benjii

Don't know about that. He gave away the first goal last night. If the officials hadn't made such a terrible decision to rule out the Sane goal I expect City would have gone through.

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"Deserved" in the sense of the rules being applied correctly, then yes, obviously he did. If you want to make your own moral judgment based on him being frustrated then fine but don't expect referees to agree with you. If you put two hands around a player's neck / shoulder area and throw them to the floor in retaliation you get a red card. FFS, Stephens clearly deserved a red card. Elneny, on the other hand, got completely stitched up for a simple shove that does go regularly unpunished.

You've just made up the bit in bold.

We were going to appoint Puel before Koeman became available. The V-Man mentioned Puel a full year before we were ever publically linked with him. Puel was clearly on Les' wish-list for whatever reason.

I forgot Redmond. Never mind.

I would go back to a back 4, which basically picks itself. Romeu, Hojbjerg and Lemina. Austin has to play if fit. Long deserves another start after his performance against Arsenal and gives us extra presence in the box and pace on the break. He plays down one of the channels. The other "wing" is a toss-up between JWP, Tadic, Boufal and Sims. I'd probably go for Long on the right and Tadic on the left.

Good point.

Christ, yes. The one good goal Darren Bent ever scored in his career.

Stephens fully deserved a red card but it was shocking that the ref didn't step in sooner to sort out Wilshere. Goodness knows why Elneny then got sent off. I think the linesman felt sorry for us and wanted to make amends. The crying shame is that Stephens just pushed him over instead of sparking him out properly.

We have to hope he decides that his best bet for attention is to give us something soft.

If they get three more points they will be on 35. We need to be aiming for at least 35. 2 wins and a draw. If we don't get that then, yeah, we're probably screwed. If they win two games we probably won't catch them and the next best bet is probably catching Swansea, who we have the opportunity to beat (yeah, I know.....!)

He's proper mint. Build the team around him, Bednarek and Marcelo Tejera.

And Huddersfield have scored once in their last six league matches. They may well win them both but I'd be surprised.

I don't see much reason to predict Huddersfield winning both of those. They might, but they could just as easily lose both.

Just looking through the fixtures for the rest of the season and it reminded me to get annoyed about this. What a crock of ****. I've got no objection to fair scheduling but there isn't fair scheduling in general throughout the season so why was it insisted that we play on the Thursday in this particular case?

Yes, that one too!

Personally, I found the goals we conceded to Huddersfield, Arsenal, Brighton, Burnley at SMS more annoying this season. At the end of the Skate game I still expected to get promoted and for them to go down.

20 years is quite a long time TBF.

I think 35 points may be enough to stay up, looking at Stoke and Huddersfield's fixtures. I wouldn't say Swansea are safe, although I expect Palace and West Ham to be fine. Swansea have Everton at home next but after that Man City and Chelsea so a slip-up against Everton could leave them on 32 points going into their last 3 games. Those are against Bmouth, us and then Stoke so those last two matches could be pretty crunch games (or us and Stoke could be down by then).

Play a back 4.

Not really. It's just obvious that he's not a good enough defender. It was obvious last season too and I was saying it then as well.

It summed up our season because we have thrown away leads to soft goals from ****e teams several times.

Losing Stephens for three games is a blessing, not a disaster. And Whilshere wasn't sent off because you don't get sent off for pulling a shirt in midfield. Obviously.