S-Clarke

It's what happens when you have dumb arses operating it. Our officials are some of the worst in Europe in my opinion.

I think the use of VAR in the Champions league shows up our officials, to be honest. The games flow, stuff is checked but it's over and done with fairly quickly. The ref in the game last night even went to have a look at the screen, but decided within a second and it was done. They just take so much time in this country. There were offside calls in the games tonight but not once did I see them pull out the lines and all that stuff. It really is operated by an absolute bunch of idiots in this country.

What would you do if you were safe, stuck in mid-table nothingness, and had two extremely well paid but similar goal keepers, and needed to make a decision on the number 1 for the next season? Makes entire sense to rotate them now. Got a hunch we may shift one in the summer to free up wages. My preference would be Forster as he's on the most and I think McCarthy is better in some elements, but to be honest they're both incredibly average so we'll just have to see how it shakes out. But it makes sense to use this opportunity I think.

Were you around as recently as 17/18...? What about the great escapes of the 90's? Compared to those seasons this has been an absolute cake walk, even as bad as we've been second half I think we've always maintained at least a 6 point gap. We've never been in any danger realistically.

He has done better with them in the past though, he got them into Europe with a very similar type team, same level of quality than they have atm. They've got solid/burly centre forwards who will create problems at this level for most, and they'll get wins over the line. i'd agree and say he's done well with Burnley, but overall it's a pretty standard season for them and he certainly hasn't over achieved.

That was a great game to watch. Really good attacking display from West Ham, at times they were majestic playing through the lines and into the final third.

I think he's just trying to play the corporate line, just so Sky don't get thrown under a bus by the authorities. It's clear that there are morons and some idiots just go too far, but the context of the protest for the majority shouldn't be ignored and just painted as ''football yobs riot for no reason'.

Game called off, taken them an hour to decide that. Bit of a shambles really, no need to call it off. No one is there now.

So going by that logic, the fans should only protest in their front rooms as that's their property? He has a point, he puts it across politely and intelligently and there are no problems with him. These owners have no place in football and they're the ones who need to be thrown out, not those who are standing up against the charade.

At least we're keeping it to 5 now. #positivesigns

Not done anywhere near enough for me, wouldn't spend anything on him. Even in the games he's scored, he's sort of been on the edge of the game. As above, I don't think he's suited to this league. He's clearly technically gifted but you need more than just that. I imagine Liverpool will sell him to Sevilla.

Not quite. I'd say it pretty much sums up the state of our squad really, especially in the goal keeping department. 3 highly paid goal keepers, signed for decent fees. Each pretty much exactly the same, average. bog standard. It's toss of a coin who starts, no harm in using these games to see who wants to take it.

Let's hope we don't over price him in the summer and just get him off the books. Obviously that auto transfer to Fulham won't be triggered now, but I still think 7m is probably a fair fee for someone like him with just a year left. There's no point holding out hope that he may come back here a different player, he wont. He's fundamentally flawed and always will be. A waste of natural talent, but that's what it is. I'm sure there will be another manager who feel they can get that talent out of him, and so the circle will start again.

This is where there needs to be a bit of common sense applied, you're right - it was similar to the West Ham red the other week, where was he supposed to put his foot as it followed through? Similar to Jannik, where is it supposed to go? You'd hope someone in VAR would be able to look at that and help the referee apply the common sense, but no - it doesn't seem to be used correctly in those situations. A really frustrating season for referees I have to say. VAR is being used absolutely appallingly by the officials in this country.

I think that's the sort of performance we've all been crying out for really, just a bit of fight and bottle left out on the pitch. It's been solely missing for a few years with this group, but to their credit they grouped together today in adversity and were just like ''you're not going to beat us'. Absolutely crap touch from Vestergaard, he's prone to those stupid lapses and he needs to cut them out. Although, he got the ball and it was an excellent error-recovering challenge - I'm not sure how they thought it was a denial of a clear goal scoring opportunity when he won the ball. I think that decision worked in our benefit though as it seemed to give our game an edge. Bednarek was much better today than he has been for weeks, that's the Bednarek you can build a solid defence around. Salisu I felt was excellent as well, he reads the game really, really well and his pace is an added benefit. He's a little bit raw in places but from what I've seen he looks like he should be a starter for us to be honest. After the red there wasn't really much of a game for our attack, it's just not really fallen for Minamino here what so ever. Adams battled hard but it never really stuck sadly. Overall, a nice backs to the wall performance as those have been solely missing.

They're all really bad outcomes and I feel equally as bad for each of them. But as SuperSaint said, they at least still have a career - albeit at a lower level. All unknown with McQueen at the mo.

Glad he's doing well, he'd have been a decent player for us this year. I can see why he was sold though. We needed more up front and he was the only viable option we had to raise cash, so from that point it had to happen sadly. I'm sure he also wanted to play regular. Ideally we'd have kept him around and he would probably have been first choice by now, it was just at the point we sold him Bertrand was still much better and £15-17m for a backup was just too good for a club in our position to say no to.

That's really sad news, he was one of the good news stories from Puels period in charge. He looked very accomplished in the games against Milan and the other Europa League games I felt, very versatile as well - probably a LB by trade, but could comfortably play anywhere. Arguably he'd have played a lot this year. Shame, he was one of the more promising young players we've had in recent years so hopefully he can find a decent life outside of playing football.

Definitely not the end, these big clubs are now in situations where they need to cut their cloths, some of them have never been there. You know, like 90% of the rest of the football world. But the big clubs don't feel they should have to do this, they have a very entitled attitude so they still want to be able to sign Mbappe, Halland and are invested in this 'galactico' type of instant success you often see. They will keep peddling and keep pushing this, so we need to tighten up our own rules so it's not as easy for clubs to sign up to things like this.

Exactly this, but on your last paragraph the club need to back this philosophy if this is the case. It's self defeating if they continue to commit to this way but don't actually provide the squad needed to sustain it. This is the tough position we're in, so we need to be quite clever in the market - and there have been signs, albeit tiny, that we are a bit better (Diallo/KWP/Salisu are all bought with the philosophy in mind) Ralph feels a bit like right person wrong time to me. The summer will tell us a lot.

If we sell everyone and don't replace well enough it'll be hard to throw that at Ralph, but he'd certainly be the sacrificial lamb at that point I'd have thought.

I'd personally expect to see around 15 points after the first 10 games, but huge caveat around that is either a fit ings or a proper ings replacement. If we strengthen the squad well enough, maybe we could sustain that sort of form over a season and we could end up around the 50 point mark.

Agreed, need to stop the rot. The thing with Ralph is that it's all about extremes, there's no middle ground. We either play really well and stack up the points and wins as per the start of the season, or we just lose every week. I want to see him capable of getting the odd 1-0 or 0-0's during the bad periods, i.e. just shut up shop and get a result on the board when we're not in a good place. I doubt it would make much difference in terms of our finishing position though over the course of a season though. In my opinion a new manager probably wouldn't have got this group overachieving as well as they did at the start, so whilst we'd have not had the extreme highs and lows under a different manager, we'd probably still be sat around the same points/position in the table.

It's all very confusing really, but apparently the 'ESL' entity was owned equally by each club. The ESL is still a 'thing' whilst the Spanish and Italian clubs are still part of it, so I'm guessing the penalties the British clubs are required to pay is just another way for Madird/Barca to get some money to help them out of their predicament? The biggest cheerleader is the Real Madrid chairman, so it all stinks a bit.

Using the reasoning that he 'got the best out of this squad before' as a reason to now dump him seems an odd thing to say. Surely that alone is a reason to keep him, as he's the only manager out of the last 3 who has managed to get anything out of this lot? Ultimately he's proven with a fully fit squad, no injuries, peak fitness etc he's able to overachieve with this squad of players he has at his disposal. The depth in the squad has been shown up massively this year, December onwards, which is unsurprisngly when our form went through the floor. We are also probably as much of a one-man-team as Villa with Grealish or Newcastle with Alain Saint-Maximin. Missing Ings for large parts is the difference between us having a good season and having a poor season. We have no one else who can score goals on a consistent basis, it really is that simple. One of the main things you can throw at Ralph is this approach - is it a bit stupid going all out with gengenpress with a squad as weak us ours, or would it have been more sensible to be conservative? But if we're honest with Ralph you probably only get that way and the club would have known that when they appointed him. They either back him or stop hanging him out to dry with this bunch. The squad and quality of player we have is not good enough to sustain a top half finish in this league over an entire season, end of.