shurlock

Yep agree with that. The confidence certainly makes the Pelle outball easier, though do think RK gave specific instructions to go long, after analysing our second half performance against the danes last week. Let's not forget the experts on here were also calling for the same thing, though, sure enough, plenty are now claiming it was to doomed to fail from the start.

Did you go to the game yesterday? Guess you had no plans of going if we had qualified for the group stages either. For a club of our size, playing in Europe and the experience and the adventure it brings is probably as good as it gets.

The Chelsea games are interesting: not sure we had much possession in the first game and the trip to Stamford was one of, if not the only time, we dropped Pelle. In the first instance, though, the instinct is to go direct to Pelle or work the ball side to side and get it wide rather than play through the lines or use runners from midfield. Koeman did exactly the same with Pelle at Feyenoord. Don't get me wrong: we were direct under Adkins in L1; but as we climbed the leagues, we were much more flexible - partly that's because Lambert used to offer more than Pelle in terms of dropping deep, finding space and bringing others into space. The difference between Koeman and MP is even starker. Notwithstanding the stat-padding of the Villa game, we desperately struggled to break teams down in the second half of last season, something that's faithfully continued this season. I rate Pelle and think he gets a lot of unwarranted stick; but we've become lazy in our reliance on him -and Koeman whose response has been to double down on defense has to take responsibility for that.

Edit

Tonight was like an out of body experience. Been so used to watching overhyped, one-dimensional English sides get their noses bloodied and crash out of Europe. Never thought it would be us.

Would Koeman have thrown Chambers into the deep end in the way MP did or properly run the rule over Gallagher by giving him a sustained run of games? Koeman's decision to play Toby out of position in DM at the end of last season rather than incorporate Reed who's not polished by any stretch of the imagination but can clearly do a job speaks volumes.

Re Koeman's attitude to youth, nothing that hasn't been said on here in the past year. Cue MLG to remind us how many youth players featured or made their debuts under RK by coming on in injury time and tying their shoelaces.

Nonsense. We played plenty of ugly football last season; just with our defense, it was effective and few complained. And RK has made us more direct than we were under either MP or Adkins. Bad luck and some poor decisions have accentuated there tendencies; but let's not kid ourselves and pretend they've emerged only this season.

12 year contract - what are you on about? Why would we do that? Already explained the basic difference between the Lovren and Wanyama signings and the Virgil and Clasie ones. Clue: sentence beginning "critically...." Have another read, then come back to me champ.

That's quite a selective set of examples. For better or worse, we bought fewer, but higher 'quality' players. Critically, this was when we weren't being asked to replace star players and sitting on massive fees. For instance, it's not inconceivable that we would have spent more than £8-10m on a Clasie to replace Schneiderlin. Christ we signed Wanyama the summer we let the likes of Hammond go. Can understand the club's wariness, though am convinced that busts like Osvaldo and Ramirez could have been avoided -and it was poor execution rather than targeting quality that led us astray. As for buying young and English, thry are clearly expensive; but they arguably have a greater capacity to appreciate than foreign players. To the extent the return on investing in young, English players maybe higher, the initial fee should be less relevant if you're thinking truly long-term.

The fees suggest otherwise. To date Mané and Wanyama blow the current signings out of the water. And what happened to going young and English? You claimed that was a speciality and hallmark of Les Reed's transfer philosophy.

Betfair's shares up 20%

We have bought one, though.

Supposedly, we have two fees agreed for him - depending on whether they qualify for the group stages. Would make sense if the fee is higher if they qualify.

He did several times last season (everton, palace and WBA); I don't think it's his natural preference; but I can see him being more much pragmatic this season.

Really? Not got anything yet.

Pains me to say but the scousers looked very good tonight.

Definitely: can understand the venue to an extent. But the times make little sense.

Dear no dear.

Mid-80s serie A.

TalkSport says he's having a blinder.

Garbage in, garbage out.

The biggest côônt of them all. That's what happens when you get thrown into the side with little or no regular football. The Caulker remark is more debatable.

Or to take the data and the inferences with a complete pinch of salt. As a fact, we have had more shots than many other teams. So what without know where they were taken (even within the 18-yard box, there's a huge amount of variation in chance success)? For all we know, it might be a sign that we're not creating enough and we're forcing more efforts to compensate. It does not follow that we're failing to take our chances. Apart from Mané's injury time chance up at Newcastle (not Colback's block), Maya's header and Mané's shot that was well-saved by Howard, the smell test doesn't suggest we've been particularly wasteful. Of course, it's still early days.

Spot on. Even among the limp performances last season, we created more than we did yesterday - think WBA away where Pelle flashed a virtual tap-in from Bertrand's cross across the face of the goal. Yesterday was not the blueprint of how to do things.