S-Clarke

I think he wanted a bite, so well done on that.

To be fair if we play like that for the rest of the seasons we'll probably get lots of 0-0's and 0-1's. Death by football.

Interesting possibilities and important moments. etc. I'm bored out of my skin watching this team, absolutely bored to ****.

Surely the china bubble will burst soon? What they are offering players - and even flaming refrees - is obscene. It's just a ball on some grass for Christ sake!

Really good display from us, energetic and pressing high and playing with real intent. Redmond should have been more clinical but he was also a tad unlucky. Tactically we were spot on, closing the channels and restricting liverpool any space. People will say Liverpool were poor, but we really didn't allow them an opportunity to do anything. Obviously the disappointment is that it's only 1-0, but we go to Anfield with a goal and an advantage. Much more than many expected.

a £13m bargain then.

So Morgan isn't signing for WBA at the bargain price of £13m then? Thought as much.

Didn't he get another injury? I was sure he had a setback of sorts.

Not sure why Redmond keeps being hung out as the scapegoat here. He's a good player and has bags of potential, not even worth writing him off.

Saints and Villa both feature on Steven Davis's CV. ooooh errr..

Great game at Bournemouth, can't help but think it papers of the cracks for Arsenal though. Another season another failure for them.

OG for Glasgow there.

1/10

It's clearly a bit screwed, but it's always the same. I personally think this will be used as a convenient excuse for us to use, but we rotated the hell out of the squad to try and avoid this. I think it's bitten us on our arse as we're clearly not as fresh/fit as we should be because our players don't play every week. WBA/Spurs for example rotated their squad a little, not too much, and won both of the games. Their wins were born out of a cohesive team unit after playing together for a decent period of time. First team every week from now on should be: Forster Cedric - Fonte - Virgil - Bertrand Romeu Hojbjerg Clasie Tadic Remond Jay Couple of positions up for debate - Clasie. If we could replace him with a Sigurdsson type player - perfect. Jay - is he right for a lone role? I don't think he is personally, he's better playing support to a 'big man'.

Seriously Jeff, do one. Absoloutly making yourself look a prize fool here.

He didn't say that at all. He said January is a difficult time to buy, different thing all together.

There are clear concerns, but what I want to see now is a settled team (injuries aside) which we know will play every week. One which the players can get used to. If he still rotates the **** out of us in the 2nd half of the season when there is no need, he can do one.

There will clearly be a lack of team spirit and fludity in our play as it's never the same bunch, they're not able to build on the field relationships. I saw a clear rotation policy when we were going from league to EL, but now it just seems like a mess. No real reason, no real pattern to who gets rested. 6-7 changes per game isn't going to equal anything other than a few wins here and there but ultimatley a team lacking in any on the field relationships or partnerships. My hope is that now we are out of this very unfiar period over christmas, we can find a team - our best team - stick with it and get some consistancy building. There's no reason for us to continue rotating in the 2nd half of the season.

Agreed, as per usual it was all too passive up to 70mins. Everton were dire and the fans were getting on their backs, if we showed an ounce of ambition and pined them in we'd have got a good away win today. They were there for the taking. We didn't show the ambiton and we were clearly happy with a 0-0. All it then takes is 1 mistake and it's 1-0, then the entire midset has to switch to attack. Not possible that late in the game.

Really, really, really poor period. I'm still confused as to how we played as well as we did at Bournemouth, that seemingly looks like the odd one out as we've reverted to type since. The worry is that we play this passive protective game in order to remain compact, but we're now starting to ship goals at an alarming rate as well as still not scoring any. We've got too many players out of form right now. Redmond looks shot, the manager scored a complete OG with him at the start of the season. Romeu looks absolutely dead on his feet (no surprise there). I must admit, in previous season we've had spells like this (this time last year was just as bad) but I've always looked at the manager/coaching staff and have felt that they won't let this dip any further, you always felt that. I just don't get that same feeling now, I cannot see where the inspiration is going to come from. Of course we were going to have a season like this eventually, we've had improved finishes for years - it was going to end at some point, but it seems to be ending in very limp fashion. I've never been so bored watching us and I've never been less interested in listening to our managers post or pre-match stuff, I cannot bring myself to listen to him. As a club we don't panic or react based on a few results, so I don't expect Claude to be going anytime soon - but he needs a good January and we're dying for someone to come in and light up our season as it's really never got going.

This is all a bit of a shambles really. We're mentally fragile as a team and it shows. Everton have been dire as well.

It's the same old really, nothing different. Gaps to the forward players is too big, redmond/tadic coming deep for the ball then having to make up a lot of ground to get near the final third. Repeat constantly. Everton have been truly inept, a team with a bit of ambiton would have taken it to them today. We've just let them have this game as we have shown nothing apart from trying to keep them at arms length. The Christmas rotation malarkey hasn't really worked. Players should be fit enough to play more than 1 game in 5 days, if they're not then stick them into a fitness camp.

He didn’t say that at all, did he? It’s just that people cannot really use ‘’this season we’re 9th at this stage’’!! as a reason to suggest we’re doing better. We’re doing no better than we did at this same stage last year, and to get us to this stage last year we just went through 1 win in 10. It’s best to wait until the end of the season before comparing anything with last season.

They’ve made a few changes. Trippier in for Walker, Son in for Sissoko. Dier moved to midfield to replace Dembele. Toby back to replace Jan Vertongen.

Because we’re missing the link between the midfield and our attack. It nullifies him when he’s having to track back and pick the ball up deeper, he needs to be as high up as possible all the time.