Window Cleaner

An upgraded Puncheon but with far less goals and assists this season. If he's not good enough for Tottenham he's not good enough for us, far too erratic.

I certainly have no time for youth that isn't good enough in the first team, it's why José doesn't do it either. The first team is exactly that, not a test bench for someone who might or might not be good enough in 18 months time. If they're good enough they're old enough, if not well there's always Yeovil and Salisbury.

I have no idea where he will end up, personally I don't like these young players holding the whole team back because we're obviously giving priority to developing them. If we had a reasonable replacement stiker we'd probably have beaten Cardiff, maybe Villa and a few other games. Lambert hasn't always been great this season and Mauricio has oft bemoaned our lack of finishing ability. A decent extra striker may just have given us the few points more that we needed to be amongst the big dogs, idem Gazzaniga.

We shall see, there a lot of seats empty on the merry go round to be filled this summer. Until the ride starts it's difficult to predict who'll end up where. Barcelona is the key, if they sack Martino (which is likely apparently because they don't tolerate failure round that way) then the great manoeuvres will start to fall into place.

I don't hate the kids, I dislike the practice of bringing them into the first team when we have nothing else when they obviously aren't ready. I think we waste far more money on the academy than we need to, we produce a few good players, all clubs do but we also produce a lot of failures. When the youngsters are ready then that's the time to introduce them to the first team and not when they're completely out of their depth as is the case with some, like Gallagher and Gazzaniga.

It's worked for Shaw and Chambers, certainly hasn't worked for Gazzaniga, I'm undecided about JWP and Gallagher certainly doesn't have the required qualities. It's mitigated at best.

Sharp will be back with us next week then, hanging about doing nothing except picking up his cheque. I'd give him a number and put him on the bench against Utd if we've nothing else. We won't do that though, perhaps we even can't as he's played for 2 clubs already this season.

Will be in 2045 doesn't solve our problem does it? Should be out on loan somewhere to grasp the basics of goalscoring in real games before he gets chucked into the deep-end of the PL. No-one else does it, why do we?

Yatabaré, cheap and cheerful, also scores a lot of goals. Offer Guingamp 3 million and they'll bring him over in a rented yacht. We wouldn't have been looking for a kickass principal striker, just someone who can do the job on occasions.

He's not even at Championship level, in fact he's probably no better than Sharp.

Perhaps, how would Levy know about his grasp of English though, after match jollies perhaps.

But how we let ourselves get into that state beggars belief. We could easily have got someone in January for a few million to take the load off Rickie on occasions.

Sorry about this to all his potential fans but to me he just does not look the part. No gumption, no skill.

A quarter of Lampard's goals have come from penalties though. When our midfielders take the penalties talk to me again.

Can't remember the last time we beat any of them actually, not these last 2 seasons anyway.

What about him ?

Ah but did they dominate those games and just fail to score because of the paucity of their attacking players ? Could be.

Caulker might improve our squad though. Probably just a bit better than Jos and with some decent coaching who knows.

Home to Hull on Tuesday evening. Hope they win that, wouldn't like to think that we could have finished above them if it wasn't for that joke loss at home to Cardiff. Low point of the season for me that (well one of 3) just nothing at the sharp end, bit like yesterday really..

Wanyama still worries me on occasions against good class players, nearly f*cked up again yesterday but was generally OK. Still rather have Morgan and Corky myself.

A year or so ago I told you that Hooper was not of PL standard, thanks to him for proving me right. If we wanted to sign Hooper we might as well just keep Sharp (who is not of PL standard either) because he's still going to have a year left on his contract anyway. The front office have some major work to do to get shot of he, Osvaldo and Mayuka again.

The press rumours only have any value if you take them seriously. As they're usually wrong it's best just to ignore them and wait to see what comes to pass.

Can't see where he might be going myself, this can (or could) only be about "the project" and not another plum job waiting for him then.

Is that not the young Targett ??

Some people just always want to win, not an unuseful quality in a football manager really.