HarvSFC

According to the Cheltenham website, Armitage was born in 1901, so might be a bit too old for us! https://www.ctfc.com/teams/first-team/defender/will-armitage/ Reminds me of when we signed Jack Stephens and Harlee Dean back in the Liebherr days. Both have forged good professional careers, but hopefully Armitage can go further. Alli's a strange one. Something's not quite right with him at Spurs, and hasn't been for a long while, it started as far back as Pochettino. He plays in the lower profile Spurs matches, like the early FA Cup rounds and the Europa Conference matches and he looks well below par. However, he is still only 25 and only five years ago did he score 18 league goals from an attacking midfield position. So, if he can rediscover whatever it was when he initially hit the scene from MK Dons then he'd be a really good player for us. Or, he could be one of those who has just stopped loving the game and is on a slow downward spiral. Who knows.

Neil Warnock’s retired about 20 times and Sam Allardyce “retired” after leaving Palace too, before taking the Everton and West Brom jobs.

Much better than players walking off the pitch with their arms around each other after they’ve been a dick all game. You see it in most Sky matches, which they promote as big rivalries. United and Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham, their players are all mates, whereas the end of Derby and Forest at the weekend, you can see the rivalry is still there and still matters.

Broja would unfortunately be a wet dream for Moyes. He likes a big powerful forward upfront, be it Cahill, Fellaini, Lukaku, Saha, Arnautovic and now Antonio. Broja has the attributes he loves and has a bit more than the others as a striker, other than Lukaku when he was at Everton. And of course Broja was game changing in both West Ham matches this season. When we got Puncheon in the January window when he was on loan at MK Dons, I believe that we also had to pay a fee to MK Dons to end the loan, so could be possible this month, but we would receive a fee.

He always did show a lack of heart to be fair.

Played against Frankfurt on BT on Friday night, winning 2-0 and receiving the plaudits in what was seen as an upset and a match Frankfurt dominated. Was the first time I had seen him play and wasn’t sure if it was a one off, as they are 14th in the Bundesliga with 21 points from 20 matches, but he definitely looked good on Friday! To add to the articles, the commentators said him and Neur were the standout Bundesliga goalkeepers, which again, I wasn’t sure if it was just hyperbole.

Wolves replaced Patricio with Sa in the summer for £8m, despite initial question marks he’s now one of the better goalkeepers in the league. We just need to be more adventurous/better with our scouting, rather than strictly sticking to the domestic market when to comes to goalkeepers. As I’ve said previously, Boruc and Niemi are the two best goalkeepers I’ve seen here and neither had Premier League experience.

With the next league fixtures over two weeks away, not a single Premier League match was postponed this weekend. Strange coincidence, considering there's usually 2-3 matches called off every week.

Enjoyed that. Could've been 3-0 up at half time had Broja not been offside twice. I don't know how close they were, but VAR didn't seem to take a look at either, so I'm guessing both calls were fairly concrete. We didn't seem to be able to pass the ball too well today, seemed to try hitting it into space, but a Man City player usually found the ball first, but we defended very well and after his mistake last week Forster was very good, think that was up their with his performance against Arsenal away (I believe, where we won 1-0?). In the stadium and from behind the goal, the De Bruyne penalty check looked clearly outside the box and even as though he took a dive, but they sure did have a good look at it. Will have to watch it back on the highlights. I thought the red card check was a bit of a surprise at the time too, though, and going from the posts on here we may have got away with one. In recent weeks clubs (Leeds and Arsenal from what I've noticed) have been posting up stricter rules for pitch invaders, kids in particular. Today a kid gets on the pitch and gets Grealish's shirt, which possibly incited a number of muppets to then run on the pitch individually. In my time following Saints I've never seen so many individual pitch invaders, for a match of this stature. It wasn't a good showing from the stewards and it looked like the Man City fans were kicking off at the end, throwing punches. So, we'll see what happens from that. But, going back to the players, we gave the runaway league leaders a game (again), taken two points from them this season. Maybe we should just play them every week to stop them walking to the title. Hats off to all at the club once more.

Even this winter break crept in slyly. It used to be half the teams played one weekend, giving the other half a break and then the other half played the following weekend, giving those who played the previous week a break. That was okay, as there was still football played. Now, it's everyone's off for a mini-break, jet around the world and play money friendlies. Taking away the key element of a "break". What's noticeable is that the Football League doesn't stop playing.

Try to say something positive about Norwich! Errrrr.... Argos? H&M? I wonder if he said the same in his Middlesbrough/Birmingham interviews.

Agree with all that is said. KWP is the better all round right-back currently, but Livramento is clearly a Premier League player already and possibly/probably has a higher ceiling. I don’t think Livramento should’ve been the automatic starter that he became straight away and think we could have rotated better, rather than playing KWP in an unfavoured position. We were crying out for one of these during the Cedric years following a very good right-back in Clyne and it is almost a shame that we have both at the same time. However, Hasenhuttl does need to be cleverer in how he’s using the two to ensure we don’t risk losing a very good player who would no doubt improve one of our close rivals.

One of the posts from the second page is good... "Vestergaard and Bertrand, in their departure messages to Southampton, were quoted as saying 'if you can't beat them, join them. Enjoy the relegation battle suckers!'" ... As we sit one point behind them...

Brentford's early season momentum has completely gone. Toney hasn't stepped up either, only two non-penalty goals. Ronaldo throwing a tantrum and sitting on the naughty step after being subbed off.

Djed Spence is living off the Arsenal cup game hype at the minute, where he bossed Martinelli, but Forest are on Sky quite a lot and in the Championship matches he hasn't really stood out for them and then you have the fact that Middlesbrough loaned him out to a divisional rival, rather thank keeping him for their own promotion push. They don't have the squad of a Chelsea/City/Any of the top six, so it's not really comparable to a deal like Broja. He'd be a good backup to have, probably a bit better than Pied's level, but you don't spend £15m on a backup and I really hope KWP doesn't leave. That would be poor squad management.

Fulham have missed out on big money for Moussa Dembele, Harvey Elliott and now Carvalho from their academy in recent years.

If Everton went down the shitter financially after taking Koeman and their fans giving it large saying they were going to crack the top four, they had a glass ceiling, etc. I wouldn't feel any sympathy for them. The same goes for Derby, their overspending/breaking of the rules just hasn't affected us directly, but it has a number of other clubs. There's a reason why they got a 21 point deduction, rather than the standard 10.

One of the stipulations was that postponed fixtures would be played at the next available date, which was cited as one of the few positives we had for Newcastle postponing our fixture. (We could get them on a quick turnaround) Yet, here we are, a midweek where neither Southampton, nor Newcastle are playing, while three other postponed Premier League fixtures are being played and still no announcement on when the fixture will actually be played. 🤷‍♂️

Martinez would be a bizarre appointment. He was sacked previously after 11th and 12th placed finishes, Koeman took over and finished 7th, Allardyce led them to 8th, Silva 8th and then they declined under Ancelotti and Benitez. So, what's Martinez going to do that's different to now. I don't think he's a great manager either, he's been in charge of the best Belgium team ever at their prime for six years now and has nothing to show for it. He's also another one that isn't particularly liked by Everton fans, judging by his Wiki: "On 12 May 2016, Martínez was sacked by the club, who were 12th with one game remaining. He had guided them to the semi-finals of both domestic cups that season, but fans had protested against his management and demanded his removal." I guess he did get relegated with Wigan, so with all this in mind, please make it happen Everton and continue to get it so wrong off the pitch.

Yeah, from an outsiders perspective, Derby bent a load of the flimsy FFP rules to spend more than they could afford, gambling for promotion. Something to do with their stadium/sponsorship. Mel Morris was hailed as a "genius" by the Derby fans, prompting images such as the one below, and despite never achieving promotion: Obviously, Lampard, Cocu and Rooney won't have been cheap, despite their relatively inexperienced managerial careers and Rooney and Ashley Cole were there as players in recent years, again, will not have been cheap. Now, Derby and fans are crying for sympathy from those in the Championship, despite lauding it over everyone over recent years and they aren't getting it from anywhere. They still have a player they signed for £10m in Bielik on their books, for example... I also believe Derby appealed their initial points deduction and a decision wasn't made until the season was over. Had Derby received their points deduction when originally stated, they would have been relegated and Wycombe would have stayed up, rather than playing out this current "great comeback" storyline. Now, I don't want Derby to liquidate, and I know Bury have in recent years, but I cannot see a club of Derby's size going under and believe this is just another one of those stories that usually gets put out for clubs in this situation to push a deal further forward. Ask any other neutral Championship fan and they believe their punishments are fully deserved, as I mentioned, they were spending much more than everyone else, taking play-off spots, but not achieving promotion, Derby fans were lapping it up each season and it was clear to all that if they were to continue then it was going to go tits up, which it has...

Obviously, you have the major incident, being the penalty. Shouldn't have been one, the attacker stopped playing the ball and went for the contact with Bednarek and then it took around 3-5 minutes to award the penalty after it wasn't called in real time. However, it's the little fouls and non-contact football that's happening again. I don't think referees hate us, but every other team in this league gets in the referee's face and puts pressure on them, because it works. We don't and that's why the likes of El Ghazi and Toney can make fouls that would be a yellow had they not already been on one and ultimately get away with it. Wolves were the same yesterday. An inexperienced referee, got in his face and got cheap fouls throughout, which isn't highlighted as much, but is game changing. You know it's a bad day at the office when Wolves fans are taking the piss, posting videos on social media of Podence doing his best Shefki Kuqi impression and winning a foul from it. At the start of the season, the officials had seemingly taken note of the Euros, where the officials AND VAR went by unnoticed. Games were allowed to flow, football was allowed to have contact again, we rightly scored against Manchester United because of this new outlook. However, the big six bosses made several complaints regarding this and it's seemingly gone back to a non-contact sport again. Plenty of rules were changed midway through the last season regarding VAR and handballs and it's spoiling the game and taking away any consistency immediately. Anyway... Has Traore been wearing two sets of gloves every week in the hope that he'd finally score? Or did he know, we're the club to break droughts against. They even got Coady's first ever home goal yesterday. JWP's free-kick was world class. Up there with Wayne Thomas and Cuco Martina and his was from a dead ball. Incredible.

Yep, and it still gets me how Newcastle and Burnley, who have only won one match after 20 and 17 matches need just another win and a Watford loss and one of them can get out of the relegation zone. Madness, any other season and one win at this stage would see you cut adrift. In other news, Leicester have only played one league fixture since Boxing Day. Rodgers' sides usually collapse in the second half of the season, wonder if the same will happen this season given the systematic break they've created.

Take another fine to comment on how shite the ref/officials are. Never even heard of Michael Salisbury.

The Wolves number three isn’t playing the ball either, steps over it and goes for the contact with Bednarek. Crap decision, the fact it’s taking so many viewings shows it isn’t clear and obvious.

Chelsea would be making a ridiculous decision if they were to sell Broja. He has pace, power and the ability to pull a goal from nothing. Similar to Lukaku, but Lukaku has had four attempts at reputably major clubs and has only been successful at one of them, Inter, where the slower game suits him more. I think Broja has much better technical ability than Lukaku and is better on the ball. If we were to sign Broja and avoiding any buy back clauses, which there probably will be, I reckon we could sell him for £100m+ if his trajectory continues and the timing is right for contracts. Please let it happen and not another Alderweireld!