HarvSFC

Peter Madsen, Jim Brennan, Mario Licka, Pele, Marcelo Sarmiento, Lucien Mettomo, Jan-Paul Saeijs, Zoltan Liptak, Romain Gasmi... We were very adventurous with our recruitment back then. Some signings more successful than others!

That's the Nigel Quashie curse. Suffered relegation with QPR, Forest, Southampton and West Brom. The latter two being consecutive seasons. We did, however, unfortunately sign him from Portsmouth, who were Premier League at the time.

Who, I found out the other day had resurrected and now goes by Alexander Mezan.

Although, KWP was a 22 year old who couldn't get games ahead of Walker, Trippier and their £23m signing Aurier. Winks is 26 and behind Hojbjerg and Skipp in their pecking order. Think it's another case of there has to be better available elsewhere.

For a brief period the hierarchy of best players in the world was the obvious Ronaldo and Messi category and then Bale was the player beneath them. The injuries and desire stopped him from having a prolonged period up there, so it depends whether a spell as one of the best players in the world is considered better than someone who has been consistently at the top of the game for the majority of their career.

With their last World Cup being the one in 2014. You would probably trade one World Cup qualification for a Euros win, but missing out on two qualifications is pretty miserable for what is still football’s biggest competition.

I still stand by Austria would have taken Italy to penalties in Euro 2020(1) had Italy not had five subs, which allowed them to bring on Locatelli, Belotti, Chiesa and the goalscorer Pessina, while Austria were very much lowering the on pitch quality with their subs. And then, who knows what may have happened from the lottery of the penalties. 🙁 As for Bale, as much as I enjoyed watching him a few years ago, he's not that player anymore and despite his good scoring record for Spurs when he returned, I don't think he was a huge success there and certainly not what they were expecting/hoping for. 20 league matches with only 10 of them being starts. His pace is completely gone and he was invisible in some games as much as he was scoring important goals in others. His heart hasn't been in club football for a number of years now, he did reach the top and win it all to be fair to him. But, his main focus is Wales and golf now. There were even rumours of him retiring last year, he doesn't have the hunger for it and after the success of Walcott's return, I'd hope that if it ever does become a possibility that we'd give it a hard pass.

Picked up Darren Powell, Dennis Wise, Tomasz Hajto, Marcelo Tejera, Kamil Kosowski and Djamel Belmadi that summer. Cracking transfer window and one that we can only dream of these days. I think Fuller was the only one we paid a fee for.

He gets very defensive if you call him a wheeler dealer.

Uh oh, he's being noticed! Our best and most consistent player this season and he hasn't even playing in his natural position, or side for the majority of it. At least he knows he doesn't need to leave Southampton to get into the England squad.

Had good spells here in the past, but like the rest of our defenders, lacks consistency and has other weaknesses both technically and physically. The very least us fans ask for is commitment to the club and to be available and play when needed. He now doesn't even have that. Today was our biggest match of the season and he's pretty much stuck two fingers up to the club and the fans and shown that he doesn't care. We've had far better players here in recent years pull this move and survived after their inevitable departure, get rid of him at the next available opportunity. Imagine if we were in a relegation battle and we had him picking and choosing when he wants to be in the squad, while picking up his wages happily.

A few weeks a go I thought we should keep him, he looked back to his 2016 best, making top quality saves and it was only because of a shoddy defence in front of him that he was conceding goals. He was certainly keeping us in some matches. However, it's becoming clear, that he just isn't consistently good enough, or able to maintain that form if we want to push up the league further. He's a good goalkeeper, will help keep teams in the Premier League, but he won't help them push beyond that. I can see him going the Dan Burn route and getting a nice final pay day and signing on fee by returning to Newcastle, becoming their number two, to be honest. We need a goalkeeper where we can come away from a match and say I don't know how we won that, our goalkeeper got us those three points. Like with Davis in the lower leagues and Boruc and Niemi up here. We've not been able to say that for a few years now. Our outfield 10 have poor games, we lose. It's that simple. Whereas, we've outplayed plenty of teams this season and often blame poor finishing, but it's also a good opposition keeper that we have to beat.

Both their subs score, their strength in depth is too much and why they want five subs in the league. Equally, if there wasn’t five subs we possibly don’t start both Broja and Adams on the bench, as using 2/3 to bring them on poses a bit more of a risk than 2/5. Shit rule. Doesn’t deserve a 4-1 score line. But, we all know the defence needs bolstering.

I said after the West Ham match that it should be Caballero’s last match here. End on a high, a win and his final bit of action was a good save. Rather than, being remembered as the what if Forster had started against City player. Indeed, Forster could also make a mistake tomorrow, but Caballero is far more liable. He cost us a goal against West Ham and indeed, his final good save was also a result of another cock up from himself. Fortunately, it didn’t cost us then, but it will against City. No room for sentimentality at this stage.

That’s really disappointing. I suppose I don’t like Burnley that much, but a small consolation.

If Brighton had a goal scorer they would win the league. Contrasting with other clubs, who would get a lot worse, if they were given a goal scorer.

He was an expert at finding Championship quality to be fair! Had the biggest budget in Scotland with Defoe, Ramsey, Kent and co. moving up there and he has delivered, although Celtic are back on top for now.

Guardiola proves what I wrote earlier. Not a single substitution tonight, but he’ll be one of the loudest voices calling for five subs and a reduced fixture list.

You only have to look at the semi-finalists of the League Cup to see who benefits from the five sub ruling - Tottenham, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. Then you look a bit deeper and the winners, Liverpool were 3-1 down at half time against Leicester in the quarters before bringing on Konate, Milner and Jota at half time and then Keita on 59 minutes and an unknown in Beck at 80 to bring it back to 3-3 and get the win on penalties. Sparing Klopp's blushes after getting his line-up wrong, but he was able to change half of it and bring out the inexperience of Bradley, Koumetio and Morton before they cost any further goals with subs to spare. We were also guilty of playing a second string team in the last round of the FA Cup because we could bring on the big guns when needed with five subs, it's not something I want to see. I want to see the best possible team put out for each match. Then you have the big six managers moaning every week that they don't have enough subs, before only making one or two in the next match. While, we don't make full use of our subs either. Bringing Long on, on the 94th minute against Watford yesterday at 2-1 down and Djenepo on the 85th minute at 2-1 down against Newcastle being the two recent examples of subs being too late to make an impact. But, now we want 5? It might help us against the likes of Leeds, Burnley, Brentford and Norwich, who all have paper thin squads, but it's going to make competing with the top clubs even more difficult than it already is and I'd rather we didn't spend the rest of my lifetime focussing on how we're going to beat the likes of Leeds, Burnley, Brentford and Norwich.

Our next CB signing needs to be in the Lovren, Alderweireld, Van Dijk bracket. All three were still developing in their careers and hadn’t hit their peak when we got them. However, all three had also played in the Champions League and were fairly experienced for their age. We’re currently searching for potential, but for players with limited experience, which can prove costly and bring in too many in-match errors at centre-back. A bit of experience but still with potential to grow is the perfect balance and those three were our most successful centre-back signings of recent years.

First of all, you could tell Watford have a relegation escapist expert in charge now. They were very good at the “dark arts”, delaying the game, feigning injuries, etc. Whoever the ref was, you’d say he was in their pocket, without making any major decisions, he gave one of the weakest refereeing performances I’ve ever seen. Secondly, the starting lineup was all wrong. If Broja’s out of form and not starting, replace him with Armstrong, the player we spent £15m on to replace Ings. Replacing him with Smallbone, who is as effective as Walcott is in the Premier League and isolating Adams up top, who is a support striker, not a lone forward is just pure crap. Without considering the fixture is Watford at home. Thirdly, for the second game in days, we’re playing walking football. All our players look for the easy pass, then the other traps the ball, killing it dead and then moving it sideways. The ball needs to be constantly moving. It hasn’t been with us for the last few fixtures now and isn’t going to be any good against Watford, who have been a team of athletes and powerful runners for years now, since they got promoted with Ashley Young and Marlong King back in the day. Broja, Armstrong and KWP were our strongest ball carriers, but other than KWP nobody takes anyone on now. Fourthly, if I was a cynical person, I’d be suggesting that Salisu is done here. We know that he either signs a new contract, or he’s gone this summer and judging by current performances he’s not playing at 100% like Van Dijk wasn’t when he decided he wanted to go. His body language off the ball is also similar to that of Ings last season. He’s a shadow of the player who bossed City recently and on current form he’s useless to us, as Van Dijk was, who was a far superior player when he stopped bothering to show up. Finally, not great form to be heading into the FA Cup fixture against City. Reminiscent of the semi-final at Wembley from a few years ago when we didn’t turn up, if we carry on. I guess the next phase is to find players with a winning mentality, these lot strive for safety and then stop. Europe was a possibility 8 days ago, considering we could have been on 44 points if we had won all three from the week, but now the season’s over barring a Cup upset.

Ended up making errors for the two goals, first one is the first highlight, second one is at 0:35.