S-Clarke

That's a real surprise, but if i'm honest I couldn't care less. Leaves him with us to train and practice, rather than being bogged down with national team ********. Of which there is always national team ********.

36/37 will be enough. We'll probably end up in the 40's though.

It's big, but christ what a boring, bland, unlived in property that is.

He's buying a bigger one with the huge signing on fee he's going to get from us.

I haven't had a chance to post on here yet, but christ what a second half that was yesterday. I felt we let Spurs control too much of the first half, we were passive in our approach and slow in our press - our attacking play was ponderous and didn't really cause them any issues. Not much else to say on the first half, but it could have been much worse. Saving grace was that it was just 1. Second half, we came out a different side - but we benefitted from Spurs drifting from the word go, complacency on their part, but we took advantage of that and put ourselves on the front foot as soon as the 2nd half started. The pace and directness of Long and Sims changed the approach of our attack and stretched their defenders, they didn't look as comfortable and were forced into making more harried clearances which meant they couldn't really get hold of the ball as they did in the first half. I wouldn't say we peppered them, but we controlled much more of the game and we opened them up so much more than we did in the first half - and it's the key element of getting down the side and I think that was a clear tactical instruction in the 2nd half – obviously aided by the introduction of a little more pace! Valery, 2 in 2? It was a lucky goal in the sense that it was a miss hit, but...if he had hit that clean, it would have been saved I'm sure. Total mess up by 3 spurs defenders, but not complaining. I thought...amazing, we've potentially rescued a point here. I then had a debate with the guy next to me....stick or twist? I wanted to see us go for it, I thought we had the head of the steam and we put them on the back foot - so we needed to use the remaining 10/15 mins to our advantage. We did. Our use of the ball on the break was so much better than I have seen for ages. I know Puel was apparently the master at counter attacking football, but the speed at which we do it under Ralph is what makes it work - and the free kick came from a really quick break from us. What a free kick by the way, I saw him put the ball down and I thought...this is your moment, it was pretty much perfect for him positionally...and he honestly couldn't have hit it any better, no goal keeper could have got to that - it was measured into the corner to exact millimetres. It's a real talent and I'm pleased we're finally seeing him fulfil his ability in that sense, but also his general play. He's more aggressive, more progressive and quicker with transitions. He seems more confident to look forward and play the pass forward. He's snappier to the tackle, stronger against midfielders and is generally influencing games in midfield against some decent opponents. So well played JWP, keep it up. Obviously he's a shoe in for England in a couple of weeks, I just hope he doesn't let that dampen his form! Overall, it was massive. Given the results of the teams around us (Newcastle, Cardiff, Brighton) a win turned into an absolutely critical result - otherwise we'd have been in deep ****! So, we've got a 3 week break, and we sit in 16th with Brighton away to come next. I would imagine we need something like 7/8 points from the available 24 on offer - that seems doable to me, given the fixtures we've got - compared to, say, Cardiff. I think we'll finish a few places away from 17th in the end, but it will still come down to the last couple of games.

There are a lot of fans who have been like this since we signed him. They felt vindicated when he had his awful run for us, they're too proud to now change up their opinion and realise that he’s actually a threat. He's no world beater, but he's our outlet and he's doing ok.

As I've always said, JWP is a tactical player. He is a dream player for someone like Poch or Ralph as you can build a team around him, you can trust them to put in a shift and they are tactically astute in themselves to not need much guidance through a game. Sure, he's never going to be quick or powerful, but he's good technically and tactically aware which means that managers like Ralph will always lean towards him.

Not expecting anything from the next two, so let's see what happens.

He looked good last night, but you have to appreciate that Fulham gave him the pitch to play in, so he was able to stand out and put in crosses at will!

We needed that win for sure, it was a game of poor quality to watch though! We certainly edged it because we pressed and harried Fulham at strategic points in the game - not all game. We were very fortunate in the fact that Fulham offered very little and were particularly ****e. I thought JWP had an extra bite to his game and won tackles I never imagined him winning a year or so ago, there was one instance in the first half where his tackle helped us break away and line Hojberjg up for a shot. The defence was particularly comfortable, dealt with Mitrovic well – but I could sense he was getting frustrated as he had no one really coming in to support him, so it was a lone man show at times and easy for our three to mop up around him. Wing backs were ok, Bertrand was better because of the space Fulham afforded down the left side – he was in tons of space and had the time to send over some delicious crosses at times. Not enough in the attacking sense from Valery though I felt, solid enough on one-ones with Babel but didn’t really offer threat on the right side – which meant we did seem a bit lopsided. I thought Redmond was busy but lacked a little bit of final product at key moments. He’s certainly miles better than he was last year though without question. Austin, whilst he was battling, was very short on quality. It’s frustrating watching him try and move around and come deep for the ball, he’s not the type to do that. Overall it was a fantastic win in a game of little quality. Still lots of work to do, but it seems to me that it’s just 1 position up for grabs now in the drop zone.

Absolute scum club. No other way around it. They're trying to get out of it. Tough ****. Tragic what happened, they milked it enough and tried to make it all about them, but now they want nothing to do with it.

The squad is awful. There's no beating around the bush on that, it's awful. And weaker than it was in December.

Have only just read this, it's a perfect read. It's exactly what our problems are. Basically, without beating around the bush here, we need Cardiff to absolutely collapse as we have nothing. We were already poor enough before January, but we thought it was clever to make ourselves even poorer. You can’t even say that was a shrewd financial move, as they’ll all be back on the summer on their huge contracts anyway.

Give me a ****ing break.

How Cardiff are acting is making me sick. This has nothing to do with them. They should have just done a tweet, shown their condolances, but all this 'Play for Sala' 'Win for Sala' is just disgusting by them.

But who else could have provided the attacking width in all honestly? We are so short of wide players or any general pace in attack, it's criminal really.

We can talk about tactics all we want, but at the end of the day we conceded a goal in the 93rd min due to a lack of concentration and general dumbness. That's nothing to do with tactics. It's just dumb players.

I'd say it needs to be an 80% overhaul at least. Only guys I'd keep around from the starting 11 yesterday are Jan, Hojberjg, JWP, Vesterguard and a few of the young lads (Valery/Slattery etc). The rest can just do one as far as I'm concenered. As you've said, the majority of these guys have been losers for far too long under 4 different managers and coaching setups.

To be fair the lack of options in midfield isn't down to a slimmed down squad. We've got injuries to Lemina and Armstrong who'd both be in there, so with Romeu, Hojberjg and JWP I think that's one area we have options. The less said about up front and attack the better though.

So that goes back to the same question - who was this extra midfielder we could have deployed in there? Slattery? I don't think he'd have had the desired effect if I'm honest. We needed an Armstrong type out there, then we could have reverted to the extra midfielder. We didn't have the players to play that way yesterday.

On par, but getting worse. Seemingly because he has no interest in us, none at all. If he was a passionate owner as our Ralph claims him to be...then he'd have bothered to learn English and given us some concrete proposals on his plans going forward. At the end of the day his actions speak louder than words, and all his actions have been is to sell and get rid, whilst not investing a penny. This entire charade seems to have been simply an ego boost for himself and his franchises in China, a quick and easy sale for Kat as she needed money urgently, whilst helping him jump on the football bandwagon they’re trying to promote over there. None of this is being done in the interests of us guys who spend our money to line his pockets. This entire takeover screamed alarm bells from the moment he initially failed any test.

The problem is, if this was cost cutting (which it seemingly is), it's only temporary cost cutting. So therefore it doesn't really make a great deal of sense. The return of Cedric, Hoedt, Bouful, Carillo, Clasie in the NPC is going to kill us financially. We won't be able to do anything until those are gone.

He was pretty clear in that he wanted players in the door, who were more suited to his way of playing. Yeah, he's got a smaller pool to work with, but it's ****.

I don't think the issue is with us shipping them out, as I agree they were pretty crap and not suited to this league. They weren’t going to do anything for us, so didn’t want them stinking the place out. The problem was that we didn't replace them with better/more suited players. Absolutely shocking really.

I wouldn't direct anger at the media team to be fair, they only push out what they are told to push out. I think they can/do make some good content.