saintwbu

Ref cost us, simple as that. Chasing a game for 45 minutes when we were in control first half.

The last time Demarai Gray moved clubs it was during the January transfer window. That club then ended the season as Premier League champions... 😉

Brilliant, thanks, hadn’t seen that. Didn’t realise Djenepo came back out to watch, nice to see him smiling with Ralph at the end. What a team.

Completely agree - great fee at the time for a player we didn’t even really need bar a short term injury for Clyne which got him in the team in the first place. Most people probably don’t even remember he played for us, has done next to nothing for any club he’s played for since. Think his only decent period was playing holding midfield for Fulham after being poor for them at CB, they seemed to like him when he moved further forward.

I want the game to go ahead for footballing reasons, but a bit worried about the thought of us ending in a situation of missing anyone important the week after if their outbreak hasn’t been contained as well as they hoped! But i’m probably not clued up enough to know if that’s a likely scenario or not.

I love Romeu to bits, what I liked about Diallo last night was that he’s not the same as Romeu. That means we have 3 quality CM’s that all play differently from each other, finally giving us genuine options in that position. Really exciting.

Sky were wanking off Thiago beforehand like he was the second coming, and then Diallo walked all over him for 90 minutes, Thiago was treading a thin line fouling twice whilst on a yellow. What a performance.

There’s been a lot of re-writing of history about Stephens this season. He was brilliant from the Aston Villa away game at the end of 2019 onwards, and a huge part of our upturn in form. He had a bad couple of games at the start of this season and people went back to slaughtering him. Pleased for him that he’s stepped into Vestergaard’s shoes brilliantly.

It was really sad to see. You can see his frustration, he seems like a really lively, bubbly character so to see him like that was actually really hard to watch. Really hope he can shake them, as there’s a lot of talent in there and I think he’s got a lot to offer.

Am I right in saying that Stephens hasn’t conceded a goal since he came back into the team? 3 clean sheets on the bounce.

I’ve always liked Demarai Gray, but yeah he’s probably not shown his quality regularly enough at Leicester. They have been a good team for almost all of his time there though, and he’s had good spells. I’ll be really happy if we can get him in, if it’s as well as fullback cover (Brandon Williams would be nice) then I think we’d have a really strong squad for the second half of the season.

If Antonio is out i’ll be much more confident. Glad we’ve got Romeu back for this one, Rice makes them tick, we’ll need to win it in midfield to have a chance of getting 3 points. Without Antonio they don’t have a great deal of pace, which is good for us, but they’re a big threat from set pieces with Soucek particularly. Would love to banish some demons and finally beat West Ham for once!

We played shit, but we still scored twice, had a blatant penalty turned down (yet again), hit the bar and missed an open goal from 2 yards out. We definitely deserved to win. Not bad for a team missing its three best players this season.

That’s not true to be honest. Aston Villa away last year around this time was the first game where he looked real quality, and had a pretty solid season from that point onwards. He had a poor start to the season and hasn’t been back in since, which is just football.

Got to sign him up imo. I haven’t seen any decline in his performances. KWP is more eye catching going forwards, but not as solid defensively. Bertrand still overlaps and his delivery is superb. I think he’s the sort of player who could shift into more than one position if needed, just a technically brilliant footballer. I’m also not surprised he mentions a future at the club beyond playing, he’s the sort of player I could imagine taking up a director of footballer role at a club in the future (be it ours or another). Very intelligent guy with a business mind.

I like Redmond, and always back him. But there’s no doubt about it Saturday was one of his worst performances for us, he missed the ball or put it straight out of play on multiple occasions. I don’t think it’s unfair to point that out, he looked really out of sorts. Hopefully it was just a tough game to get into and the conditions didn’t help. Djenepo starts for me, he’s a live wire and unpredictable, and can do the defensive work too.

Lemina brilliant for them yesterday but obviously can’t play against us so that’s good. Andersen out and has been one of their improvements in defence. Got to win this really to avoid looking like we’ve had a bit of a slump.

Shame they couldn’t have done that against Liverpool wasn’t it. I wouldn’t mind Spurs winning the league, but at the same time I really don’t want him to.

I fully expected him to start today to try and help him get up to speed and find his rhythm again. The only thing that surprised me was him not coming off against Sheffield United at 3-0 up. Was very surprised he played the full 90 that day.

Ref was fucking horrible - to be expected against a big side but still as annoying every time.

The return of the Premier League saw ‘Black Lives Matter’ on the shirts, in the stands, on Sky’s broadcasting of the matches. The knee was supposed to be for the first game back. After a few weeks, the Premier League were getting uncomfortable questions about supporting the political movement, I think some clubs even issued statements distancing themselves? The Premier League denied they were supporting BLM. However, the next week, all that branding had gone, somewhat coincidentally I think we’d all agree. The protests throughout the summer were largely anti-police, anti-conservative and anti-establishment. From my experience, a large proportion of people who attended were there more because they were anti-government than because they were searching for genuine improvements in society around equal treatment. To then see that carried over into football is what I think has caused a divide on this topic. As mentioned, other pro-equality movements that the Premier League have engaged with have had no backlash at all. But most of those didn’t involve police being attacked, national monuments being defaced or elements of society being told they must be racist because they don’t do this or don’t do that, when plainly it’s not the case. Unfortunately, despite the far left shouting the loudest most of the time, most of this country are not anti-conservative, are not horribly ashamed of our history and do not hate the police. Taking the knee carries that association, and always will, rightly or wrongly. I think if the stadiums were full the dissent would be much more clear.

Not really, they’re only 3 points adrift and just took a point off City, having nearly taken points off United and Spurs and were also 3-0 up against Chelsea earlier in the season before blowing it. Gallagher, Diangana, Pereira and Grant are all good players and they have a very good goalkeeper in Johnstone. I really don’t think it’s that big of a job, I think Bilic would’ve still had a decent chance of keeping them up too - we’re only 12/13 games in!

WBA will take a lot more points off teams if they do go with Big Sam. So i’m glad we’ve already played them once and got the win. They may come in handy for us throughout the season though.

As mentioned i’d like to see a mix of new guys and first team. Salisu, Diallo definitely to start, then ideally N’Lundulu and Tella too as they seem to be regulars on the bench. But I wouldn’t want a whole second choice 11 as we’ve got a really good opportunity to win this cup.

Would add even more joy to this already fantastic season so far if we see the emergence of Tella and N’Lundulu in this team. Both look really promising, and bring attributes that suit our game, so fingers crossed for them both.