tajjuk

We are mentioned in there, along with Brighton and Everton. Arsenal don't even have a manager and where is he going to play in a team with Ozil, Mikhtaryan, Ramsey, Wilshere etc. Same goes for Man City, Phil Foden is one of the brightest young English prospects and he's managed 4 games this year. he's also not going to displace Ali and Erikson. If the lad has any sense he'll find a place a lower club first and establish himself. Do hope we are looking at him and other young championship talent as I feel this is an area we have overlooked in recent years.

No from Swansea. Evans from Brom, but bigger clubs will want him Butland and Shaqiri from Stoke, but again think there will be stiff competition. To be honest harvesting players from relegated clubs never seems a great idea to me, especially in a year when the majority of the PL has been awful, so the relegated clubs have been super-awful.

I wouldn't read too much into that, his confidence is pretty low which means he won't come looking for the ball and he's the sort of striker that makes a lot of clever runs rather that gets involved in the playmaking. Plus we've been awful, with lower possession and less attacking play for most of the season. And he's been coming off the bench lots, often very near the end of the game etc. I doubt he had a huge amount of touches for Napoli but he had a good goals per minute record. Getting him playing well and the team playing better he'll score goals.

Hoedt and Lemina IMO will come good they have shown enough this season as two young-ish players in their first season in the Premier League that they are good players, remember some Premier League greats had difficult first seasons, Robert Pires springs to mind. Plus these guys were playing for Lazio and Juventus, there is clear pedigree there. Bednerak is a pleasant surprise, but the question has to be asked why he had no involvement at any point earlier in the season. The big issues are Boufal has been a complete failure, he was supposed to be our wonderkid creator and seems to have turned into a moody sulker, he was badly used by Pellegrino, maybe that has turned his attitude sour, but then so was Gabbiadini and he has been praised for his work ethic and professionalism despite the lack of game time. And then Carrillo, who yet might come good but seems to be a bit of a white elephant and it seems pretty damning that he hasn't been near the squad since Hughes arrived so is looking like £19 million down the drain. Too many misses than hits by the recruitment team over the last two years for them to be patting themselves on the back though.

I personally think we'll give City a good game, we'll be buoyed from Tuesday and most of their players will probably only play at 70-80% I reckon as they won't want to get injured for the World Cup when they have nothing to play for. Guardiola has said he wants 100 points, but they have broken every record so it's a meaningless game for them, whereas our lads will know there is the risk and will want to give the home fans a good send off after such a miserable season. They owe us a performance against a top 6 side. Plus you are expecting Swansea to suddenly come out with 5 or 6 goals after they have scored just 2 in what the last 10 games? Finally Lambert will want to put on a good performance to confirm him keeping the Stoke job next year and he'll want to get some of the players he wants to use next year in that team so I can't see Stoke going there and getting rolled over. All these players are professional, they won't happily take getting beaten 5-0.

Our transfers and scouting team have not been that bad, Liverpool are a testament to that, it's just they have had more misses than hits over the last 18 months or so.

Why do people keep suggesting Shawcross? He's shot as PL player, he's played a big role in what I believe is the worst defence in the league and consistently makes mistakes that lead to goals almost every game from what I have seen (like he did against Palace). Since his major injury he has not been the same player, his reaction time is glacial and he gets turned to easily, plus he seems to want to try and win the ball from any angle when 9/10 he is not going to win it, thus giving away silly fouls and penalties. He goes to ground pretty much all the time now from what I have seen. Plus he is likely past is peak. He's not the player he was 4-5 years ago under Pulis.

Convince Ryan Sessegnon that he's better of getting game time with us than going to a top 6 clubs bench, highlight the likes of Walcott, Chamberlain etc. who never fulfilled their potential. Rehabilitate Shaw to play behind him.

think yahoo rated Zouma in their worst 11 of the season.

This is an important point, if we get the manager situation settled for next season we can quickly get onto securing transfer targets, I wonder how many transfer deals were on the back burner whilst we sorted the manager situation out last year.

Not sure we should be gloating, we aren't 100% safe and we have been utter sh*te most of the season so seems rich to gloat. Plus I have nothing against Stoke really, nor West Brom, nor Swansea, they are all similar to us and have suffered similarly to use, especially when it comes to bad recruitment and losing their better players to others, like Swansea had Siggurdsson and Llorente sold, and not replaced sounds familiar to us. Personally I feel all the 'other' PL clubs and fans need to stick together against the top 6, aside maybe West Ham, can't say I dislike any of the middling to lower PL clubs. But have plenty of distaste for the big clubs and particularly Liverpool and Man Utd. (who's fans seem a lot worse to me than City or Chelsea fans, maybe cos those fans still remember the average and bad times and know how lucky they are)

We'll probably get a new five year plan.

We can't sit in and just park the bus, doesn't really work against City, Huddersfield for most of the first half of each half pressed City back pretty high until they got knackered and sat deeper.

Whatever we want, i can;t see him going, I doubt very much is going to change in the leadership of the club I just hope they have learnt from the last 18 months or so.

To be fair on Shaqiri, 8 goals and 6 assists in a terrible Stoke team is not too bad, especially considering their strikers have scored like 2 in 30 or something.

I think he'll be off to be honest, agree with other he has been criminally mismanaged and in a confident attacking team he'd score goals. But if there are off the field issues with his wife I can't see him staying.

He looked pretty fantastic when he first appeared with Reading a few years ago, people were talking about him as the next big England prospect, he had some amazing games and then he seemed to just go completely off the ball and into the wilderness, looks like he's finally found his form and is maybe fulfilling that early promise.

This is going to be long so I am going to number them - 1. I think people are being too harsh on Hoedt, he's a 24 year old centre-back in his first year in the PL, in a team that struggled (and wasn't expected to), there is plenty of talent there and I think he'll be much better after this experience and with a settled (and more quality) partner next to him. That should be a key transfer area for the summer, likely Yoshida is going to move on, Stephens/Bednerak are there as other options but we need to replace VVD, especially in stature and strength. Hoedt is quite a cultured centre-back but needs some steel with him. 2. I don't think we will find a better right back than Cedric, we should keep him if we can (he doesn't strike me as the sort of character who would want out or make a fuss) and he should spend all summer working on his crossing. If a big offer comes in then take, but if not I'd keep him there. 3. I think McCarthy has shown enough to warrant a full season as no.1 and also suspect Forster will desperate to get his place black and we might see him back to to his best, plus I can't see anyone taking him anyway. People will mention Butland but Stoke will want £25 million plus for him (unless he has a released clause) and I can't see us paying that much for a keeper and bigger clubs may be after him anyway. 4. Anyone who wants to go, needs to be gone early. Our stand on VVD ultimately cost us, we couldn't use the money wisely to replace him and the unprofessional arse clearly poisoned the dressing room. The season's crapness ultimately may help us in that the bigger clubs might not come knocking but the most likely candidate is Bertrand. If he wants to go, get him gone early, get the replacement early (Shaw would be my choice, I think in a more forgiving and friendly environment, with a supporting manager he could flourish). Should also be remembered that the best left back in the Championship is our player. 5. Based on the stuff behind the scenes Boufal has to go, he's not worked out as we hoped and is likely to go back to France or somewhere like China. For a club like ours to get one of those super talented attacking players I think you have to accept some baggage (or get super lucky unearthing some unspotted talent) the Payets, Arnautovic's, Shaqiris etc. are at those clubs because of that baggage and you somewhat have to put up and manage that, they just have to do it on the pitch, Boufal hasn't done it on the pitch so bye bye. 6. Long and Austin to me look important characters in the dressing room so I think they should stay. Long is a useful option, even though he is generally pretty awful and if we can get 30 league games out of Austin then he'll be up around 15-20 goals I reckon, but we clearly need another striker of quality, which is tough ask for our budget but the club needs to go all out for this. (Batshuayi might be worth looking at if we can get him) I suspect Gabbi will return home, and Carrillo will end up dumped on loan somewhere. Gallagher needs to be given a chance I think. 7. Centre-mid I think we are fine with Romeu, Lemina, Hojberg and JWP. Lemina showed real promise of being a top talent but was a bit consistent but it was his first year in the league and again the team struggled. Romeu was at times awful but considering his performances over the previous years shouldn't be written off and Hojberg showed some real quality towards the end of the season that hints at his potential. JWP needs to find a position and knuckle down into it. What we need to add to this midfield is an attacking mid who is able to score goals, this has been a missing piece in our team for years. 8. Out wide Tadic might go, doubt many will be that sad, he's been pretty average for a few years now and only woke up recently, but we need more pace here, at least one top quality player to come in and I'd like to see more involvement for Sims. So that could end up being - New centre-back New left back New attacking mid New wide attacker New striker. Very unlikely to happen as even at our prices we'd need to spend £100 - 150 million for that lot lol. So outs I expect - Bertrand, Gabbi, Boufal, Pied, Clasie, Yoshida, Carrilo, Gardos (but won't be sold). Might raise £50 million here, mostly from Bertrand. Maybe Tadic and Cedric. Leaving - GKs - McCarthy/Forster Left Back - Target, McQueen + New Right Back - Cedric + New (or new + New) Centre Backs - Hoedt, Stephens, Bednarek + New Centre mids - Romeu, Lemina, Hojberg, JWP + New attacking mid Wide players - Tadic, Redmond, Sims, + New Strikers - Long, Austin, Gallagher + New

Same, I'm happy to give him a chance but I kind of feel that any half decent manager could have got that squad playing, we should not have been anywhere near where we were, our squad is better than many clubs above us. And the more we hear about what has been going on behind the scenes at Stoke is worrying, though how much control over transfers he had I don't know. To be fair he probably won't have that much control over transfers here so maybe its not a worry and the club consistently tell us that they do their due diligence on our signings checking them out not just as players but as people. And again to be fair they seem to because I have not heard anything about anyone acting unprofessionally behind the scenes (though Boufal?), Le Tiss for example was talking last night about how hard Gabbi works in training even though he has barely had a look in, so maybe Hughes with the tactics and the motivation of the players combined with some better signings might be a good combo? Though our scouting/recruitment team have hardly been setting the world on fire.

This a few swift kicks early on and any of the world cup players will coast through the rest of the game.

Yeh they do, they can have 3 or 4 (?) I think 'designated players' where you can basically pay them what you want, but the rest of the squad has to fit within the salary cap. If English football should learn anything from US sports, that is probably it.

He has a good point, especially as any success in the PL is almost exclusively based on how much money you spend and it all becomes a bit tiresome. it also means 99% of the time there is a glass ceiling however well you do (the 1% being Leicester's fluke win), we've hit it pretty much and I have a hard time seeing a club like ours surpassing it unless there is a serious financial metldown in the top 6. So dropping a division gives us hope of winning more games, dominating games and maybe winning a trophy.

the quality of the MLS is definitely on the up, they are picking up quite of a lot of talented South American players but they need the threat of relegation in there I think.

We have a decent record away at Swansea, if we are to go to any Premier League ground to get a win, then Liberty Stadium is probably one of the best bets. I see us maybe sneaking a draw against City, they had their celebration this week, most of their players will be thinking about the world cup, there is not much in there for them to come to our place and go all out, plus I think most of the fringe players who need their 5 games have got their 5 games so can't see a hungry reserve team playing either, but then they are good enough to beat us at half pace so a draw is best we could hope for which is not good enough. And I agree with others I don't think Stoke will put up any fight on the last day. So I think we will draw both game and go down. Plus remember Swansea don't need to win, they have two home games against teams around them, 4 points gets them safe and 3 points against Stoke is not going to be hard for them so there is no pressure on them to beat us tonight.

Very true but they don't concede many at home, going to be a very nervy game cos I can't see either side getting many goals ahead. Plus we have to win, Swansea can afford a draw as they have Stoke at home whereas we are left trying to get something out of Man City. I am also worried about the impact Saturday had, even Hughes said it felt like a loss, the players looked gutted and that may have destroyed any little confidence bump we have had from the win and the draw.