benjii

Yes, but actually, that's a slightly hyperbolic take on it by the Echo. Makes sense to leave Cedric out seeing as he has a head injury and Martina isn't exactly setting the world alight so sensible for Stephens to get the experience. Reed would always have been likely to play given Romeu wasn't rested over Christmas. Sims has been around the first team for a few weeks and Boufal is unavailable. Plus Sims has looked really decent. McQueen has proven perfectly capable against better opposition than Norwich and apparently Bertrand has been ill. So, really, the only surprise would be if Hesketh starts and if any of the other youth players also start. I don't think picking the others is some sort of big gamble.

We are not badly off or in a "kind of state". But if you spend £30m+ on an infrastructure project you're probably going to carry some debt.

You liked Lee Todd?!

Wasn't crap at all.

Agreed. If he's causing problems then he can, as he would say, "feck off". He's nowhere near technically good enough to be much use in Puel's system anyway. To be clear: I have no actual idea if Shane Long is disgruntled or gruntled and whether he is causing any problems at all. In fact, if we are talking about just one or two prominent players then they can all do one. Even if they think Puel is useless, he's not some Poortvliet style joke appointment; he has a reasonable pedigree and deserves some time.

Yeah, Long's a decent squad player but if he wants out then I'd sooner have Gallagher, to be honest.

Mickey Evans. Basically, crap, but scored some vital goals for us, looked like a wurzel and headed the post.

That's not true at all. A lot of teams don't try to set up with five lines, as described. Instead of making banal guesses, try engaging your brain.

We set up, in terms of basic formation, exactly the way described in the opening sentence.

Quite. We rarely pressed high with Koeman and we often played some pretty turgid stuff. If we had just scored a few more goals at home this season there wouldn't be this incessant whining about "boredom".

Just a stream of consciousness, unstructured, immature waste of copy, really. He should have posted it on here - would have fitted in nicely.

Well when expectations are unrealistic they are likely to irk. Did you seriously think we'd be unveiling some great striker within the first couple of days of the window? You know how this transfer window usually works, right?

It was no more or less blatant than the one he ignored for Bournemouth's third goal but he wasn't trying to "big up" his own advantage at that point....

I can't remember that. Was it late in the match?...... I'd probably allowed my attention to drift by then!

Is it? Only if you're a complete wimp really.

If you challenge with two feet off the ground you might get sent off. I agree it was a bit soft but if you fly in like that you give the ref a decision to make. Their pen was a nudge in the back. Fair enough to give it but then in the build up to their third goal their player did exactly the same to Bellerin to create the chance and the ref ignored it. I felt he gave more 50/50s to Bournemouth overall.

And he actually blew up just before six minutes which was wrong because Arse scored in injury time. He should have added another thirty seconds.

Three goals, loads of subs, red card melee, injury stoppage. Six minutes was about right. And overall the ref favoured Bournemouth in that match.

Dinlo AFCB fans calling the ref a ****** despite him giving them a soft pen then not giving a foul against them in exactly the same circumstances before their goal. Muppets.

Awful from Oliver. Ignored a foul on Bellerin there that was exactly the same as the soft penalty he gave in the first half. Of course he was desperate to give the penalty to show what a wonderful advantage he had just played. Rubbish "look at me" refereeing.

That was awful. The problem there was presumably that the linesman didn't see the flick on the pass through (Silva was on from the first pass but it was deflected by a City player, I think). The ref must have seen the deflection though and must have noticed that Silva looked miles offside so should have spoken with the lino.

Same thing happened against Swansea the other week. I think it was Dyer who was in the same situation. As far as I understand it, he should still be considered as playing them on - even if he's off the pitch - ie. deemed to be on the goal line. In theory, you need permission to leave the pitch (accidents notwithstanding) and by "counting" people you stop the farcical situation of someone deliberately stepping off the pitch to avoid an offside. The corollary would be that a striker could stand in the goal mouth behind the line and not be offside!

I think we should leave out a few who will start against Liverpool but it's also a good chance for others to play themselves into a bit of form. Assuming the 4-3-3, I'd go with: ---------------------Forster-------------------- Stephens-------Yoshida------Virgil-----Bertrand -----------------------Reed----------------------- --------------JWP---------------McQueen--------- --------Redmond---------------------Tadic-------- ------------------------Long------------------------ Subs: Huey Lewis, Martina, Fonte, Davis, Sims, Rodriguez, Clasie I'd probably look to give Jay Rod half an hour in one of the wide attacker roles as well, as I think he could be useful there for us, particularly in away matches where it would be good to have him and Long on the pitch to provide an outlet.

Yes, that one was unbelievable. A favourite from last season (albeit a lino, not a ref) was this failure to give offside: In fairness, he doesn't have a clear view or anything....

Yes, but then we usually had Mane to chip in as well who is a much, much better finisher than Tadic or Redmond and better at stretching teams. I like Boufal, and I think he will do really well for us, but he's a different sort of player than Mane and isn't going to score as often. When we played the 4231 under Poch we had Jay Rod, in addition to Lambert/Gallagher. Again, a much better finisher than Redmond or Tadic. Perhaps the "answer" going forwards if we stick with a 4-3-3 is to play Rodriguez as one of the wide players with Long/Austin central. That means that two of Redmond, Tadic and Boufal miss out though and seeing as Redmond is apparently the new Thierry Henry/Arjen Robben/Lee Holmes and Boufal is our record signing that probably won't happen. My feeling is that Puel probably has a mandate to develop a new style from the board, the board recognises this will have teething problems, and the club is reasonably happy if this season isn't exactly stellar. Whether that's the best long-term plan or not remains to be seen. Personally, I want to see a system that has Boufal in a central role and the team built around him. A "standard" 4-3-3 won't really allow that.