S-Clarke

Watch the Bale transfer start a complete merry-go-round......

The best player I've had the privilege of watching live at St Mary's in recent years, even at 17 you could tell he was going to become a world class player. I always felt he was more than a LB, I think most of our fans did, and fair play to Spurs for developing him even further and turning him into one of the most potent attacking players in the world. I must admit, I do feel a sense of pride seeing one of our academy players turning out at Real Madrid. I hope he tears the league up.

The fact he's suggesting Le Fondre as an alternative to Osvaldo should be enough to prove he's on a wind up.

Demba Ba

tbf it's just a random twitter rumour, but kind of has legs if you think of all the wide/attacking midfield players Spurs now have.

Aaron Lennon and Adebeyour have apparently been told that they can leave Spurs before the end of the window.

Wanyama had a very, very bad game yesterday - there's no denying that. But equally, he was very, very impressive against WBA. He had a bad game, so did Lambert and so did Morgan. It doesn't mean he's a bad player or a bad signing. It was Osvaldo's full debut, and of the very few positives there were yesterday - it was how instinctive he was which impressed me most. Hits it first time, all the time. He will score goals as long as he gets the supply he requires. But agree on Lovren, he's taken our defence to an entirely new level. An absolute class act. Also, what's all the sudden panic about JWP and Chambers suddenly not being good enough? they were more than good enough last week, and the week before. It seems to be that if a young player has 1 bad game, they're not good enough. Well, both of them are good enough and will play a fair few games this year. So, overall, those 3 signings aren't too bad at all really, are they? We do need 1 more though to be honest.

That sounds better...

I can't see any Osvaldo bashing?

One of the positives I picked up from yesterday was Osvaldo's incisiveness. He literately hits everything first time, always hits a shot and brings out a save. Too many of our players want to take 1 too many touches and they're then crowded out, if Osvaldo can keep up the ''hit first time'' instinct he seems to have, then he will put them in as long as we stretch the play a little in the final third. His 1st time touch, turn and shot was excellent. We haven't got anyone else like that.

I doubt it was a non-story. Would be very surprised if Clubs haven't at least inquired, a key player for us last year and seemingly reverted to just a member of the 18.

Get with the programme. New manager and 11 new players required ASAP.

You managed to get quite a few bites on this one, B+.

People started talking because of the wins against Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool in close succession - the 3 games that pretty much kept us up. If you take those 3 games out of the equation, the record looks pretty poor and we didn't look like scoring at the back end of the season, which you can't really ignore - it's also manifesting it's self into this year. We have stepped up in terms of our play though, our football is better and more structured but also more frustrating. A fine example is that of Man Utd last season, we played fantastically up at OT but just couldn't score a 2nd no matter how much we tried. We should have also beaten sunderland for all our possession. Jury's still out in terms of results, however we do play better football and have more organisation about us - alas we look pretty boring to watch.

The funny thing is that if Killmarnock were offered Wanyama from Celtic, they'd sign him and he'd play him. He had an absolutely diabolical game yesterday, awful in every way imaginable. No one can deny that. But he had a very, very strong debut for us. He's still very young, let's not forget, so will blow hot and cold occasionally. In terms of attributes, I feel he adds what we were missing in that area - but we now need more pace in front of him to make his role a little more interesting.

That was from a dead ball situation though.

I don't think he's been effective under either manager to be honest. Couple of flashes here and there, but over 12 months since we signed him for £12m and he's now a substitute. Not anywhere near the impact the club or us fans were hoping for, he's been pretty average to say the least. Not sure how long we're going to have to wait for him to ''come good''. He's very frustrating.

But even Spain and Barca have pace, they don't play with ''out and out wingers'', no, but they play with attacking players who play across the line but have the ability and pace to take a man on and beat him. Spain deploy Jesus Navas and Pedro in that position, Barca deploy Neymar, Pedro and Alexis in those positions. So, even if he wants us to play like Spain, we still need pace to make it anywhere near effective.

I'm stunned that you have that view, absolutely shocked. Never thought I'd see you say that. Ever.

If we don't replace Puncheon we're mental. I think it has to to be honest. I don't want to come across spoiled as we've already spent a load of money, but we didn't ever address our massive weakness from last year (attacking pace) - in fact, we've actually weakened it. Go figure.

Watching Puncheon running at and beating players in the Palace game, is leaving me somewhat frustrated.

We defended ok, pretty solid for 90 mins. 2 centre backs look like setting up a decent understanding. Our problem is a lack of attacking threat. and I'm not sure Gaston is ever going to achieve anything with us.

If they're injured or not fit, there's not much we can do. Which is why today you'd deploy someone like Puncheon to offer us the width, if we don't replace him we've made a huge, huge error.

Seeing both of them next to each other on the bench at the end - now that was a real WTF moment. Has he tried to fix something that wasn't broken in the slightest?

What did Redmond do that we didn't? Ran into and attacked space with pace and power. What did he achieve? The win for Norwich. What did we do? Popped the ball around in pointless areas and didn't create anywhere near enough. We need pace and the ability to beat a man in the final third. We had a bit of that with Puncheon, and he was the difference on most occasions last year, but if we don't replace him then we'll achieve absolutely nothing, just bog standard stuff. It's really frustrating to see us attacking teams, because we just don't do enough. We don't look like scoring at all and that needs to change pretty sharpish. This was always going to be a tough game, but we should have made a hell of a lot more from it. It was also pretty sad to see Cork and Morgan sat next to each other on the bench at the end, the 2 linchpins of our midfield last year and we kind of looked like a disjointed mess at times in that 2nd half. Lallana had a good game, why he was subbed is beyond me and Lovren was once again a moan mountain at the back. I thought Lmabert was pretty shocking in terms of giving us an outlet, Wanyama's ball retention was utterly diabolical and he was pointlessly diving in all over the show. Shouldn't have stayed on the pitch. Osvaldo didn't really do anything, but to be honest we don't really have the pace to get down the sides of teams in order to get the best out of him. He's quite sharp though, not one of those ''take loads of touches'' players, he literately hits everything first time. Chambers and JWP struggled a little today, especially in the 2nd half and didn't offer us anything in terms of creativity. Chambers looks solid enough but not what i'd call an attacking full back. Fox didn't really do much wrong, although there is always an enormous amount of space in and around him when he plays (Does he smell or something??). But to be honest they didn't really test him enough. But to cut a long story short, I don't think it's just a ''bonus'' if we sign additional attacking pace, I think it's kind of a necessity. Let's hope the club have something up their sleeves. Look at what someone like Redmond can do.....