S-Clarke

Second year loan is a good shout, that happens quite often to Chelsea kids. This is a good place for him to establish himself for a couple of years. (as long as we stay up of course!)

Salisu was excellent, but he didn't have a great deal to defend against if we're honest. Generally speaking though Salisu has started the season as well as anyone. I was more impressed with Diallo on the day though who seems to have got stronger, gives us a much more dynamism midfield when he plays due to his turn of pace.

Exactly this, it was very much our regular formation - but Redmond did drop deeper than Broja and like you said had a free role to drift around, but primarily he was central with Moussa and Ely on the other sides.

Going to be a top player this kid.

That was as comfortable as you'll get in the premier league, very dominant from the first minute. I had horrible feelings of us hanging on in the final 10 mins, but Leeds couldn't muster anything. I won't get ''too' carried away because I don't think we'll face as toothless a team again this year, they had nothing about them. It shows what happens when you remove the 4 or 5 PL quality players out of a side, they were well short. But we still had to compete with what was in front of us and we put them to the sword, albeit with our usual wasteful approach. I can see why he chose Redmond, and his selection was justified as he did well I thought. He didn't play directly up front, but he dropped in behind Broja and occasionally drifted to the flanks - but in the main he was the 'number 10' just in behind and he's not too bad in that position. Moussa was Moussa, still fairly wasteful and erratic on the ball. Didn't do anything of note. Elyonoussi 'should' have scored, no doubts. But he had a busy game, direct against Dallas and came inside quite often which dragged a few of their players out of position in order to open more space for Redmond etc. Broja is a proper centre forward, he carries a threat in all aspects of the game. He's a threat from set pieces, he's a threat on the break as he's so quick and he's a threat in the build up as he's strong with a good touch to bring others in. Big fan of his, think he's got a big future in European football. The win is a relief though, we needed that. As others have already alluded two, our season starts from today and the next few fixtures will provide us more points if we play that way. (I do still worry about the number of chances we need to score though)

He wasn't with them in pre-season, he only had a 6 month contract and then joined up with England in the summer. I 'think' he's back with them now on some sort of deal, but he certainly wasn't there during pre-season as I remember the panic articles from Georgie's about his unavailability.

I don't think we're alone in terms of haemorrhaging money though, I think most PL clubs did over the last 2 years. What amplified our situation were the huge contracts in the years before that for the failures like Hoedt, Lemina, Boufal etc etc. And then having to make a loss on every single one of them. Mr Transfer Deadline day - ''So where did the money from the VVD sale go? they've raised so much!'' - We did invest it, and heavily on record transfers etc. But sadly on a load of of absolute shit, basically. And that shit was so shit that we had to lose more money to get rid of them. Without an owner who is engaged or interested we can't really move forward in any way, we're stuck in this constant battle of trying to find player x who can be sold for £xxxxx so we can buy cover at LB. Inevitably that will lead to relegation, no matter who is in charge of the first team. Just got to hope an ownership change can happen sooner rather than later, as I don't think we can limp along for much longer.

Newcastle last year, they kept Bruce but brought in Graeme Jones to the coaching staff - and their results and performances took an uptick. The impact Jones made was actually discussed on MNF at one point I don't think Saint Fan CAM is looking for a replacement for Kitzbichler (or anyone really) and I don't think people are dismissing his role, I just think we could do with some additional strength and experience in the background which isn't Kelvin Davis or Craig Fleming etc. Kelvin and Craig should focus on the U21's and earn their experience there (and that level needs help...). They were pretty much thrust straight into senior football coaching with no experience.

Sorry egg, I can't agree with that at all. I don't understand how people can be ok with him. Don't be fooled into thinking he's appointed anyone, he has advisors in this country who he tells to go and do whatever. Semmens himself has said that he's managing the takeover enquiries, he manages the day to day, he appoints the managers, he appoints people like Crocker etc. There's zero involvement from Gao and he has no say in the day-to-day running of the football club. Out of choice, I might add - he's not interested. For me, that's bad. Not just in a financial sense but because there's no shared interest top down, all this creates is a situation where a club is in limbo without any clear objectives from above. We're in a situation whereby we're just being kept 'ticking over' by business people on this side of the pond, who aren't themselves the people who should be setting the goals or plans. There's nothing positive about the Gao reign. The longer he stays the more damage that is being done.

That's another club we can't compete with financially anymore then. I think it's only Burnley and Norwich we can compete with now? But even Burnley were able to spend £18m this summer without selling, so that may not even be the case anymore This club feels like it's stuck in treacle and can't get out.

Don't agree with you there at all. He did a sterling job in the middle alongside Rice in many of the games. Didn't look out of place against the likes of Germany or Italy really. I guess if you looked at his stats his forward passes would be low, but you can't just focus on the stats - what's in front of you, combined with the stats, will provide the clear picture.

Who are we supposed to bring in outside of a transfer window exactly?

It's pretty obvious Phillips is the better player, especially after his Euro's. I was a little sceptical, but the summer proved what a complete player Philips actually is and he's a level above JWP, certainly in a physical sense. JWP is a different type of midfielder and can do a different job for England than he does for us. If we're all honest we'd have Philips in our midfield in a heartbeat.

Very much so, and to be sat with a couple of points with our head above water is probably the tiny positive you can take. The next 5, for me, are the defining ones. If we are sat here after 13 games still without a win, then we won't have a manager and we will probably be pretty much toast too. Big couple of months.

I wouldn't pay attention to anything Watford do. They are a bat shit crazy club. Don't compare to them, they are ridiculous.

Bertrand was totally different to Vestergaard in the sense that we had some great times together, he was part of some of our best ever PL sides and gave us plenty back over numerous years. He was on the downturn though and we needed to evolve that spot, which we have done. Don't hold any grudges to Bertrand and I hope he does ok at Leicester, although he will prob be as quad player in the main. Vestergaard was always limited tbh. It's interesting reading some of the posts on the Leicester forums, they're calling him their worst ever signing, the worst CB they've seen play for them etc. Granted, some of that is probably a bit OTT...but I didn't get the upset some had when he was sold. We were never going to miss Vestergaard really and it was a very good sale we could make to generate some funds without really weakening the side. I'd have liked to have used the funds to get a more established CB in to replace him, but it won't take much for Lyanco to be better to be honest.

Not sure why Stuart has to fight for his place back, no one is keeping him out of the side as they are inept. They're just playing by default. If he's fit and ready, out goes one of Ely, Redmond or Moussa and we'd automatically be a better side.

No denying that the 10's are the issue. In an ideal world they'd step up and pop up with goals and provide a source of the missing goals, but none are good enough. The club have put way too much trust in Redmond, Moussa, Elyonoussi and Theo. None of those players are good enough to make any difference for us and are probably out of their depth at this level. We need to bench all of them, put Tino right side ahead of KWP and Tella left side as the two 10's. Very inexperienced, but I'd prefer that than having to be put through the pain of watching Moussa or Redmond try to play football.

He's improved, but he's still not good enough. Not strong enough, not quick enough. He'll never make any noticeable impact at this level. We'll sell him for buttons in the summer or for free the next year.

I think most sane fans could see that if we didn't replace Ings goals then we are pretty much dead with nowhere to turn. Jury is still out for me on Armstrong as it's too early to come to any conclusions, but I feel for him as he's automatically got the burden on his shoulders and has no time to adapt because no one else has stepped up. He is our top scorer with 1 goals. That shines such a poor light on everyone else in this side. In an ideal world you'd lose Ings and replace his goals throughout a number of players, Mousa, Ely, Redmond, Adams, Armstrong etc all hitting decent figures would negate the issue - but our main problem is that those existing players are incredibly limited and cannot be counted on. That should have been obvious to all in the summer, but I feel the club have put too much trust in the existing 10's (not including Stu Armstrong in that) when they needed to be replaced in the summer. Every single one of them. Financial limitations have dictated where we are with that though.

I reckon they'd have passed it backwards.

All you've really highlighted there is the glaring lack of quality right throughout the team. We shouldn't have to be relying on Redmond or Moussa anymore, their time would have been up at any normal football club at least a year ago. Bednarek is Bednarek. My hope from the summer was that we'd use the sale of Vestergaard to buy someone to replace or upgrade on Bednarek, but we clearly didn't even have the money for that. So we're stuck there too. In a nutshell we have some decent young players in Tino, Tella, Salisu, Diallo etc but they're surrounded by a load of absolute shit that we're struggling to evolve on from.

In a small-microchasm of a single game at the start of a single season, yes, that's what you saw. But spread that over an entire year and you'll see that is the description of us most of the time. The odd defensive showing against a good side, but bottling it against the teams at home we should be beating. The quality of the attack won't really be called to the fore against City as we won't really be attacking, but when we need to win a game or score against an 'even' side, we fail. Every.single.time. Results like that against Newcastle and Wolves make the great efforts against City pretty pointless really, as it counts for nothing.

Are we really going to micro analyse every goal we concede to see if we can attribute it to a fault by McCarthy? That is going to get incredibly dull. In fact it already has.

I genuinely don't know what to do to be honest. He's operated on a shoe string here, heck even less than that really. One thing that is baffling me from this season is the lack of Tella - what's happened there? When Long is getting on ahead of you then something must be horribly wrong? That's my worry with Ralph, he gets these weird blind spots over players. Hope that's not the case here. Truth be told though I don't think any other manager would get much more out of our attack. Defensively we seem ok this year, we look to have tightened up to a degree, but our attack is just pointless right now.