S-Clarke

Not just talking about this game in isolation, but overall we need to change up the GK positions. Agreed it wouldn't have made a huge difference y/day, but his distribution left a lot to be desired and kept putting us back in the shit.

Christ, tons worse than yesterday. Southampton 1 - 4 Palace, when we had Makin and Bennet putting on a show. 3-4 Leeds at home, absolute disaster of a second half. Rochdale 0-2 when we'd just sacked Pardew, we looked screwed at that point. Obviously Leicester 9 for all the reasons. Losing at home to Wigan when we first came back up, was expecting a bit of a bounce after the effort against City and that was as flat as you could wish for.

Unlucky with injuries, but was never more than a squad player really. He was the Bednarek of the Koeman years quality wise, but we had better quality starting so he didn't really get to play. (that kinda illustrates how far we've gone backwards quality wise imo)

We are a mid-table bog average team who don't actually have a conventional season like you'd expect from a mid-table team, it's weird. We have streaks where we are top 4/top 6, plaudits from everywhere and just delightful to watch for a period of time. Then we have streaks where we are bottom 2, worst in the league and are the worst team to watch for a period of time. There is simply no middle ground. The reality is that both of those extremes meet up at the end of the season and we end up finishing mid-table as per our squad dictates we should. I guess we could be more like a Brighton or a Bolton of old and get to mid-table with a few wins here and there, draws, runs of draws and wins and defeats etc - but that seemingly isn't how we do it. We define streaky team. I guess the question is why does our form keep falling off a cliff? In my opinion it's still the age old problem of most of our players not really being much above mid-table in quality wise (probably much lower in some plcaes). There are a couple of top 10 players in our 11 but the rest are pretty average. When we play well it often coincides with our 'Top 10' players playing at the top of their game, i.e Ings a couple of years ago, JWP/Broja/Salisu/KWP at points this season. When those top 10 players drop off form wise (which will happen) it highlights the lack of quality in the rest, as everyone else has to show up - which they don't. Bednarek is garbage, no real debate to be had there. GK is a massive problem and we need to fix that. CM is rubbish beyond JWP and Romeu, we need a shake up there. Up front and attack is an absolute cluster fuck of a mess, our best player in attack is a loan who won't be staying. We need quality injected into those 3 area's in the summer otherwise it will be the same old story. If we have more quality in those areas then we may be able to sustain our decent spells for longer and maybe...you know, potentially win a game when not playing well? (i.e have a winger/number 10 who can win a game out of nothing?). We don't do that, you only see us win games when everyone is 100%. We don't have enough quality to afford any slight drop off as it stands. At the end of the day though we will finish mid-table on a shoe-string budget, which is exactly what most would expect and probably accept if they're honest. The extremes are frustrating and if anything brings out more extreme reactions (at both extremes) but that our season is going exactly as most predicted.

They can have him if they want. Their second choice goalie is only there on loan, so picking up an English player to be their squad player makes sense in terms of their quota. He won't play much.

Surprisingly good actually, frozen again. 10 month interest-free Installment plan being back is a big plus for a lot of people, however the caveat is that if you want to spread the payments you have to apply for that by the end of April.

Such a sad situation.

He might settle half way...! I think Spurs paid something like 40% of his wage with Real paying the 60% when they had him, so even that is out of our realm.

I can understand fans apprehension of signing Bale (not just us, but all clubs). He'd cost a fortune and his commitment to club football has been questionable over recent years. But...on quality alone, he is still automatically better than any individual we have in our squad. So on the basis of the financial deal being right then of course we'd have him, but it won't happen as he'd cost too much.

Forster KWP - Fonte - Van Dijk - Bertrand JWP - Morgan Mane - Davis - Lallana Ings Manager - Koeman Subs - Boruc, Clyne, Toby, Tadic, Pelle, Lambert, Wanyama, Oriol, Shaw Squad - Rodriguez, McCarthy, Yoshida, Cork, Lovren

I thought he looked alright in a 3 against Brentford, he's certainly good enough but he didn't do much today at all.

Exactly, he's a young lad having the predictable drop off. Always going to happen, like you said though the quality behind him is non-existent sadly. The club will obviously support Armstrong but there's no doubt that he has been really disappointing. Not even threatening to force his way in. Long getting on before Armstrong is a bit of a nail in his coffin though, you'd have to say. Loan for him next season for his sake.

If they'd have won 4-1 it wouldn't have done us any favours either tbh. Good side, good players - better than ours, so we'll need to be on it and hope for that bit of luck and then see what happens.

A good draw, I think it was fair. I don't think either side could have said they could have been comfortable winners, we both had chances. It was a bit frantic and I thought that favoured Leeds more than us, but that's how they play and we should have been aware of it. That's how they started the game, and it was like we had to be 'wound up' and put into gear, after 10mins or so we got a foothold. Typically they score when we're having a decent spell, but that's the way it goes - shocking goal keeping in my eyes. Livramento ball watching too. 2nd half we started well, could have gone 2-1 - and maybe should have, but over all I think a draw is far. Really good performance from Che today, he caused them all sorts of problems. Ely was clever in his movement in our transitions, but apart from that the 'attack' didn't really function. When you compare our '10's' with what Leeds had (Raphinia/Harrison) you can see that we are still a few levels behind in that quality department, in my opinion. Stu improves our number 10 position immeasurably when he plays, without him we're too slow and laboured (and even Stu isn't that quick) Tino grew into the game, but he was pretty sloppy it has to be said. KWP grew into the game as well and then started marauding down the flank as we know he can. Need Broja to get back into the groove though, he's really off it at the moment and his overall game is coming across as frustrated - which doesn't help. Draw stops the rot, lets' see what next weekend brings.

That's a bonus of a draw if there ever was one! We should finish top, if we don't something has gone horribly wrong somewhere! As it stands, as we don't know about Wales/Ukraine/Scotland, then USA will be the toughest, they've got a younger side these days - couple of ones to watch, Tyler Adams and Reyna who both play in Germany, quality players. Pulisic is a really good player as well, but they don't really have much more beyond that. They were better in the 2000's in my opinion. Iran's rating is massively skewed because of who they play competitively to get to these tournaments. Iraq, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Cambodia....just to name few. That's why one of their goal scorers, the 50 year old Daei 'was' the worlds leading international goal scorer for many years until Ronaldo overtook him recently. He was still banging them in during his 40's! They've got a few well known players like Azmoun, Jananbakch (Was at Brighton), Ghoddos etc - but generally they are very low in quality when compared to anyone half decent.

Sort of player who is right up our street in terms of age and 'lesser' known. Not sure about him in great detail, 'decent' scoring record although no mind blowing numbers. I will take any Newcastle link to any player with a pinch of salt, you'll see this all summer with every single rumour. West Ham also seem to get themselves 'interested' in every player as well, without actually being interested.

I think we expected more from our Skacel investment though with a potential resale, sadly he turned out to be nothing more than a middling championship player quality wise.

That would keep the comedy going for a little longer for sure. They complain about Keane and Holgate being too slow, they haven't met our old friend Vestergaard yet. He defines slow.

I thought he was on 100ishk a week, so we might be able to meet in the middle - but apparently he's paid nearly 300k p/w. Shocking, he's no where near good enough for those levels of wages! Those wages will price him out of a move to anyone.

shit or bust for sure. I must admit I'm the same as you, i didn't really focus too much on the finances back in those days - but part of me did wonder where we found £6m to spend in one summer, in our second season out of the PL. I thought it was part of a bright new future, looking back now I've read that Wilde gambled on the expectation/hope of investment coming in during 2006 - but it never happened, so that gamble was critical.

Stern John was alright in our Pearson year, probably would have gone down a year earlier without his goals. The 'log jam of strikers' meant we had to let him go though in order for McGoldrick to bang them in for us. Idiakez was a strange one, he was a star for Derby (along with Rasiak) so when we got him in the summer we got Skacel etc it all seemed pretty impressive. That team was decent - Bale, Claus, Baird, Jesus, Rasiak, Jones, Surman, Skacel, Licka, Viafara, Idiakez, BWP, Pelle, Saganowski & Guthrie from January...and let's not forget Wright. Should have done more than sneak into the playoffs, I think we went a bit all or nothing that summer with our transfers. ''Lets go Wilde'' I think it was.

Oriol has been one of our successes in recent seasons, throughout all the dross we had to endure. But...at the start of next season he'll be 31. The club may have briefed him that we will be investing in a new number 6 in the summer to evolve his position, that's my hunch anyway. I reckon he'll stick around for next season and then leave on a free in 2023.

For teams outside of the 'super 6' it makes our lives undoubtedly harder, as the big teams have so many more opportunities to 'put a bad performance' right in game, let's be honest the reason the 'lesser' sides beat the big sides is because they have off days. More subs reduces those chances of off days. It could benefit us a bit because we play quite an intense game, so having more chances to freshen it up against the lesser sides could be a bonus - but clearly this favours the mega teams with the endless pots of money and first 11's sat on the bench.

Somewhat agree, I do think the top nations have better quality 'starters' though, maybe just not the same level of depth as us, especially at full back. Varane, Pique, Kimpempbe, Laporte etc are on a different level to Maguire, probably a different universe really.

Most sane people get the overall point he made, so stop trying to make an argument out of nothing. It's tedious.