S-Clarke

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.

He started ok with the quick give and go's, but hasn't really moved around. He's been quite static in that central area (maybe that's all he's been told to do). JWP, as usual, is absolutely everywhere. Non-human that kid.

You post an absolute load of shit mate.

Good in transition and moving through the the lines, but very little punch to it. It hasn't been a 3-1 game, but that's what you get when they have goal scorers in their team and we don't. It's been positive in places, but also very reminiscent of our powderpuff approach in other games where we just give up goals so easily. I'm not sure Bertrand is pulling up trees at RB, and Salisu is almost certainly not a left back. More square pegs just to make up for a lack of squad, hopefully we sort that in the summer and we'd have a much better chance of being competitive.

You'd be the first one frothing at the mouth had we played our first team, lost anyway, had injuries and were depleted for Brighton. So pipe down.

That doesn't mean you don't need to manage them. Who knows what the sports science is saying about Tella? We have no insight in that, just the club and Ralph. I still retain the view that JWP is some sort of cyborg and not human.

I believe that loan has already been extended for another season. Hoedt is at Lazio (and being his usual embarrassing self, he will end back up here again unfortunately). Ely at Celtic.

They're all pretty average to be fair. I'd say GK is a position it would be 'nice to change up', but i think we've got bigger priorities, that's all.

Not sure why people are thinking that way, he holds all the cards, surely? If he doesn't sign and there are no takers, he goes for free in 2022. I'd say that makes us fairly big losers in that situation. He holds all the cards, he has the entire control of his career and it's up to him to make the call on where that goes.

He'd likely cost more than we've ever spent on a goalkeeper. He cost Sheff U £20m, and signed a 4 year deal. He isn't leaving for much less than that tbh. He's out of our budget for a start and isn't a position we need to be spending any serious money on.

Yeah about £18m. I think we could have got close to that in the first year we were trying to sell him, but our problem was pricing the players we wanted to shift too high - desperate to see if we could somehow make a profit, or at least our money back. We never had any chance of that, so we should have just cut our losses for 10-15m in my opinion. But we didn't, and now we have to sell him for £7m. A bit of a fail by the club, on multiple fronts. Similar from Carillo - out priced him from a move, wanted too much etc. Ended up releasing him on a free...go figure. I still hold hope that once we lose all of these unsellables (Hoedt and Ely included in that) we will have more movement in the wage bill.

Not 100% sure on the detail of it, but I think if they stay up and he's made 20 apps, it's an automatic £7m transfer - all agreed. Today was his 20th...so he now just needs to stay up, and that 7m fee is triggered I think.

I still remember his Semi Final performance and based on that it will always be a thanks, but no thanks for me. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.