Window Cleaner

I think one change in our habitual back 5 is fairly easy to accomodate, 2 is a bit more dicey and 4 out of 5 is just rank difficult. I seem to remember that Fox had a reasonable game against Swansea but then he had, Clyne,Boruc,Fonte and Lovren with him. Jos wasn't bad at Arsenal but with 4 of the other regulars. It's these mass changes that are causing the problem, most teams can play with one passenger most of the time.

why would that be then, he's a pro, he's also a bit of a sick note, professional players must accept the transfer of team mates as part of their profession. Now I'd only speculate here because I know they're reported to be a tight knit bunch but to some never having to play with Fox (or Hooieveld) again might be quite welcome. I'm sure Dejan was complaining to Adam and Rickie (Cpt and V Capt) about them on Sunday. I'm also not sure that some of the continental lads who have a different pro-ethic might not frown on shopping trips and Nandos munching.

but their problem is with home produced players, once the old guard has gone they're in the sh*tter to find 8 out of 25. they need home grown whether they play them or not. Whilst I've no idea on the origins of a few of their lesser known squad players just now they're about on the lower limit. Take away Cole,Lampard,Terry etc and they're out of conformity, probably why they hang on to Lukaku and Courtois who I think were signed very young and may qualify as home grown, like Morgan.

anything's possible but he really is a midfielder, plays far deeper for Uruguay.

if you say so then, don't much care myself, far better and more robust LBs available for less than half the sums being touted around. If we had 20 million £ for him I'd go and wave half of it (ie 13 million euros) under Romeyer's nose for Ghoulam, lovely lad, know his brother (and PR man) and apparently the PL would please him.

And Cole saying he'll decide whether to retire at the end of the season depending how many starts he gets until then. I suppose Azpilicueta is the starter there for the moment, not a bad player, thought he was a RB really though, probably just extremely versatile. Can't see them signing Shaw, Mourinho hasn't much time for young players. Better players available for the short term for 20 million than Shaw though.

but he was being built up to being such a big star and now doesn't even get near the bench even when we're scraping the barrel, I suppose he has no defensive attributes. Surely a 15 minute run out when we're chasing games couldn't be so bad. Must admit to not having seen him on the galleries and videos of late. Injured may be.

whatever happened to Isgrove? Loan, injury, lupus or some other mystery illness?.

noticed that Guly was back.

too much Ozone down at Palavas, makes you giddy. Anyway I've no idea if Art is correct or not is his assertions concerning Shaw but should they be then perhaps the club need to rein in his galavanting a bit. We know (or presumably know) that he was shopping in London on Thurday, seemed to be at training afterwards, then he was reportedly ill and now we're told that he's scoffing Nandos and Christmas lunch at Staplewood. Perhaps if he'd rested up a bit instead of going to Kensington he might have been fit to play yesterday who knows. Not sure that he isn't playing fast and loose with us myself. As i have advocated many times we need to put him into competiton with a real left back very soon.

Eneyama yes yes yes, Ruffier won't be coming, asked him myself, Mandanda I'd give a miss. Gourcuff won't sign with Lyon again but his dad is wrapping it in at Lorient in June and may be going to a club Yohann would fancy, probably not strong enough for the PL anyway and way out of our salary range, 120K euros a week..

How abouta LB/CB, Jeremy Mathieu from Valencia, we may have been in contact I think.

Ah yes Vorm is out for a while i think.

Boruc said the situation was difficult and undesirable. You need to be able to read the full interview in Polish for that. He said Adkins didn't want him and that the management had insisted on signing him. He also claimed that he was the victim of racial abuse in the lead up to the bottle incident. There was a translation in the Independant but I'm not sure that it's 100% accurate, my daughter in law translated the original for me and her English is pretty good, her being a Cambridge graduate and all that. here it is for what it's worth. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/artur-boruc-claims-racial-abuse-led-to-bottle-incident-with-southampton-fans-8545868.html

Well either Fox cuts it out or it ends up with the Spurs player on the back post, ball shouldn't have been there in the first place, Gazzaniga wasn't going to get it with his dying swan back flip, seems incapable of just dropping on the ball, perhaps he's too tall for that. The fact that the ball goes under him just says that he's gone down too slowly or too late.

Because he's an intelligent man and those positions cannot be covered from our academy just now. Shaw is injury and illness prone, Fox is just useless prone and we aren't going to play Targett all of a sudden. As for the keeper the evidence was clear yesterday KD looks like long term and Boruc has a broken hand, might be back soon but another whack on it could put us back to square 1 in an instant.

indeed they are, the theory being that if you're on the bench you're fit to play and the manager doesn't rate you. We have a grave injury crisis and silly little knobs like Shaw tweeting and ****ting that he could play but the docs din't want him to just really doesn't help. It just fuels "the manager is an idiot" for not playing our best players conspiracies. Shaw was poor against Toon and an ill Shaw wouldn't have been much better.

fonte first disappeared from the starting line up for the Villa game. He came on after an hour when Clyne got injured. Fonte played well against Chelsea and you'd have to suppose that being benched against Villa was just a gesture to try to manage fatigue and yellow cards. We were pretty crap against Villa so the fact that he didn't start against City says something...he's not fit and we're just trying to manage that. I haven't a doubt that there have been no shennanigans as you call them, just injures and illness.

7 subs, 3 changes possible, obviously JWP was bound to come on so that leaves 2, the fact that Jos was pretty dire and still didn't get subbed says it all as does the switching of full backs. Poch isn't an idiot but he's not going to put Stephens and Turnbull n the bench because that would be a dead giveaway. 2 blokes who've never played a first team game ( as far as I know ) for us on the bench cries out we're f*cked come and nobble one of our CBs.

would be a lot less clumsy, Jos has highs and lows, sometimes perfectly acceptable and some times worse than dire. Seems to panic easily if rattled.

Aaron Martin is still on our submitted squad list I think, don't know where he is though, could be on loan, could be training with the youth, no idea. Don't think he'll get promoted to the first team group.

he would certainly have done better yesterday, you just could not do any worse.

With the chance of european football now gone from our league position I do wonder if we might make a bit of an effort in the Cup this season. Burnley is a bum draw though and we'd have to play our strongest available side I think (not our full first team but some won't be fit by then) Can't see us having any new players by Sat 4th Jan so if we put out our strongest available XI it might indicate that we're going for it.

depends whether he renews at Boro surely, don't know what the situation is with Steele (their number 1 right ?) or the greek wallah that's supposed to deputise for him. Big problem with PL rules, only 25 senior pros and no loans if you've got a keeper that can stand up by himself. If we'd been allowed a loan with our number 1 and 2 out we'd surely have gone for one.

Welbeck played well on Saturday, fast and lethal in front of goal, only fools would turn their nose up at him.