S-Clarke

Man Utd are beyond inept. A mishmashed mess.

TBF i think he was missing that 2nd man, Kitzbitchelr has come in and provided that opposition analysis which has allowed Ralph to concentrate on us.

This is the thing for me, I don't think we have many superstars that many 'top' clubs will be sniffing around. We are a sum of parts, with everyone buying into the plan and overwhelming the opposition. The main superstar for me is Ralph and the coaching he is doing here, but I don't see him leaving any time soon. I see Man Utd fans seem to think they can get him now if they ask. No chance. Pretty confident for the first time, it feels as if he wants to repay us for the genuine loyalty and he feels like an honourable bloke - we could have easily put him out on his arse last October.

Wow, that was pretty much the complete performance - and we had a very similar one against Everton. The press is just too much for teams, they cannot deal with it. I think most teams would struggle to deal with it. When you play us your touch needs to be tight, spot on. If you have a poor touch, a loose pass...we're on them. Everyone knows when to do it and they all go at once, it's like watching some sort of synchronised sport really. They spot the triggers and they go. The midfield two just work so well. JWP is super human in terms of how much ground he covers, he's certainly not the quickest, but he makes it around the pitch more than anyone else. Romeu was terrific again in that destructive roll...but, he's also very technically gifted when in possession and that cannot be underestimated. His professionalism tonight after that early yellow was tremendous and he really looks like the complete deep CM at the moment. Take a bow Armstrong though, he is one of the main starters of our counter press and he's pulling their full back around all the time - not through pace, but possessional sense and movement off the ball. He drifts into pockets of space and pulls the opposition players out of position which opens up the entire final third for us. Walcott through the middle was good - he was direct, took players on and and played between the lines really well (picking it up in that number 10 position a lot of the time). His touch and final moment let him down though, I'm hoping regular football will build that up - because he should have scored at least 1 today. Adams was excellent leading the line once again, he's elusively quick but incredibly strong and powerful - the power he gets in his shots is epic and he will beat a lot of keepers through power alone...so just hit it Che! Back 4 were decent, KWP excellent particularly. Positionally spot on, didn't get over run or caught out - handled Saint Maximan exactly as you need to, got tight to him quickly and didn't allow him to turn and run with the ball. Kudus to KWP for that. Take as many screenshots of the table as you can, it will probably not happen again for a long time...and I did often doubt if I'll ever see us top a league, given how poorly we usually start seasons. We have continued our 'Project Restart' form, bar a couple of bumps. We are a top half PL side now and let's see what the season can bring us, lets hope we can get Ings back asap too!

Some positive news on this. The 'PPV' idea has been scrapped, it won't return after the international games. How they broadcast 'all the games' is still up for debate, but it looks very likely that it will be spread across the broadcasters as it was in summer (so no one has to pay any extra)

It's not just Gao, Kat has got her fingers in it as well with 20% - so someone either needs to accept her being involved, or also pay for that. There's no doubts that Gao wants all his money back, yeah cheers for nothing. But that is a lot of money in this current climate and as we saw in the days of Markus, there's much more financial growth in obtaining a decent sized lower league club and growing it into a PL club. I'd say clubs like Wednesday, Forest, Derby etc are tons more attractive than ourselves.

goals, goals, goals!

We're 5th on 13 points...? I think we've started pretty well? Bournemouth were third on 10 points after 6 games last year.

It's all very bizarre trousers. What are the chances of 'Salisu joins x on loan until end of the season' in January? The club can stop all this speculation if they wanted to by just saying it how it is. If he arrived with a bad injury, tell us. Job done.

Sounds like it's option 1 for Ings? Who knows, just trying to find positives in the news! Feels like our season has been totally derailed.

I think Theo and Che through the middle is the most obvious change up. Redmond on the flank. (Drifting in as he does etc). Long will stick to his bench role, I hope (he's not going to score goals if he plays, as we all know!) It's not just Ings goals we'll miss, it's his movement up top and his build up play. We'll look a totally different side without him in my opinion and it's going to be a struggle over the next couple of months. Any team will go backwards without their leading attacking player. Such a shame, it was promising to be such a good season, but this may have just derailed it totally.

Well that took a bad turn then. Could have been worse, but still not ideal. Doubt we'll be seeing him until 2021. Nightmare. He is so important to how we play and what we do, I cannot see us sustaining our heights without him. Let's hope our start has given us enough of a cushion.

I think it was a really mistaken expectation though, not helped by the governments statement that they'd 'hope to remove all restrictions' by November. I think for most people they could see that it hadn't 'gone away' in the summer and winter would see a resurgence. So based on that alone I think we should have - at the most - charged a small holding fee for your seat, but no more than that until they were definitive set in stone dates. Just my two pence.

I don't think that's fair, it's a bit of a discredit to them. There was always a lot of fanfare and uproar when Benitez wasn't kept on 'for what he did', but if anything Bruce has done just as well - if not a bit better. They look like a genuinely established PL side now and he's quietly developed quite a tidy outfit. They're certainly not poor and this won't be an easy game.

And managers. Let's not forget Hughes treatment of him. He was about to ship him off to Watford for £15m.

I dunno, I'm of the belief that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You also have to factor in that we have Forster, Gunn and Lewis on the books, you'd need to lose two of those before we even broach the idea of a new GK. I'm not sure GK is a position we need to fiddle with too much at this moment in time though tbh. For the first time in a long time it 'feels' as if we need to focus on adding a little bit of squad depth rather than replace first 11 players.

What has McCarthy done wrong?

Maybe a little rusty, but I'd have to say that his best form for us was in the 'restart' games, as opposed to over the entire course of the season. It looks as if that was nothing more than a purple patch really. if you look at his influence on our team over a consistent period (a few years) then we concede lots of goals when he's in the side, it's just a general theme. He's improved, don't get me wrong, but he's still not good enough to be a starter for a team with aspirations to be in the top 10.

They are without Kalvin Phillips today, and he is crucial to their midfield. Their stand-in (Shackleton) is a young lad and probably not ready just yet. Rodrigo would add quality as well and he's not playing either. It just shows that they don't quite have the squad, no surprise just yet. They'll have enough to stay up I think (going by the dross down there this year) but they'll need to baulk up that squad for next season.

West Brom could threaten Derby's record. I've not seen such an ineffective team at this level for such a long time. Incapable of defending or scoring.

Or just refund everyone the entire ticket price now and admit their mistake in even selling them from the outset.

This would automatically make it feel a much better weekend!

Yep, that's the one! Quite a miserable result all told. Think it was Saint Maximan who scored, he likes a long range hit.

Yeah wtf was that all about? 12 mins they should have had, apparently. Good sign of your teams quality and managerial ability if you need 12 extra minutes on every game to ensure you get something. Not quite sure I'd use that angle if I was a manager. He should have been fair that they were well beaten and the end scoreline flattered them, as it did.

I think that's what he's cut out of his game, as I said he's simplified it. He used to try and do stupid things with the ball or get caught in positions he shouldn't be in, but he's just using his brain more now.