Baird of the land

Thought we were better in the 2nd half. Wanyama was pretty much a non entity today. Hopefully he'll be relegated to the bench and Romeu(who came on and did well) will get the nod. Also don't get why Long didn't come on for Pelle, who i thought had a very off day. Unless Mane was injured don't get why he was taken off, he was causing them all sort of problems. Saw a little more from Juanmi. Should have done better with his 2 chances. The defensive problems persist. Soares switching off and almost handing them the lead back. Also villa are the worst side i've seen for a long while. Makes so much more galling that we didn't beat them. My man of the match was Davis, thought he really stepped up to the plate 2nd half. We suddenly had some drive in centre mid.

Atrocious finishing from Saints culminating in a comical conceding of a goal from virtually villa's only attack. Also hate how bad we are when we don't have the ball. Zero pressing or pressure on the ball. When we've got the ball too often we head backwards, very few individuals with composure to take the ball and move with it.

Utter nonsense this idea that Vic is in a different league to Cork imo. Cork's an excellent player and him and Wanyama would have been an excellent partnership. He offers the passing that Wanyama that Wanyama is uncapable of while Wanyama clearly has the advantage in the physical presence.

Yesterday was embarassing. Equally not for the first time of late Koeman's tactical switch to three at the back was an utter disaster that turned a disappointing defeat into a humiliating 6-1. Wasn't happy with the strategy of resting players in an important league game to priortise the league cup, being humiliated by Liverpool reserves just added more salt in that wound. The loan signing of Caulker has long bemused me. Why parachute in this waste of space and force out academy players such as Stephens. Also if i was Yoshida i'd be extremely annoyed, constantly hung out in dry in a unnatural position and the instant that there was a gap in centre back he's overlooked in favour of the useless Caulker. Hopefully we can terminate his loan in January and recall stephens. Personally don't think Koeman should be handed big money in January. Lot of work for Koeman to pick up the team before a big game against Villa.

Marcelo Bielsa

Hopefully we resist any such nonsense. Otherwise all we'll have done is given Malaga a 5 million pound charity donation.

Yep not a fan of the squad fluffing. Prefer it if we focus on purchasing players for the core and use the academy we've invested heavily in as support. At the very least we didn't need all of Romeu, Martina, Caulker & Juanmi. With Soares we seem to have gambled(it may work out in the long-term but in the short-term he's inconsistent) rather than our policy in relation to the likes of Clasie/Van Dijk.

Played the full game when Middlesborough beat Man Utd in the cup though, so seems more a case of them using him as cover and not feeling much of an inclination to develop him as he's not their player.

Stek: 7.5 Decent cover loan replacement for Forster given the situation Soares: 7 Was tempted to give him a lower stat given how bad he was early in the season. His recent performances have been a marked improvement and after seeing the rabbit in headlights that was Yoshida yesterday he deserves his 7. Martina:??? Why buy such a player? Why refuse to play him above Yoshida? Caulker: 5 Another strange one. If you are going to rehabilate such a player surely you have to buy him not loan him. If he's simply cover why not use the academy players such as Stephens who has been sent out on loan to sit on Middlesborough's bench and play the odd league cup game. Romeu: 5 When people were raving about him early on i was scratching my head and thinking he looks an average player who looks like he's about to get sent off any minute. Koeman must really hate reed to parachute him in ahead of him. Clasie: 6.5, low mark because of his injury but there are flashes of the quality that'll hopefully mean a much higher mark by the end of the season. VVD: 9.5, Class (Shows what happens when you spend real money) Juanmi: 2, Reminds me of Mayuka at the moment. Hopefully he'll develop and it won't be another case of us being robbed as he ends up goeing back to malaga on loan and we lose the fee we paid for him.

Atrocious management by Koeman. Setting the team out to get battered. Only after we'd already thrown the game did we actually try and come out and give them a game. Guess what they were missing their first choice keeper and their star centre back and it showed. Once we got at them we looked like scoring. Adding one of our best players Tadic who should have started helped and we scored and gave them a scare. If Tadic had taken the chance at 2-1 the game might have been different. As it was we were caught on the break trying to push for the equaliser. The other extremely annoying thing is playing an out of position centre back at right back. Why was Martina bought if he is considered so useless as to be third in line.

Saints deliberately trying to embarass themselves.

Not particularly impressed by the heavily defensive nature of the lineup, given city's defence is their area of weakness and sitting and letting them pummel us seems a bad idea. Hope i'm proved wrong.

Yeah it's certainly an aspect of Koeman reign that i'm not particularly enamoured with in comparison with Poch.

Terrible reffing, capped by missing a blatant penalty.

Davis has looked good as has Tadic. Unfortunately for both their worst moments were when they got into good positions to shoot. Cedric has looked weak, so might not be a bad thing if Yoshida has to come in for him. Frustrating half really, as good as Stoke but need to step it up in 2nd half and get the goal back.

Shame, he's still a player i wouldn't mind us signing.

Sounds bizarre and very worrying.

We've got more depth. Decisions from them like sending Dyer away on loan confused me immensely too unless it was due to financial constraints. Also their striker is off form(Gomis) & they lack adequate back up(something we've suffered from to some degree in the past, like last season when Pelle was going through a drought) Also i think the gap between us is exagerrated currently, they will bounce back and finish in the top half as they have a good manager(barring knee jerk sacking) & a good first xi. After 5 games they had 11 points whereas we had 6. Better time to judge would be at the midway point of the season.

As much as I'm enjoying Chelsea's struggles, that remy decision annoys me. It was a clear penalty and all that does is benefit cheats by convincing players that they won't get decision if they try to stay on their feet.

Don't agree that he's an excellent keeper. he's a decent keeper but weighing up the overall balance of his strengths and weaknesses area wise, I'd prefer Forster.

Not surprised. Steklenberg strength is his kicking. Look forward to having Fraser back though.

JWP chance has got to be to eventually nab davis' spot in the team. Don't see him covering for Vic this weekend as Romeu is the defensive mid cover. For right now he's just got to be patient and try and make an impact when he's brought on.

Played ok both first halves against Liverpool and Bournemouth. Then played awfully in 2nd halves. Hoping its a fitness issue.

Jekyll and hyde performance. Worrying that we go can go from that good to that bad between halves. A better team would have made us pay. Clasie was exceptionally poor 2nd half, couldn't believe he lasted to 70 minutes. Hope his fitness improves quickly. Hope Fonte was just taken off as a pre-caution.

Targetted loan agreements with clubs who's approach matches ours are good. Think Stephens & Turnbull at Swindon last season. However the problem is that we've entered a period where the opportunity to break into the first team is heavily damaged/broken despite the PR that suggests the opposite. In general the abuse of the loan system by the big premier league clubs negatively affects players development. Unless we provide first team chances for these players when they do well in the youth system or on these loans they aren't going to come through. This season we've got our loans badly wrong. Gallagher's seemed good on paper but MK Dons lost patience and now he's getting little to no football. Stephens is at Middlesborough not playing, whilst we have forked out what is probably a large fee to loan Caulker to sit on our bench as 4th choice centre back. That's surely a position should have been up for considering he's had 2 highly successful loan spells in league 1, especially since he has the versatility to play in a number of roles. I wouldn't have issue with Reed getting a loan deal somewhere as long as if he does well he isn't cast in the role of perennial loanee. He did very well in his handful of premiership games last season and the refusal to use him early this season(barring extenuating circumstances) was bizarre.