shurlock

Reckon NA would probably favour Guly over Puncheon as he did when Mayuka came on against Wham. Shoring up our right hand side is going to be critical against Bale. I think NA will give the nod to whoever he thinks is defensively more solid.

Defense is arguably the only position where age and being British are worth something. The need for premiership experience is probably less important for all other positions.

As posted elsewhere, hopefully Cork will be back soon- even Guly could do a job in a midfield 3 (a midfield 2 is a recipe for disaster). He's physically bigger and hard to muscle off the ball, can keep it simple and seems to prefer taking up a deeper position. And yes, shock, horror his work rate is decent.

Hopefully Cork will be back soon- even Guly could do a job in a midfield 3 (a midfield 2 is a recipe for disaster). He's physically bigger and hard to muscle off the ball, can keep it simple and seems to prefer taking up a deeper position. And yes his work rate is decent.

Don't you know TSW has pound for pound, post for post, the most entrepreneurial whizzes on all mongboards. We're blessed to have so many individuals with daily experience of handling and conducting multi-million pound transactions. It's like an exclusive snapshot of the Sunday Times rich list. Even more amazingly they are able to share their commercial wisdom while spending so much time on here in defiance of the old chestnut that time is money.

It is -and focussing on Lambert provides false comfort.

Wham hardly upped their game though. Indeed at 2-1 down -after gifting them two goals- we looked the more likely to score. It took the pen, another needless gift, to kill it. Wigan upped their game against us; West Ham didn't.

Don't disagree with any of this -and the last thing I'm doing is blaming Adkins (fwiw, I don't think he should go). Nor am I necessarily looking to blame/hold responsible NC/Reed, though given the committee approach, they must accept the failures as much as the successes. Instead I'm willing to entertain the possibility that some things are out of anyone's control and reflect the fact we've overshot expectations and arguably overperformed and we don't have the pulling power yet to attract genuine quality. In other words, it's hard to blame anyone. It is what it is. Swansea, Norwich, Wigan are the exception not the rule and let's see if the first two can sustain things this season and at any rate not entirely comparable with our situation (Swansea spent more time in the NPC, so probably had a deeper squad - we were a NPC team bolted onto a L1 squad while Wigan were promoted at an easier time and have the time to adapt). Re Ramirez, we don't know if it crowded out efforts or finances to buy defenders. Perhaps it didn't. Again nobody knows. If it did, NC/Reed are massively responsible. If it didn't, it's hard to say our squad is unbalanced. Going into this season we needed strengthening across the board -not just defense. I thought we looked pretty pedestrian going forward in preseason and lacked pace and creativity. As such, the Ramirez siging should be seen as taking us one step closer to where we need to be.

The article is about doing too much, too soon by switching to 4-3-3 and the need to have the right players to play a Barcelonaesque 4-3-3. One reading of Blackmore's article is that if we were to stick with 4-4-2 and what got us to the premiership, there wouldn't be a need for wholesale changes as we could build on the existing squad and momentum we've gathered. There is a sense -corroborated by his various radio musings- in which Blackmore felt we could do a Norwich. Perhaps Hammond, Chaplow, Sharp and co could also do a job As to transfers, who knows if NC overruled NA- nobody knows anything. To bring in quality rather than quantity a la Derby is harder than it sounds. Very few established players are willing to take the risk of moving to a newly promoted team before it's established itself or you are willing to play them grossly inflated wages to compensate for this additional risk. Alas, Im surprised this is lost on the entrepreneurial braintrust and jet-setting elite of TSW.

Very true- just look at Benayoun. We were interested in him but his wages priced us out while wham could afford them (even if chelsea reportedly ended up subsidising them). What I will say is that, over time, Davis has looked our best and most accomplished signing. Not sure what his wages are but they can't be massive (and the fee was minimal). Frustratingly it shows how much a bit of premiership nous and experience can add to the team.

It's not relevant at all. Blackmore is knocking our formation (a red herring), not our transfer targets or strategy (a legitimate criticism). Until someone is willing to put their money where their money is, nobody has a clue why we didn't have a more balanced transfer window.

Undecided isn't the same as being indecisive. There are plenty of plausible reasons why we didn't sign more defenders -cock-ups on our side are one explanation but not the only one and not necessarily the most convincing one.

In jrod's defense, I thought he was much better yesterday and very selfless, making decent runs and dragging defenders out of position. The problem was that there weren't always runners to exploit the spaces. But you also want a striker to be selfish -and Jrod doesn't have the confidence yet. Frankly, when Lambert came on, we didn't do much more. If anything, it became slightly easier for West Ham as they were able to outnumber a rather static Lambert -just like last season. To be effective, Lambert needs someone close to him or pace behind as he drops off to receive the ball -still think he and Mayuka could be very potent, though we would need to compensate by introducing more grit into midfield.

Did you go yesterday?

Like against Wigan when we looked worse after switching to 4-4-2. Can see him going 4-4-2 at home against teams we have a good chance of beating e.g. Fulham but not away where we need to be more compact. and for good reason. The open question is whether we go 4-4-2 at home against teams like Spurs. Do we gamble or not?

But he's not playing INSTEAD of Lambert FFS. Guly played on the left, JRod up top. There's no way Lambert would have played on the left -and we've seen Jrod's struggles there. The reality is that Jrod was chosen ahead of Lambert for the lone forward/central striker position - coincidentally, that should put to bed the myth that NA's under orders to play Guly as Jrod is a 100% NA signing.

Don't disagree with a lot of this. West Ham was different- they were poor and the mistakes came out of the blue; however other lapses -which seen in isolation could have been avoided- came out of long spells of soaking up pressure and conceding too much space. In those cases, the goals felt almost inevitable even if our ultimate undoing was a mistake.

Tongue-in-cheek but the the so-called voices of reason and cold reality on here aren't a million miles off claiming that. Of course, it's only the rest of the world that has an agenda in their eyes. Takes one to know one, I guess.

Avoidable this, avoidable that. As if we're on the cusp of ironing these things out -or it's readily doable. Pull your head out of your *** mate or at least your rose-tinted glasses. Just like your gushing assessment of our squad after the transfer window or your hunch that Jrod was going to be a huge hit in the prem, can't fault your optimism but it simply doesn't not chime with reality.

If people can't pin NC's grubby paws on team selection, then go after the next best thing: formation, a total red herring. Formation has nothing to do with our troubles. A 4-3-3 with JWP in the side is different from a 4-3-3 with Ramirez in the side -both in terms of attacking intent and quality. We were blown off the park when we went to 4-4-2 against Wigan. Why? Coz the personnel hadn't changed.

Half the team was different -and we're not talking cosmetic changes, we're talking full-on internationals, established prem players, some with top 4 experience. Nobody was expecting a totally new 11 but if you think west ham werent that different from last season, you're very mistaken. Compare our changes -two lads from the NPC even if they're more or less improvements on what we had.

What are you on about? Jarvis, Benayoun, Diame, Collins, Carroll are massive changes - their team was more different than ours.

Gray is slightly different though in that he inherited a relatively decent squad from Hoddle (or at least a squad with prem experience). In other words, he was underperforming relative to where we had been whereas we've probably been overperforming under NA. Any incoming manager would be asked to outperform that, a totally different kettle of fish.

Save bringing new players i.e. defenders in, how is any manager going to be a serious improvement on NA? There are only certain ways you can play a sh*tty hand.

Shame he hasn't scored more away then...