S-Clarke

The people asking us to make a stand....would be exactly the same people throwing the club under a bus once he leaves for free and we don't replace him. Because that's what will happen. We can't replace players without having the money in the bank first, so letting players go on frees will eventually leave us with no squad.

That 11 kind of picks it's self again, only place really up for grabs is that 2nd striker and left winger birth. But you can't argue with the 11 he's gone with really. No square pegs, players in natural areas of the pitch. More balanced width down the left and the right side. We will miss Ings, no doubt, but I can see Tella playing on the shoulder today - Minamino dropping back and playing balls through the middle/down the sides. Could be a way to exploit, as they don't have a particularly quick defence.

I used to stick up for him a little bit back in those days, but it was quite apparent as the months went on (the season after the play off push) that it was like watching your unfit dad try and play football with his work mates. In the play off push he was mainly centre midfield for us, alongside Viafara.

I don't think they're doing anything wrong really, whilst it's frustrating to read, they're just operating a sensible strategy with who they are approaching. It's us who is doing it wrong - letting these first team players slip down to 1 year remaining. Poor squad management.

West Brom are dross. Won't miss them next year. Palace aren't much better either, this game has been pure pain. This group of the league (Palace down) is really a swamp of trash. Sadly, we've managed to join it.

He didn't really pass forward, he recycled the ball sideways and back. I think another contributing factor is Ings drop off, combination of injuries/fitness have lead to him being in and out of the side this year. I think most feared what would happen to us if Ings was missing/not firing, and I think this has showed the result a missing Ings has on us. He's our only consistent source of goals and due to him having a pretty terrible season, truth be told, we are struggling big style to score goals or create meaningful chances over a consistent period.

The last thing we should be doing is reducing the squad further, that's why I find it hard to align Semmens comments with Ralphs. Ralph is out there publicly wanting 2 for each position, yet the club are here saying we have to sell before we can buy. Given we don't already have 2 for each position, I don't see how the selling does anything other than make the situation even worse. I guess the only way we could facilitate that is through a really, really large sale or two. Let's prepare for that I guess. £60m for JWP? £30m for Ings?

To be fair the majority of that came from the sales of Reed, PEH and the loan fees we got for Hoedt and Lemina. You'll notice we didn't actually confirm the signings for Diallo and KWP until PEH and Reed had been sold, which I think tells you all you need to know in terms of what was funding those. We did seem to find some loose change to fund the Salisu deal before hand though, but anything else that happened after that was only as a result of selling.

It's probably a combination - you also have to factor in that we weren't going to have it all our own way for ever. Teams will become cute to our approach and will have ways to try and counteract it. I think Tella is someone who is breaking through that can stretch games on the break, but I'd potentially go out and replace Redmond/Moussa next year with someone consistent and with an end product. I don't think we have players who can deliver that end product consistently enough when we get into those positions. So if you consider that teams have probably got more cute to our approach, add it together with the injuries and lack of squad cohesion and it's created a mess of a season really.

That was a fair result in my eyes. Newcastle needed to win that though.

That just comes down to the lack of quality/depth in the squad. We had a few square pegs in key defensive positions and that makes a huge difference against teams of the quality of city. Not much else we could do though, certainly wouldn't have risked KWP tonight.

This is how I see it and why I'm behind Ralph. I see that we have a philosophy, a way of playing, something everyone has seemingly bought into. We are let down by the lack of quality and squad depth. That's it. The way we play, the way we approach games in the main is a progressive and modern way....but if we had a tad more quality in the back 4 and up front/wide, then I think the story would be amazing. I prefer seeing a team with a plan and a way to play than an Allardyce play for a 1-0/long ball bullshit, which is very short-termism and doesn't get you anywhere. What's letting us down is the lack of quality and depth, not the manager's ability or his philosophy - in my opinion

We were actually fairly solid up until January, all gone to shit since then in spectacular style. Obviously the Utd result skews that a little bit as well.

Just putting it out there, what if we went full strength from the start, still shipped 3 or 4, but lost KWP and Diallo to a reoccurrence and they were out for 'weeks' again? I'd say that would have been a much worse outcome. I see why he did what he did tonight. We don't have the luxury of two 11s though, which is why it becomes a bit square pegs when we do want to change it up.

I don't disagree and that's why I still class GK as a 'nice to change' position rather than a priority. But this is what I mean with having flexibility in order to evolve the squad. We're so hamstrung that we have to ignore the other glaring holes which aren't as glaring as other areas. £10m on two keepers, one out on loan and one not truly established here anymore. You'd have hoped one of those would have been our first choice for years, but another club fail in the recruitment department.

It's amazing how many goals of similar style we conceed, we just don't get a tackle in - either in the box, or on the outside. We just let them dance around. I don't know why...is it an instruction they are following? ''stay on your feet' or whatever. I dunno, but we are meek as fuck in those situations.

Two very similar sides in my eyes. Play the same way, good between the lines, struggle to score goals. I can see Brighton having a lot of the ball, but I also see us having lots of ball wins on the counter press as they do play around with it at the back. I wonder if Lallana will 'wimp' out of this one?

Oh yeah, of course. You think he's lower league quality.

I don't think anyone is happy? It was an abject defensive performance. People are just commenting on how well we transitioned when we counter pressed, which did work well at times tonight - that element of our game was good. The elements which let us down were the two boxes, arguably the defensive more than the attack as we scored twice. Need to really sharpen up defensively, not just individually, but as a unit. Doesn't help when you have square pegs everywhere, but it wasn't as negative as it could have been, yet it was still pretty shit all being told. I just want this season over with and start again in the summer to build a squad capable of doing something.

Shows how low our expectations are if we think he played 'better' than recently! He really needs to go, needs a new start elsewhere.

He's on one of his purple patches!

To be absolutely honest I'd ditch 1 in the summer and buy a brand new number 1. Both of these guys aren't suited to the high line/sweeper keeper/ball playing GK we need. It's suicidal to keep playing this way with either of them.

That was a strange game really. Whenever city put their foot down we conceded, thankfully they were a little bit kind in that sense and didn't play like that all game. Defensively we are abject. We ball watch, we stand off, we don't tackle, we mark space and not the man. It really is a total mess to see. When Bednarek is on form he is a decent player, no more. When he is off form he is an absolute mess. Salisu is still playing in La Liga, totally not used to the pace of this league. It'll come, I hope. Thought we transitioned pretty well throughout the game, got into some decent positions. The problem is when our attack includes Redmond, you are automatically on the back foot. Fine example came in 80+ mins. We were 3 on 1 I think. He could have gone left, right, easy. What did he do? Passed it to the 1 fucking city defender in front of him. That summed him up. Truly abject, get shot - please. Onto the next one. Wasn't expecting anything today, but it would have been nice to see us defend rather than defend like a bunch of pansies.

I assume Moussa was injured. Made of glass that lad. After 2 years, he's still struggling to hold a place in this side and that's really disappointing for me.

Who knows, I don't think it would make a difference either way tbh. Both a fairly average GK's. The one big error he made wasn't punished, thankfully.