S-Clarke

Bournemouth aren't happy. Bless them still trying their god damn hardest to make a rivalry with us though

Looks like Brooks has been told he won't be week in week out first team at Bournemouth, so he's told them he wants to move. I think we were the only option if that happened and it looks like it has! Absolute baller of a player, so technical and nice to watch - glides across the pitch, absolutely perfect for how we play. Not a typical hugging the touchline winger, more than happy to come inside, play as a 10 and break the lines. At Championship level he should boss it, he single handily ripped Swansea to pieces - admittedly not hard, but lots of teams are of Swansea standard in this league.

Yes, correct - primarily a right winger, cuts inside a lot. Him and Tella pretty much interchanged roles last season.

You've hit the nail there - we need players making themselves available, not glamorous roles in any way, but that creates space, creates passes angles and keeps the possession. Charles and Rothwell did neither, they weren't really sure of their roles so nothing ever got going. Really boring and unsung role as such, but being 'available' in the right places, with the right body angle to receive the ball and move it on again is pretty much the pivotal aspect to how we play.

Yeah I think that's fair, I remember SAA's first start against QPR at home and he really struggled I thought. As a sub he is more of a threat, maybe Dibling can be more of a threat as a sub as well?

He was better once he had better players around him, he struggles to do it alone and does need to be carried a bit I think. There was no one to carry him in that first half and he was shown up a bit. Looked better once the better players were creating the space and angles though.

Jesus, the amount of nonsense which gets posted on here during a game never ceases to amaze me. First half was disjointed and a bit messy, the players didn't really know where to pass the ball as the was no real link up and somewhat expected due to the amount of changes and debuts on show. The critical way of playing how we play is players making the space, being available to receive the pass, knowing where to be etc - if you don't do that, you look crap and you are prone to constantly giving the ball away. Dibling was really poor I thought. I know he's young, but he's not experienced or 'good' enough yet to stroll around like he did. He didn't offer any passing angles and we were so blunt because of that. The difference in both Mara and Alcaraz once we brought on better players, who knew the system, around them was stark. Immediately Alcaraz had space, players available for the pass etc. Some of the hate spewed towards Alcaraz was just baffling I thought, I think he must have stolen Bad Wolfs girlfriend or something. 2nd half was much better though. Draw is a fair result, age old saying of a game of two halves and all that. Could do without another game, but we're not the only side with a replay.

Absolutely, the first period of that game was relentless by Ipswich - chance after chance, attack after attack. I think they hit the post 3 times, and the bar once. Like you say, one of those games. They should have been at least 4 up at HT given their dominance, they just couldn't finish. Second half they ran out of ideas a bit I felt, certainly after the 2nd Maidstone goal - they seemed to be passing it around without much purpose, but the game should have been out of sight by then tbh.

Love those sort of games/results, once in a lifetime thing for Maidstone there! For all their effort they deserved that! It kind of regrounds football a little bit. Much better than those bore fests last night (Chelsea/Villa, Spurs/Man City)

That would be an enormous loss for Leicester, he's their best player.

2029.

I think we're only in the market for loans, not sure we have the ability to make any $$ signings at the mo. I do agree that a centre forward is a gap we have, but we do also have a gap for a really quick wide man from the right hand side. Edozie, Fraser, Sulemana are all much much more effective from the left rather than the right - so I can see why we want an out and out right wide player, they may not play every single minute but it'll give us more options. If we then have to shift Armstrong up top we can without nullifying our right side, ditto we could lose KWP to injury and still retain an attacking threat on the right. Most of our attacks come via KWP as a 'wide' player, Armstrong often drops inside to allow him to bomb forward. Maybe we're looking at ways where we don't rely on KWP as much as we do. I think we'd lose a hell of a lot in an attacking sense if he wasn't available, probably most of our threat tbh.

I imagine someone had got hold of the news, he'd already informed Liverpool back in November so they'd done well to keep it quiet for this long. Best to announce something like that on your terms than have it leaked via Murdoch. End of an era for Liverpool, not quite sure where they go from here. Their 'stars' (Salah, VVD, Robertson, Alison etc) are getting older and their squad as a whole is as weak as it's been for a long time imo - they're only up there as the league is pretty poor overall this year. There is talk of Xabi Alonso going there, but I can see that ending in tears.

Brooks words after the match last night, not sure a loan is out of the equation yet - probably why this one will go to the wire.

Swansea seem to make it easy for everyone. If they'd have played this keeper at the weekend we'd have scored more than 3 in that period. Brooks ran that first half though, always rated him - classy operator.

And he's pretty much unplayable so far! 2 assists, Bournemouth 3-0 up and they've not even played 15 mins.

Absolutley, as a club we're not scared to throw young players in if they're good enough. Like you say - JWP starting at Man City, Shaw coming in at the back end of that season and then starting the next season etc. If they're good enough they'll play, if they're not good enough they won't. I think as a club we've got as good a record of giving young players a chance than any other.

Before the Liverpool televised game I think, load of nonsense. TV dictates football to much these days. I remember our run back in 2003 - the draw for each round was made on a Monday lunchtime, they used to allow us to stick the TV on in the college library to watch it. Those were the simpler days.

Don't forget Vestergaard as well, he came out of that VVD fortune.

If I remember right, when we pocketed that VVD money, the media circuits was in full frenzy linking us with lots of exciting names (at the time) We were going to re-sign Shaw, sign Sessegnon from Fulham, Promes, Theo etc. But we just ended up with Carillo late in the window. Easily our worst ever transfer window in my opinion, when you put into account what we'd sold VVD for weeks before - and the best we could come up with was Carrillo. Our last January effort was almost on-par, but like you say at least Onanchu came with some pedigree - I still don't think we ever really gave him much of a chance here, so I don't really know if he's any good or not.

Fulham even invited the KKK.

There was quite a prolific poster on here who hated him, ripped him apart after every game. Can't think of his name now.

Agreed, the scouting has not been up to scratch for many years. I don't think it's unfair to say that they're still firing blanks either. (things have got better, but there are still question marks for me) Mara, Onuachu, Sulemana, Larios, Stewart, DCC - that's £70 odd million worth of player there up the pisser over the last 18 months. Our most success this year has been via the players our manager and new DoF knew - Fraser, THB, Charles, Downes, Manning etc. Our best 'club' signing in recent years has to be Charly for me - I'd like to see more of those finds to show that we're finally moving away from our banter-scouting era. You can't always rely on the manager being the scout, the club scouts have to have to be finding some gems too.

One of my favourite players we've had in the PL era, part of the best PL side in my lifetime. A key part of that too.

I reckon Monaco have a picture of our £19m cheque in their boardroom, as one of their greatest ever achievements.