way down south

he'll probably snatch her arm off if she gave him back his 200m what with his current financial state. but what difference would it make to the club if she is going to have her hands tied with the club's previous cunning decisions which have left us in a seemingly untenable financial cesspit?

well that is if gao is gonna back ralph this time which come to think of he wouldn't be able to even if he wanted, as per a few articles i read, gao is barely breaking even as it is which makes for a bleak and depressingly weak season.

well that was probably the weakest possible performance from us against a chelsea team who aren't exactly the toughest team we'll face this season. our midfield and defence is probably the weakest in the league. I think now is the time for ralph to change his ways or rather go back to his old one of digging around in the u23s for potential solutions to our glaringly obvious shortcomings. atleast up until january when we must look to sign a couple of players.

very unlikely i know but, a win against chelski could see us go on a run of positive results to get our season properly on track. we haven't had a perfect performance in any of our games this season. but if we were to win against them, we'll have produced a near perfect performance and that be a platform from which to build our season.

tadic's main attribute and what made him useful was that he was good at spotting gaps in the oppo defence and weighted his passes through beautifully. especially when he had intelligent runners and prolific scorers like mane and pelle infront of him. also the floated or whipped crosses he made with his left foot were almost always pinpoint. pelle fed off of it as did mane. elyounoussi never demonstrated such qualities for whatever reasons. IMO what elyounoussi struggled most with was the intensity and pace of the epl. split second decisions are what he needed to make but tadic was more intelligent and usually made the right decisions with his passes quickly. scoring was more of an issue for him while he was here as i remember it. he always preffered to pass the ball rather than take a shot, even when in a good position to shoot.

IMO best chance we have is to play as wide as possible and try and exploit their wide areas as its their fullbacks we could hope to get something out of. 4-3-3 maybe with hoj,rom, jwp and redmond, ings, boufal. just my opinion. 1-1 or 2-2 at FT would be best case scenario.

can't see us getting much out of them, they won't struggle too much against whatever pace we have up front as their backline is fairly mobile with tomori in there. their midfield will probably dominate hoj and rom with kante and jorginho in there, upfront there is plenty for us to worry about given our defence and them being full of pace, skill and power. all in all we'll have done an impressive job if we come away with a point.

sorry for posting the same thing twice, i was having technical difficulties. also had to LOL at their miserable fans lamenting matip not being on the pitch, as if he wouldn't have gotten rinsed as well. fickle. reminded me a bit of osvaldo flooring kompany and some others before bending a beauty against man city. imagine the satisfaction if one of our own did the same against liverhampton. day dreaming a bit but..

i just wanted to appreciate vvd getting floored during the salzburg game.

just wanted to say i did enjoy vvd getting taken to the cleaners for a rb salzburg goal.

While I agree that mope doesn't have a grasp on how to affect a game through subs, the fact that we drop off after we score isn't exactly his doing IMO. I know it sounds strange as team tactics are basically the sum total of his job but, after the palace defeat he complained about the team dropping 5 yards back in the second half and sounded as if he hadn't a clue why that happened. Only reasons I can think of are either the players are purposefully veering off of instructions as a way of forcing him out or he doesnt give the instructions which to me sounds worse.

Is it just me or has anybody else accepted the fact the puellegrino won't get sacked under any circumstances this season? That being the case, our only hope of avoiding playing against Ipswich in the championship next season is to start winning games and scoring goals ASAP. Fulham game appears ideal at it's not a six pointer but its still a chance to gain whatever amount of confidence we can from winning and scoring a few. Otherwise lose this then our confidence will be shot (not that its intact now but) we lose (heavily) against watford who BTW need the win as much as we do, at which point we should start looking forward to some 40+ games in the championship next season.

While I dont think we'll get relegated this season, the steady decline of the club since the start of last season is quite unmistakable. Since koeman left and we hired puel everything from how we play to which teams we beat and how difficult we were for the big teams to beat, pretty much everything on the pitch has certainly went to sh#te. And we barely scraped to mid table and could just as easily have ended up just above the relegation spots. Which seems to be where we'll likely finish this season unless there are drastic changes that completely turn our season around. As we've seen in the the teams that are currently above us in the table, 4 or 5 games can make a huge difference.

I think our main issue is a case of being a midtable team. Because clearly we cant buy perfection like the man cities of the world so every now and again we settle for mediocrity. Prime example , fraser forster. Now if we were a top 5 team we probs would have sold his a## and bought a competent keeper by spending say 30 mil on someone like pickford. Another example is us keeping all the generally agreed upon average footballers and sh#te ones too. Jwp, long, tadic, redmond, arguably austin too. IMO had we moved on the above mentioned players and recruited wisely starting the process early in the transfer window, i'm very certain we wouldnt be here arguing why we're so sh#te.

IMO it would be better to play him in away games in which hes more likely to get more space on the break and only has to beat 1 or 2 players to work a shooting opportunity or pick a killer pass rather than home games where the opposition is likely to play with 2 banks of 4 and he'll keep going full boufal trying to beat 4/5 players on his own before he gets a sight of goal. IMO the league cup game against arsenal last season was when he was most effective. Breaking away from midfield beating 1 or 2 players easy, I remember him wreaking havok and terrorizing their defence.

Point taken. But still if we cant keep a clean sheet and nick one goal on the break, what other choice do we have if we are to get anything from this than to score(hope to) atleast one more than them or as many as them. If we got any semblence of confidence from the palace win then we have the slightest of chances for an upset.

Man u are strong in both the wide and central areas of attacking third. Martial, rashford, lukaku pace and power in abundance. I dont know if we can hope to keep a clean sheet against that, IMO our best hope is to outscore them as their back four isnt as flawless as their front 3/4. Theyll probs win the midfield battle as well with pogba and matic in there so, playing direct seems to be the more efficient option. If austin is fit play him as we'll have a chance to win some aerial battles in the box with long feeding off knock downs. Cedric. Vvd. Hoedt. Bertie Lemina. Romeu Tadic. Davis. Long Austin With long joining austin making a front two in phases and davis dropping back to help out rom and lemina and tadic fitting into the 10 role on occasions IMO.

I think mahrez is an example to all prats who wanna leave and act like children while they're at it. Wanting and asking to leave is one thing but disrespecting the club and its fans by refusing to play and refusing to give your all to a club and fans who gave you their all is a whole other thing. I mean its all reasonable to say a footballers career is short as its less than a decade that you're at your peak, but spending 1 more season here while being paid a fortune and all the while raising your stock and probably increasing your chances of moving to an even bigger club than the dippers? How in the f*#k is that too much to ask. I just hope that he's not as stupid as his actions suggest and realises that him staying here playing out of his skin and helping us get into europe and still moving to a real madrid or some such before his 27th birthday is actually a brilliant thing for him.

I think his problem lies with him not growing up in an actual academy setup like most footballers. I read somewhere that he only really got into a football academy at 17 which isnt too old but IMO isnt too surprisng that he is a little behind in the tactical side of his game. He tends to play outside of the team most times ive seen him like he is playing under different instructions.

Hesketh is exactly the player we need. He seems to pick through balls at will, not exactly quick but seems to have good ball control and he can definately smash one in from outside the box. But as has been said above, he seems extremely fragile like one crunching tackle away from a season ending injury. The happoel game from last season seems to have done a number on him both mentally and physically hes completely dropped from the radar after that game. But he did look like breaking into the first xi after the cup game where he score and assisted i think. I hope in his sabbatical hes been hitting the weights and he comes back looking a beast. But highly unlikely IMO as i think hes one of those that just cant cope physcically in the pl, probs needs to adapt his game to work around his physical issues like most offensive midfielders. I mean most arent exactly built like tanks even in the pl, silva, ozil, lanzini i admit he may not have the skills that those others have but i hope we find a way to effectively utilize him, the boy has got talents you cant teach.

IMO we have done a hell of a lot better in this transfer window than in most previous ones. We havent lost players we didnt wanna lose, we signed good players who are proven at the top level and we are getting rid of deadwood that just eat up wages. And IMO even if we sold vvd it wouldnt hurt as much because we already have hoedt ready to take his place. Infact i wish we'd sell now for a stupid fee and get on with signing an attacking mid. Also whats been bugging me is why we dont appreciate players who can dribble in this club. Having a player like tadic is all well and good when hes having a good game but what he does is not dribble past 2/3 players and create a chance out of nowhere OR far more unlikely, curl it in to the top corner. What he does is play a through ball in behind or barely beat 1 player and cross. Otherwise just lose the ball while trying the same thing over and over. Looking at most clubs in the pl they have atleast 1 player who is like a creative hub. Someone who beats players left and right and lays it on a plate for the striker/scores himself, or scores regularly from outside the box. Someone who the team relies on to orchestrate their attack. Lanzini, shaqiri, coutinho, payet, mahrez, eriksen, mooy even. But we have tadic who right now cant orchestrate jack sh##t. How long has it been since we saw him be unplayable like most other creative playmakers can be when theyre on song? Unless boufal is given a chance to prove himself asap and he takes it, we should sign a creative playmaker and sell tadic right now.

Awesome signing. But im wondering who misses out on a starting place alongside him? I bet itll be stephens as him and wesley is a little too short on experiance. Cant be good for stephens improvement, maybe a loan to a lower midtable pl team could be a good idea in january, as warming the bench and starting only cup games isnt going to help him. As for vvd i think even after all the hard stances and resistances the club has shown, i think its inevitable that some team is gonna come up with a bid of >60mil£ around deadline day and we'll get rid afterall. And personally i wont shed a tear over him leaving.

Was under the impression that vvd was still not going despite him handing us a letter and what not. Either way we'll probably go for someone in the 20-23 yr old bracket, unfulfilled potential and cheap (by todays standards that is).

Not neccessarily IMO. What club needs more than 3 fully fit strikers competing for 1 spot in the starting 11? I know gallagher and gabi can play on the left or right wing aswell but theyre primarily strikers so i think trimming down is a great idea. That being said i would be up for a player of vietto or someone with similar pedigree replacing long. Doubtful we'll splash out more than what we get for shlong tho.

After signing hoj and lemina im thinking We now seem to have a different mould of players on our radar. Under utilized 20-25 year olds who moved to big clubs too soon and who are open to move inorder to prove themselves and probably move to another big club where they'll be certain starters in a couple of seasons. Which IMO is an exellent model because they are more likely to succeed than young players from unknown leagues and clubs. And their price isnt too astronomical and neither is their wages. Plus when they do move on from us they'll move for some nonsensical prices. For example if and when lemina starts tearing up the pl in the next couple of seasons we are defo getting 70mil + for him. Rinse and repeat until we change our model again if we get some actual investment and we start offering 100k+ wages and we win a couple of silverwares.