benjii

I know a few ST holders who didn't realise the ST window had ended. I expect there are others who were caught unawares too!

There's no way Sturridge will join us. He thinks he's way too good for us. The only way Sturridge is joining a club outside the "big 6" is if someone throws insane money at him. So, basically, I would forget Sturridge.

Haha! Very good. Certainly at home, it is annoying that we haven't scored in the first half more often.

You could have bounced all over some of their top boys, mush, then ransacked the brothels. Lads.

Is it? It feels like it might be. But is it? It means we've scored in the first half in a third of our matches. Is that unusual? What's the average number of goals scored in the first half by teams this season? How many teams have failed to score in the first half 9 times (assuming 10 is the most)?

I would choose: Forster Cedric Fonte Van Dijk Bertrand Romeu Clasie Davis Boufal Redmond Long Subs: keeper, Yoshida, Hojbjerg, McQueen, Tadic, Rodriguez, Sims You'd hope that Long's pace and Redmond's pace would give Stoke's meathead defenders some issues. If Long is having a frustrating night again then throw Rodriguez on quite early instead. I like Tadic, and would generally prefer him to Redmond, but he seemed a little tentative yesterday and I think he is slightly worried about his injury. For this match, I'd give Redmond a chance to build on his second half performance, which I thought was actually one of his best of the season. Clasie seems to be finding some form after his displays against Arsenal and yesterday and Davis is Mr Reliable.

Here are the worst performances that spring to my mind since we got promoted back to the Prem and excluding the Adkins era: - Midytylland away in the Europa - Liverpool at home in the League Cup - Sunderland away in the FA Cup - Sheff Utd away in the League Cup - Bournemouth away in the league - Ipswich home and away in the FA cup (although we won) - Aston Villa at home - Palace at home in the FA Cup Puel has not served up anything as bad as any of that.

PS. And if you're after a dire European performance, Klueless Koeman's (lolz) effort against Midjytyyland clearly takes the biscuit. A far worse performance than Prague away in every respect.

It was way better than Bournemouth away or the dire cup performances against Palace and Sheff Utd under Koeman. In those games we could barely string two passes together. In Prague we conceded from a set piece, dominated the match but lacked quality in the final third. In those Koeman matches we didn't do anything at all. Koeman seems like a laugh to have a beer with and that seems to count for a lot amongst our fan base.

Indeed. We have not, in any match this season, played as bad as our worst matches under Koeman. And who can forget, "no plan B" Pochettino. What with all the sideways passing and that. Bloody passing! Puel is getting unfair treatment.

I also thought we switched to more of a 4231 or 4222 in that second half, which was interesting.

24th match of the season. That's 9 cup games already. And we have at least 3 more. Some seasons we might play about three in total. New manager, top half of the league. I think that's decent enough. I thought Clasie had a really good game today but Boufal obviously takes the MOM vote with a great goal. He could end up being the most entertaining player we've had for a long time. Should have scored two or three but decent enough. Need to pick up some away wins now.

That sub made sense. They couldn't defend crosses. We should have done that earlier. In fact, wasn't he involved in the creation of the Yoshida header that should have won us the match?

Sign someone better than the very average Austin, would be good.

At the end of the day, if you wanted to set a team up to play the way Puel wants us to play you wouldn't choose to have Long or Austin in it. Rodriguez would be a much better fit but he's buggered. We also need to get Boufal a decent run of matches. Doubt that will happen until Feb now though. We need to sign a mobile stirrer with a decent first touch in Jan. And ideally a central midfielder with some sort of threat in the opposition box.

Agreed. It changes a league format into a two-legged cup-tie which seems perverse.

I don't think it's fair to blame Puel. We had golden chances in each away game and missed them. Last night we missed a golden chance at the end and gifted the other team their only attack of the second half with an individual error. It's not Puel's fault he's stuck with Austin, Long and Rodriguez. The only real criticism I have of Puel is the over-use of Redmond. Last night it was clear that HBS had a weakness when it came to defending crosses. Redmond on the left never crosses well. We should have probably had Tadic left, JWP right and got a couple of players through the middle.

Because it wasn't a proper release clause. Vectis Saint is correct. There is no need for a club to offer more but the release clause is the minimum bid that can't be rejected by the club. It's quite simple. The reason why a club MIGHT bid more is because they are unaware of the terms of the player's contract. Probably unlikely in reality but that's the theoretical answer and it's why Vectis is correct.

Good.

I think people expecting an open game may be a bit disappointed - they only need one goal to leave us needing two and they won't want to allow us to get a head start. I would expect them to be quite cagey until at least half time (of course that goes out of the window if we get a couple of early goals). Their home support was loud but it was all very choreographed. Not sure how that will translate to a little block in the corner of the Northam!

A minnow, please. Not a Prem or Champ team - that's boring!

It doesn't even need to be rationalised with "too many games / rotation etc..". We are not a super-ruthless, league winning team. We will, from time to time, have bad days. Even if we were out of all the cups we would have bad days. Last season's team had bad days. This is not unique to Claude Puel. At no point this season have we played as badly as we did under Koeman away against Ipswich (lucky win), Midjtylland (dismal defeat), Sheff Utd (dismal defeat), Bournemouth (one of the worst league performances since we got promoted). It happens. We have one or two elite players and a lot of solid mid-table players. Last season our position flattered us because there was so much crap floating around in the league below us.

Speaking of Barry Horne..... THAT goal against Bolton!

So has Stek!

I've never thought he was brilliant but he's a solid top flight keeper and some of the comments on here are, unsurprisingly, idiotic.