions to make it fit as well. You need an outstanding attacker playing that way as well, arguably a couple - then you have a way to break out of that back 5 and make it a 3, but we don't really have that. We keep trying and toying with 3 at the back and I just don't think it will ever work against the best teams with the personal we have. It probably looks good on paper, but like you said not with our players in the cold light of day.

I liked to show faith, I wanted to stick with him and let Sports Republic show their hand and see what he can do. I wasn't happy with last season, it was by far his worst with us. He's been backed this window more than he's ever been backed so time will tell if this improves things longer term. I don't want to read 'too' much into one game, but the concerning bit is that it's all very much groundhog day. I want to see who we get through the door in attack as that will make a huge difference. (and I still think we're in the market for another CB, just a hunch). He's got until November though, if we head into the world cup in the bottom 3 then he's got to go and we can use the world cup to prepare with a new manager. It's probably quite telling that as a PL club we'll only have 1 guaranteed player away, good for us but it does show up the lack of real proven quality.

Not in this league, and not with the attackers we have!

Can't disagree with anything you've said there, well summed up.