shurlock

I miss the days when Pards and Adkins would stick Lambert on the fullback. Subtle stuff

Must try harder. Les has spoken about a realistic aspiration of CL football - very few talk in the absolute terms you've tortuously conjured up.

Didn't Yoshida play left back in the second leg of the arnhem game?

I thought that stopped when Cortese left?

Its mamie where I'm from - like MAné crossed with juanMI.

Keep hearing we have a stronger squad which may be true on paper; but it is unclear how its benefited us to date. Has the deeper squad allowed us to absorb injuries and make positive in-game changes? The jury's out IMO. Just need to look at Saturday when Koeman's idea of taking the game to City was to bring JWP and Tadic on, two players we had last season. Juanmi has been an afterthought (more so than Elia and Djuricic, though they were loans). Does bringing Romeu fill people with that more confidence than when Cork was on the bench. We clearly have more defensive depth than before - but in the absence of bringing three defenders on, Gardos is probably better than a combination of Caulker and Martina.

Second half of last season, we were especially toothless - it's only thanks to our defence that we picked up points. With Koeman, I expect that any turnaround will start with and focus on not conceding silly goals. From a Koeman perspective, the space we give teams has to be as much of a worry as our lack of movement up top.

The Chelsea game was excellent, even if we played them at the right time. The Swansea game was pretty scrappy despite the scoreline -recall Koeman not being too happy about the performance.

Thats a very different point. There is a big difference between bringing in cover for a temporary event such as an injury and adding cover as a permanent part of the squad. It's easier to make allowances for the former situation, especially if the contingency is short-term. Caulker falls into that category, even though Gardos injury is longer term; but Martina clearly falls into the latter category and there is no reason we shouldn't have sought higher quality.

Martina wasn't brought in for Bertrand. Defensively, for the past couple of seasons, we've been light in personnel. We never did quite replace Chambers until this summer.

Enough to have splurged on a decent RB and AM if that makes you happy.

Kanté has been excellent for Leicester. Their best player after Vardy. We were linked with him, whatever that means nowadays.

We didn't have a clue in possession for 70mins. Going three at the back with our silky, ball-playing CBs, Caulker and Wanyama, obviously worked a treat...

At least Lallana and Lovren haven't scored.

VVD...

Cedric was all over the place for the first too. Was on the wrong side when the ball was initially played.

Usual strawman nonsense about not competing with the top six – don’t think that’s the claim when people invoke ambition and get ridiculed. Rather the point is whether the club is being ambitious enough within its own constraints – whether there was scope given the surplus and significant nontransfer related revenues to add another player or two or, at least, bring in an extra bit of quality where we settled for the likes of Martina, Romeu, Juanmi or Cedric. Nobody’s deluding themselves and claiming this is going to close the gap with the top clubs. More strawman nonsense. But it would allow us to be more competitive and continue to make progress. That’s how most seem to be defining ambition, rooted in a realistic understanding of the club’s relative size and stature. It aint rocket science.

Not sure anyone's claiming otherwise.

By virtue of the fact that we lost our very best players (though fortunately got excellent prices for them). In that context, its a complete red herring to suggest more couldnt have been done without setting us on the path of financial unsustainablility.

Not really. Koeman is referring only to transfer proceeds. Whether activity is sustainable or not needs to be seen alongside the TV money the club receives and other sources of revenue.

As I pointed out in my post, though that's not inconsistent with generally not rating him as a RB.

Specifically as a RB? Not really. Nor did I see the massive outpouring of support and supposed schadenfreude after the villa game either, though I do recall many voted him MoTM while also expressing surprise that he had a good game because he's generally **** there.

Who's said he's a decent RB?

Does a free reign mean making concessions on cuts and tax credits? The Tories have a majority. End of. Its a fact of life in majoritarian systems that governments generally don't need to listen to the opposition. An effective Labour party might enrich the debate but its strict political power is nada. Governing parties have more to fear from their own backbenches. And as far as enriching the debate, there are multiple ways in which this happens in an established democracy anyway -none of which will be obvious to the simpletons on here who appear to measure performance against the quality of an opposition leader's #bantz on PMQs. Dare I say it, the SNP's electoral success -as well as Corbyn's victory- has crystallized in Tories' minds the fact that there is clear opposition to austerity in the country (to return to the first example), and combined with Osborne's instinctive sensitivity to public opinion, induced some flexibility, albeit at the very, very margins.

Relax, pal. Just making a factually CORRECT statement that they were working with different resources, making comparisons difficult if not impossible. I'd agree that Koeman inherited a more difficult situation (at least in terms of the summer disruption) but I also believe he had a better overall squad.