saintwbu

This sounds like how he was always credited with Shaw’s announcement on the scene, when he was already our starting LB when Poch arrived. He is a great manager, and was really good for us, but I can’t help think that Koeman’s team has sort of enhanced the memory of Poch’s tenure, as it was a continuation of progress and some of that period kind of blurs into one for some I think.

Man of the match tonight for Fulham by the sounds of it - trending on Twitter because it’s full of Fulham fans pleading for their club to sign him permanently. A number of shouts of ‘Ginger Kante’ and being better than Kalvin Phillips. I was always surprised Ralph didn’t take a closer look, he seems on the face of it to be a perfect fit for our style.

But Man City also rely on intricate passing in tight spaces, and in dangerous areas. I’m really not sure how he’d cope with that.

Hi Pierre, always good to know the players post on here. The ball should’ve never got to Stephens if Hojbjerg had just gone forward like any other CM in the country would have. Then he wasn’t ‘caught out’, Hojbjerg again played an absolutely shite pass which put in Aubameyang, Stephens had to sacrifice himself to try and stop him scoring.

Clyne comparison made above, but has always been on my mind too, has a similar movement style I think, slightly hunched over and looks a bit awkward on the ball sometimes but effective. Really worth remembering he has only made 12 senior appearances for Tottenham too, he’s 23 but he’s still barely played in the Premier League. I like him, i’ve liked him in every game, and yesterday was exactly the performance he needed to leave a mark. That cross for Ings was the sort of intelligence and precision that we have so desperately lacked with Cedric as our RB, everything was just smashed into the air with no direction.

GET IN THERE!! So happy for him

Spurs fans don’t seem excited at all by it, can’t blame them. But I do actually think he’d be good for them, he’s a Mourinho type player, a brute who covers a lot of ground. At Spurs he’ll have the quality around him to allow him to just run around and battle, we don’t have that so his shortcomings are there to see.

His simple work for the first goal was such an important difference from what we often see from PEH. It was an almost identical situation to what PEH found himself in before the first Arsenal goal the other day. Both came in and received the ball with back to opposition goal and space behind them. One had no idea what was behind him and bounced it back towards his own goal immediately, one turned onto the front foot and played forward. One ended with us 1-0 down and one ended with us 1-0 up! I thought Smallbone was great against Villa at home, and good today, really like the look of him.

I don't think we'll miss him at all, personally. JWP does all the majority of the combative work in this team, and he does it bloody well. I like a kid coming through the ranks anyway, but I really like the look of Smallbone from what i've seen - calm, composed, always looking forward and lovely passer of the ball. At home, I think we'd be far better with one ball winner, one player (JWP/Smallbone combo). If away from home we're still keen to go with two ball winners then JWP/Romeu as a combo is just fine imo.

Smallbone for that goal is almost identical to Hojbjerg before Arsenal’s first goal the other day. The difference? Smallbone was aware of what’s behind him, and his instinct was to turn into attack. Hojbjerg had no clue what was around him, bounced it right back first time, forcing us to go backwards and eventual cock up and concede.

Hojbjerg quality of pass wasn’t the issue for the first goal - his decision to pass it immediately back towards our goal (twice) was. How can we play with a CM who has absolutely no awareness of what’s around him whatsoever, and does not possess the ability to turn on the ball. Twice he was given the ball and with no shoulder check he bounced it straight back to our goal - the first one was unforgivable, he had all the time in the world and a turn would’ve put us on the front foot and acres of space. Absolutely pathetic, drags our team down and is hugely culpable for our poor home form - he does not suit a possession game one bit. Good riddance.

Fuck Hojbjerg off as soon as possible, useless

Why did Hojbjerg try to play those two backward passes without ever looking behind him? he’d have realised he had tonnes of space to turn and go forwards

Hojbjerg away from home (like Friday night) is fairly effective. That’s because we don’t have the ball often, his job is win it high up the pitch and get it to one of our players who can use the ball. Any time on the ball or responsibility and he is absolutely hopeless, hence why he’s dreadful at home, because teams put the onus on us to play and you expect your CM’s to be the main source of creativity but he can’t do it. Great example against Norwich of him having a simple curved pass around the CB’s to Ings and we’d have been in, somehow he went from facing goal to turning to directly face the dugouts, before playing a simple pass down the line. I also really don’t buy the ‘he gives it everything when he’s on the pitch’. He covers a decent amount of ground, but there’s been tonnes of times i’ve watched him let players run past him, and not tracked runners who have gone onto score. His fist pumps into the air appease a section of the crowd, and people love his interviews, but he’s an extremely average footballer and I must say I find his gesticulating to the crowd quite irritating when i’ve just watched him pass to the opposition for the fifth time in 10 minutes.

Still not seen a performance in the flesh worse than Hojbjerg at home to Inter a couple of season back, it was astonishing. People think he’s competent so he wins it for me!

Hojbjerg is comical

Smallbone looking quite tidy, would be interesting to have him in the middle alongside JWP. Armstrong still looks a bit rattled by that early challenge, doesn’t look quite right.

Gonna be really tough today, gonna have to remain patient and not lose our heads... Not the game, Tony Gayle is on co-comms.

To contribute to an utterly pointless debate; Pope, Mee, Tarkowski, McNeil, Cork, Barnes, Wood, J-Rod all get in our match day squad and most would start. IMO.

I’m not sure fitness was as big an issue as some are suggesting. I think them equalising so soon just knocked the stuffing out of us. We were the better team by a mile until the second we scored to go ahead. Then we stepped back and they scored and our heads were gone then imo, we knew we weren’t going to win from that point. I also think it’s annoying that Romeu is the only player we have who knows how to take one for the team to break an attack, meaning he couldn’t do it again as Gedson broke to set up the penalty and no one else ever does it. But, god did we play some great football last night, never enjoyed losing a game so much, we were ****ing superb and that second goal was as good as i’ve ever seen live it was exceptional. I love this bloody team.

Yeah was a great experience, I particularly enjoyed seeing people still entering the ground on 35 minutes because of their ‘no bag’ policy and the single bag drop off point, which then resulted in a queue of hundreds of people an hour after the final whistle. Also was a big fan of the random metal barriers dotted across the exit walkway from the away end which is great for 5900 people to get pushed up against and have to climb under as they leave. Aesthetically amazing, logistically work to be done.

Anyone know why that bloke in the bottom tier was dragged out? Was all getting very messy, lots of people filming.

Hoping JWP is a bad flesh wound, rumours of players shouting you could see bone...

Shame all these links (Cedric, Vestegaard, Hoj) are not popping up in the summer as they’d be great business for the club, but in this window it’d not be ideal to lose all 3.

I think he’s talking about Valery, and I presume you are talking about Cédric?