HarvSFC

Jol at Tottenham.

It’s an all competitions three match ban, so he won’t be back until Watford next weekend.

Good header Elyounoussi, shame it wasn't on target. Walcott off at half time again please, Adams or A. Armstrong on, need another striker up there.

Poor defending from Livramento, keeping him onside and giving him an unchallenged header there after Bednarek rightly moved to Wood. Suppose we came back from 2-0 down last season, but then Ings and Armstrong got goals from nothing. Going to be a long slog now, unfortunately.

Targett’s not a fan favourite at Villa after this first half.

Remember the footballer "tweet" that we were involved in:

People who talk about how we should have won League One, forget Adkins didn't start the season with us and that Brighton had a six point lead when he was appointed, shortened to three at the end of the season after winning 16 of our last 20 matches and winning us 88 points from 41 games over the whole season. He couldn't do much more, other than perform a miracle. The Championship, nobody expected us to win going into it. It's only now in hindsight and looking at the squad we had that you can think that we had a chance. But, Reading went on a crazy run, beating us to the title by a point after we were top for most of the season. But, no complaints here. Nobody now remembers Reading won the Championship title in 2011-12, or Brighton winning League One in 2010-11. We celebrated promotion in two consecutive seasons, seeing us win most weeks for two years, we got the pitch invasions, the celebrations and we're still in the Premier League. The only thing we missed out on that the other fans got is some silverware.

It would be weird for a manager who blamed their previous struggles at another club on feeling homesick due to being away from the south to then go further north.

If I wasn’t being clear, I was referring to their valuations if they weren’t in the last year of their contracts, which is what Semmens is trying to sort. As, we aren’t doing too badly without a past his peak Bertrand and Vestergaard.

I think we could have made around £5m on Bertrand and Ings would have been valued at around £50m, so that’s a £25m loss, and given we need every penny available to reinvest in the squad, I think that’s what Semmens is referring to. Unsure about Vestergaard, as I believe Leicester only made a move for him because he was cheap and they were in need of a centre-back. With that in mind, I wouldn’t be too upset if Elyounoussi left on a free this summer. We’ve seen the last few seasons that he’s hard to get rid of, if he’s available. He’s definitely improved, but I rank our 10s as Armstrong>Redmond>Djenepo>Elyounoussi>Tella>Walcott and I see it as a position that we 100% need to improve on, barring Armstrong.

The main question marks over Hassenhutl's management are his defensive organisation, which he isn't doing too badly with this season and his tactical inflexibility regarding the 4-2-2-2 formation. With that in mind, we haven't had a genuine relegation scare since Gabbiadini saved us against Swansea, which was pre-Hassenhutl. Now, if you think back to Howe's management of Bournemouth, he couldn't get his defence to work and he was called naive/stubborn plenty of times throughout his Premier League tenure, because his Bournemouth side attacked every week, which left them exposed on numerous occasions and ultimately relegated. So, we'd be replacing a manager with a similar skillset and a relegation on their record. Nothing that I've seen based on performances of the players this season makes me think that we need a managerial change. We've played 8 games with 5 of those coming against the league's current top 8. 6 in the top 10. It's been a difficult start, but we're four points above Burnley in 17th. We experienced far worse under Pellegrino and Hughes, where it was clear throughout that we were being outclassed every week. Additionally, many put yesterday's victory down to playing a depleted Leeds side due to injuries. But, they won't put our defeats at the back end of last season down to missing the likes of Ings, Vestergaard, Romeu and Bertrand for large spells and having a bench consisting of Ramsay, Ferry, Jankewitz, Obafemi and N'Lundulu each week, who all are nowhere near Premier League football in just a matter of months. Howe reportedly turned us down in 2010, and if the stories are true, as he's apparently turning down Newcastle and Celtic as well these days, then I hope that he does it again, as we're a bit too close to blame any failings on homesickness.

Let’s hope Newcastle find a few more £40m Joelinton’s with all their money. Blew their load after five minutes, Dier made it look respectable.

And Leicester stop playing the chuckle brothers and beat Manchester United.

Positive is that we’ve got both Armstrong’s and Tella on the bench if needs be, so hopefully we can maintain this performance. Whereas, Bielsa’s options to switch the game up are a bunch of kids and a crocked Adam Forshaw.

They’re poor on the ball, but then so were Wolves and so were we. Need to capitalise.

He thrives off attention, that's all there is to it.

Sol Bamba’s back playing for Middlesbrough every week at 36 after his diagnosis and recovery. Good that he has recent inspiration and all the best to him. Was a player I wanted us to sign before Bournemouth.

100%. Had the best squad in the Championship, scraped 6th by a point. Had one of the best squads in the Premier League after mass investment, got sacked with them in 9th. Has a false reputation as a manager because of his name, like Gerrard has in a current one team league given Celtic's self destruction.

Get Kelvin Davis back in the first eleven for Saturday too, he plays well against Leeds.

Howe can't organise a defence, though.

Hasenhuttl usually favours players who've been in training all week, doesn't he after internationals? Could be Tella against Leeds and then Broja against Burnley. Either way, it's a shame he isn't ours.

The Fulham youngster, Carvalho would be good for this, who is also in the final year of his contract. We knew we needed a new number 10 when we signed Minamino last January, and nothing’s improved since, so wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a priority position.

But, he's also not the clear improvement for what we need in goal. I understand why we're looking at him as he's in the final six months of his contract, but there's also a reason why he's still at West Brom and why he's only had one Premier League season at 28. We used other fans' opinions to judge a lesser known player in Lyanco in the summer, and a quick Google of Johnstone's two most recent clubs - West Brom and Aston Villa, show he's one that divides opinion. https://www.villatalk.com/topic/15997-sam-johnstone/page/71/ http://westbrom.com/forum/index.php?topic=21946.1875 (They blame the goalkeeping coaching here, where have we seen this before). Then you've got the standard eye test, a goal he conceded last month after 13 seconds in the video below against the prolific Andre Gray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91IYe1xPr34 As I say, I understand why we're in for him. But, he's not the answer to the problem, like Gunn, a highly rated Championship goalkeeper wasn't and we'll be in the same position in the near future.

Still think that we can do better than Johnstone, but I guess he's the cheap option. Signing the one goalkeeper who conceded more than us last season stinks of Leicester signing two of our defenders, who now can't keep out goals for them.