benjii

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.

Yes.

I don't think there's too much wrong with the system. Some fans are just a bit dumb. It's like saying "opera is boring". It probably is if you don't have a clue what you're watching. If I've got a concern it's more about the psychological side and the mentality of the players because we seem to capitulate far too easily as soon as the opposition scores. We lack character at the moment. However, if we scored a few more goals people would love our neat, controlled, technical football. It's small margins. He's been left with a squad without a single top-half quality striker (taking into account Jay Rod's injury) and with a bunch of midfielders who probably haven't scored ten goals between them in the last 5 years. Then you've got a captain who seems to be restless over money / contract and a goalkeeper suffering from a crisis of confidence. I'd say he's doing remarkably well in the circumstances. People also forget how dire our football was under Koeman at times. Mane got him out of jail often.

Agreed. Disappointing

That's obviously a made up name!

Pochettino and Koeman clearly had "their" men supporting them when they were here. I'll be danged if I didn't even know the name of Ronnie's fitness coach. Why didn't Puel arrive with his own team? Or did he?

Give me Puel over Krueger any day. What the feck is he up to?

I'm watching Middlesboro v Leicester. They make us look excellent.

It would be good if Clasie is fit. He was our best midfielder in recent weeks. Assume Boufal won't start (if he is available?) seeing as he started the last two. I'd be tempted to go with a front three of Long central with Rodriguez and Sims either side. Everton aren't the fastest team and that front three could cause then some problems. They will hit it direct at Lukakau which is a worry without Virgil. We need to accept he will bully Fonte and Yoshida and make sure we've got people ready to win second ball. I'd be tempted to play McQueen, for a bit of extra height, in midfield to do some shielding.

PS. That's not to say Poch isn't a better coach than Puel but painting the last four years as some sort of glorious parade of attacking football is utter nonsense. There were matches last season when we could barely string two passes together.

Yep. "Sideways passing", "pretty possession ********", "no plan B", "threw away the Cup at Sunderland" etc. There's a lot of history re-writing going on. The fact is, the only players in our best XI with a hope in hell of getting into Spurs best XI are Virgil, Bertrand and maybe Boufal.

Do people not think we played well in the first half then? We murdered then and should have been a couple up. Even with their dire, time-wasting, park the bus crap, we carved out several decent chances. Then, as soon as our players see the other team score with their first shot yet again, heads drop. I don't blame Puel for today at all really. Maybe could have picked Cedric but that's about it. When the players did what they were supposed to do for the first forty minutes we played some great stuff. Then individual mistakes and an absence of players willing to take responsibility cost us. Those are issues of form and issues of squad composition and I don't think that's Puel's fault. 10 shots today and only 1 on target. That's not the managers fault.

One thing I am learning at the moment is which of the people that stand near me at SMS are immature tossers.

It wasn't a yellow and the one he did get was harsh. He's an awful player though.

Agree with pretty much all of this.

He was our best player by a distance today.

I'm not having that. He's got a great touch and he's foreign so he must be lazy.