shurlock

Needs to do it more often; as Gary Neville put it, he flatters to deceive.

Moronic

Result the most important thing; excellent for confidence going into the international break. Won't get too high or too low about the performance (esp the midfield), given its one game against an average side and the sending off changed things; but good to see us reverting back to a more balanced side, without too many attacking-minded players (Newcastle, Everton) or excessively cautious (Watford, Midtjylland). Still, in no way, makes up for Thursday; but it's a start.

But as Sog says, you can read absolutely nothing into Wanyama not being in the squad.

Just hope he's not having to mark Redmond.

Plenty of possible clichés to reel off: Yes, they're disappointed but there's a lot of football to be played, that they're working hard everyday and are aware what needs to be done, that they're looking forward to welcoming players back etc. NOT that he thinks they were the dominant side on Thursday and unlucky to go out and get ahead of himself by saying that they can qualify for Europe all over again, when the side is searching for a first league win, never mind a decent performance.

Still gutted about Thursday and all we get is the dopey milkybar kid telling us we can do it all again this season.

He was back in training on Friday, so presumably whatever he 'had' has cleared up. HTH.

Means very little that he's playing today.

Edit

apples and pears nonsense.

You love it.

Are we? Over the last five years (inc. this summer), we appear to be running a surplus.

How much would a Delgado or Delap cost in 2015 money?

Who's no.15? Cynical c**t doesnt begin to describe him...

Didn't we want to sign VVD last summer; but refused to pay the £8m asking price? Will be intereting to see how much clubs have to stump up for him this time around.

Or a Sissoko type player - someone with a bit of power and drive. Arguably theyre easier to find than your Hazards and Silvas of this world.

Will get in early and say that whatever we pay for VVD (tbc) will effectively be covered by the Lovren sale and surplus we ran last summer.

You take out the Villa result we scored 16 goals in 18 games in the second half of the season - that's close to bottom three attacking play.

Behave - he wasn't that bad. Got beaten one or twice towards the end of the game when we were chasing things and his crossing wasn't great (he did cross for Jrod's best chance). He was no better or worse than any other of our players. He certainly wasn't helped by the poor link-up with Caulker who seemed to be working on commission for the number of times he successfully hoofed to Pelle.

Is it conversion rate or chance creation? What chances should the strikers have 'converted' last night?

Fair enough

Was Koeman a typical Dutch coach with you, though? He was very effective; but your previous posts suggest that you were very pretty direct under him and got the ball early and often to Pelle?

We got Davis and JWP playing off Pelle and it caused them problems for the first five or ten mins and things might have been different, save some lucky blocks and deflections. They focussed on snuffing out the second ball -and we didn't seem to know how to respond.

Not sure you understand the meaning of investment or self-sustaining, to be honest.