Pass the Dutchie

Points after 20 games:

Puel was Monaco's fitness coach before he became their manager. If anything, Puel should (and probably does) know more about fitness than Black.

Krueger was on the pitch before the Liverpool game. That's the true part. Publicly though, in full view. Not really the place you would do damage control. And some players have shown some frustration after a substitution. Not so surprising. Fonte's attitude seems to be a bit off this season. Plus we fail to score enough, and some bad results... it's easy enough to make up a story. Just look at this place every week.

Ziyech wasn't selected. Lucky Ajax!

Premier League players selected: Arsenal: Elneny (Egypt) Bournemouth: Gradel (Ivory Coast) Crystal Palace: Zaha (Ivory Coast), Sako (Mali) Everton: Gueye (Senegal) Hull City: Mbokani (DR Congo), Elmohamady (Egypt) Leicester City: Amartey (Ghana), Mahrez and Slimani (Algeria) Liverpool: Mané (Senegal) Manchester United: Bailly (Ivory Coast) Southampton: Boufal (Morocco) Stoke City: Bony (Ivory Coast), Sobhi (Egypt), Diouf (Senegal) Sunderland: Koné (Ivory Coast), Ndong (Gabon), Khazri (Tunisia) Watford: Amrabat (Morocco), Guedioura (Algeria) West Ham United: Kouyaté (Senegal), Ayew (Ghana)

Our fixtures during the Africa Cup of Nations: Liverpool (h) Burnley (a) Leicester City (h) Liverpool (a) Swansea (a) West Ham (h) We'll miss Boufal (Morocco) for at least the first Liverpool match, the Burnley match and the Leicester City match, and possibly for all of them. Liverpool will miss Mané (Senegal) for the first match and possibly for the second. Burnley is unaffected. Leicester City will miss Amartey (Ghana), Mahrez (Algeria) and Slimani (Algeria). Swansea is unaffected. West Ham will possibly miss Kouyaté (Senegal) and Ayew (Ghana) if they progress to the semi-finals. Based purely on that, we'll want Morocco to do badly and Senegal and Ghana to reach at least the semi-finals. Who will you support (if anyone)?

Fernandinho’s third red card in six matches. It's funny as long as you're not a Man City fan.

...for £1M. I would call that decent business. You can't expect a world class player for that money. They man has done alright for us.

I'm at work and can't watch. Appreciating the updates.

The Guardian also have Clasie out until Jan 14th though. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jan/01/everton-southampton-match-preview

No idea. It seemed unlikely last season and it seems unlikely now, but not impossible.

Goals after 19 games: Same amount of points as last year this time, better position. Goals are obviously the main issue.

Position after 19 games:

I was away for a few weeks. Points after 19 games:

We have exactly the same amount of points as we did last season after 19 games. We're also in the semi-finals of the League Cup. Like his style of play or not, be frustrated by the results or not: nobody's getting fired yet.

Plenty of examples in threads where you and ALWAYS do you daily dance of 'disagreeing' with each other. Nothing much duller to me than threads that are 50% made up of people going off topic just to vent their petty dislike of each other. If you consider that entertaining, fair play. Weird, but to each his own. I'd rather see people going at each other because they don't like an opinion, not because they don't like the person saying it. I'm interested in hearing what you think, not in reading a copy and paste job each time. I'm entertained by reading something new every now and then, not by reading something I already know to a point that I can predict it, over and over again. I can dream, right?

I personally really don't care much about polite or not polite. I do 'care' about intentional trolls.

Quite the contrary. You are free to go ahead to make this forum about people being dicks, and I am free to ask people to consider to stop doing that. Instead of asking you that in every thread where it happens, I'm asking you here. Just because you choose to go ahead and respond to trolls, that doesn't mean that we can't have this conversation here. Maybe other people will want to respond differently.

The point is that they already know they're being a ****. That's their intention. And by responding to them - giving them what they want - you also become a negative influence (if it happens again and again and again), starting that vicious cycle. Yes, I am trying to influence you. Part of free speech, isn't it? Trying to make things better?

This has very little to do with free speech. Everybody is allowed to post whatever they want within the forum rules. I'm just asking to consider to not give the people who intentionally try to wind people up again and again too much attention.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/daley-blind-fears-manchester-united-9365716

I’m still relatively new to this forum, but I’ve been around long enough to know this is probably a pointless thread that will mostly be used to make fun of the attempt. But instead of contributing to the problem by calling out people in several threads, I thought I’d bring it up here just in case anyone is listening, and to give other posters a place to talk about this without polluting other threads. Most of us come here because we care a lot about this football club, one way or another. Nobody cares better or best, or is more entitled to caring about the club. I’m a fan of discussions about football, where people bring in their opinions, their feelings, their memories, their ideas. That – and sharing practical information – is exactly what a forum is for. Sometimes these feelings (etc.) can be very negative, sometimes euphoric. On every forum there will be people who will post things with the deliberate intention to wind other posters up – the so-called trolls. We all know how these people work, we all know what they feed on (attention) and we all know how they die (lack of attention). Trolls can exist in various forms, but in the end it usually comes down to repeating the same opinions over and over (both positive and negative) and ignoring any serious discussion or questions about those opinions. This is not the same as being a generally more negative or generally more optimistic poster. It’s a matter of variety and interaction. Nobody likes a troll (except perhaps other trolls). As long as they don’t behave in such a way that a moderator feels called to ban them (for which we’d usually have to report their posts first), we can put them on ignore. It’s a great feature of the forum that’ll improve your reading experience immensely. This loses its positive impact however when people keep responding to these trolls, calling them out again and again, quoting them, telling them why they’re wrong, and so on. In many cases, over half of the posts in a thread end up being from either trolls, or people calling out trolls, and then on top of that people responding to say how other people shouldn’t respond to trolls. I know how difficult it can be to read something you don’t agree with, and to just let it go. This difficulty is what trolls count on. Can we please try to do this differently? Put the posters whose posts rub you the wrong way on ignore. If you can’t resist a response, write them a private message. If a post is truly offending to you, report the post. Let’s pay more attention to football and actually interesting things concerning this wonderful club. You can use the rest of this thread to tell me how sensible posts are not allowed on this forum, etc. Please do, I can take it. But next time you’re about to respond to a troll, or to someone responding to a troll, maybe take an extra second to consider if it’s really worth it. We all want a forum worth reading, don’t we? How do you feel about this?

I know he's old (well... 32) and I know it won't happen, but I wouldn't mind getting Schweinsteiger in on loan for the rest of the season. He can shoot, he can deliver, he has a lot of experience. Our midfield could defnitely benefit from that.

Rodriguez to stay now Austin is injured?

Last season we scored a total of 59 PL goals: Home: 39 goals (1st half: 18 / 2nd half: 21) Away: 20 goals (1st half: 8 / 2nd half: 12) We are currently 7 goals behind last season's schedule: Home: 8 goals (1st half: 1 / 2nd half: 7) Away: 6 goals (1st half: 4 / 2nd half: 2)