kitch

Agreed.

Singling out Cedric does seem a bit odd. He's by no means the worst offender out there. I'd say only Ings, Yoshi, Bednarek, McCarthy and sometimes PEH look fussed. None of the others seem to care too much, at least not on the surface.

He was great directly after, to be fair. It was about a year later that he suddenly started struggling.

I would imagine his head isn't in a good place. Speculation, of course, but he doesn't seem the mercenary type to me, where money is everything. I could be totally wrong, obviously. I don't know the bloke, or his situation. He did become a liability, and IMO he does need to get a move even if only on loan. Enough years left to kick start his career again, and he'll do a club a good turn in the future if he knuckles down. Sad situation really, though hard to sympathise too much with someone earning 50k+ a week for keeping fit, while most of us scrimp by!

His decision making in the 2nd half was worrying, like he and Bertrand are on different wavelengths, but for the first half I thought he was really positive. One of the few players you got out of your seat over went he went on a run. Showed good feet too. There's a cracking player in there somewhere.

Honestly, I think we'll go down. A draw tonight against Swansea, and then a beating by Citeh while Swansea go on to beat Stoke.

Not to mention the fact Austin has scored against them in the last two games.

In a way, you could level our current plight at Everton. They lure Koeman away, the boat gets rocked, Puel comes in and everything that happened since, happened from that moment.

I would say it's got to be Austin, though even he would probably feel a knob for accepting any award for anything any of the players did this season (so far, anyway). PEH suddenly started to shine like the player we all know he can be, but in the last month has been shyte again (perhaps excluding Wigan). No idea what goes on with him. McCarthy's done fairly well, having been thrown into a team to replace a bona-fide no.1 starter who'd been shipping goals behind a crap defence. Quite a lot of pressure there, and he could have done much worse. Not saying he's been outstanding, like a Nick Pope situation, but he's done what he needed to do in a fairly toxic atmosphere. The rest are made up of players who've been injured/not given a chance, such as JWP, Gabbi, Sims, Davis, Yoshida etc., or players who've just been shyte (consistent or otherwise) on the whole, such as Tadic, Redmond, Boufal, Lemina, Forster, Cedric, Bertrand etc. God, what a depressing season it's been! Is it over yet?

Watched on the telly. Thought PEH had stood out from the start. Tenacious, ready to battle and try and win the ball at all costs. He's safe with it, too, a bit like JWP. He's not going to set the world alight with skills or a blistering run, but when he's got the ball, and he's being hussled, he's generally assured in possession, before playing simple passes back out of danger. PEH was my MoM, and I don't think he was as bad as people are making out in the first out (well, relatively speaking, seeing as they were all ****). McCarthy also looking confident. If FF had been in goal, he wouldn't have come for those crosses, and if someone like Grigg is waiting, it would porbably have been toe-poked into the net. McCarthy cemented as no.1 at the moment, IMO. Thought Cedric started very poorly, and other than the goal didn't do very much. Bertrand and Boufal's progress was being stifled by Wigan's RB, so didn't get to see them get going. Lemina did OK. Flashes of his class. What I couldn't figure out, is why Redmond was on the left (a right footed player), and Tadic (a left footed player) on the right. Both of them attacking at a snail's pace, and always having to cut back inside. At least with Tadic you've got some confidence in him that he'll still deliver the ball, but not Redmond. That said, I think Redmond deserves another go now. There's a good player in there, and he's quick. Get his confidence back up, convince him to actually take on a man and use his pace, and I think he could be an important player again. Stick him on the right with Gabbi up top, Boufal or JWP in the centre, Tadic on the left.

We can but hope.

On the plus side, we've got no risk of Liverpool coming in for him....

I hope they do. Can't stand Wet Spam.

If by recently, you mean 1994, then yes

100% survival for me. The best years at this club were only 2-3 years ago, and I want to build on that. I LOVED the 2015 season.

He's a human being - sometimes you're just having a crap day, and you're not in the mood. I'm like that all the time. In fact, I hate people, generally. Maybe he's the same? One of our best players though. I've got plenty of time for him.

Hi Mauricio

PEH is probably my favourite player now. Love his attitude and his approach.

Think about it for a minute! Two scenarios: Scenario 1: The club continues to fall down the PL table (well, one more place). MP2 takes us down, we're back to 2011 again and lots of the good players leave. All the fans can rejoice in pointing the finger at the board, calling them a bunch of stupid s**t-c**ts, feel more validated that their opinions over the course of this season were proven to be correct and look forward to playing Brentford twice next season. The fans were right, the board was wrong - a victory for the fans. Scenario 2: MP2 suddenly gets his biscuits in order. We hit a purple patch, climb away to safety, and are clear enough by the end of the season that we can be allowed to blood in some youngsters in non-crucial games (the 'pathway'), who prove to be vital next season in our European push. The board are proven correct in their decision to not succumb to fan pressure by sticking with the seemingly hopeless manager who gets his s**t together and actually comes good, along with their decision to not reinforce the team over the January transfer window. The board have worked wonders in the past few years, but this would be their greatest victory (putting aside the fact we got this bad in the first place), and would prove that in future the fans need to have faith and pipe down when they get upset. The board was right, fans were wrong, but the board being spot-on would still be a victory for the fans, as it means the club is in very good hands. See? There's no bad outcome here, not if you look for the positives! Sure, relegation is normally considered a bad thing, but brush aside that little detail (and all the players who force their way out, having played at 1/3 capacity all season), and it's really a good thing that a team who were aiming for European football end up getting relegated the same season that they've twice broken their transfer record.

I was Puel 'in' until about a week before he was sacked. I rated him as a man, I thought he was intelligent, tactically aware and a good manager. I moved to the 'out' brigade because I was worried that, for whatever reason, he was failing to get results and showed no signs of turning it around. I lost faith in him a bit as the manager of Southampton, but I was still confident that he was a good manager. Ideally, he'd have had a strong run towards the end of the season like Koeman tended to do, and we'd have finished the season with more confidence about us. With MP2, it's different. I've never once had confidence in him. I was there for the first game against Swansea, and alarm bells rang that day for me. Puel was defensive, but knew when to try and kill a game off. MP2 doesn't go in for the kill - ever. The only reason we beat Everton so comprehensively is because they were so woeful, and we had an in-form Austin who was being allowed to score goals like it was a training drill. The only positive I've seen recently is the Spurs game, where the players did appear to be fighting for the manager. I'm sure he's a great guy, but I'm still waiting for him to make his case as manager of this club, because so far it just hasn't happened. In answer to the original question, I don't regret wanting Puel out. Nothing for me showed that the follow up season was going to be any better. The problem was in the appointment of his replacement. I do feel, however, that Puel was very poorly treated by the club, and that the negative press that surrounds the board regarding his sacking is justified.

To be fair, the manager knows him better than we do. He's worked with him before, probably knows he can be effective there.

I've got a GNVQ in IT, which makes it even worse that the fact even a complete lemming like me can see the problem, yet those paid an absolute fortune at the top, can't.

Because the rest of the squad have already played in a way that would benefit Gabbi in the past. It's the same team that made the most of Long in '15, by playing to his strengths. When they started playing to his feet last season, while he had his back to goal (presumably because that's how he'd been told to set up) he became hopeless. I don't think it's the striker's job to do everything (unless you want to fork out for an Aguero), it's the midfielders'. Tadic is capable of that killer pass, but is constantly played out on the right, where he is at his most ponderous. Davis was key in that style of play too, but recently he's out of sorts, and I suspect won't ever return to the '8/10 Davis' we saw a few years ago. We have proof that it worked, because that's the style we were playing with Gabbi arrived, and look what happened there. Ever since, we've been getting more and more reluctant to play a higher line, possibly because we don't have a Wanyama to mop up the mess, and haven't had a CB of VVD's quality since....well, VVD. All this does is leave Gabbi isolated on the front line, with no support at all. Last season, he was forever coming back into his own half looking for the ball, such was the defensive manner the team was set up. He, along with Austin, is a natural finisher. Add to that the fact that he's much more creative (2nd goal against Utd in the EFL Final proves that) and I really feel for the bloke. I don't even think he needs a 2nd striker there, he just needs some bloody support from the attacking midfielders behind him, who I'm guessing have the reins on them due to the manager's seemingly complete reluctance to attack the opposition.

I'd say that, in effect, we need to alter our game to adapt to the players we've got, who've proven what they can do when utilised. The treatment of Gabbiadini recently has been one of the bigger facepalms the club has made amongst supporters. Someone has said it further up - we're relying on Shane '6-goals-a-season-striker' Long to keep us up. It's going to end in tears. The squad is a decent squad, on the whole. Gabbiadini is one of the better parts of it, IMO. Not using him is madness.