striker

Ridiculous match. We dominate yet are down 0-2. I think MU only has 2 shots. It should be 2-0 us.

Typical BS. We have a perfectly good goal dissallowed, and then MU hits a perfect free kick.

Leicester now in relegation, and a tie still doesn't get them out. What a fall.

I think Gabby is the type of striker that Puel wanted (past tense) Redmond to be. The short quick guy. Jay Rod looked ****ed, my guess is he's looking to go.

Oops, make that -3. I am shocked at how bad Sunderlands d is.We are just passing back and forth uncontested in their own box.

and we cut our goal differential to -4 !

Good team goal there, about 5 guys touched the ball before the OG.

Good point, I forgot about Gallagher. He has promise. Gabbi, Gallagher, Austin, and Long (along with little Thierry of course) is really pretty good.

Puel probably just saving him for the cup final, rather than sticking him in for the final 10 minutes of a blow out.

Do Sunderland really have zero shots on goal as the stats are showing? I thought I remember one. Regardless, 14 shots versus 3, this is an ass kicking.

I can't believe how open our mids are at the top of the box. We are passing in there with ease..

Very open and sloppy now. Good thing we have that 2nd goal. A goal now could come from either side at any time.

Sunderland offers nothing. They really do deserve to go down. This is a home game and look at them.

I like this Gabbi guy. Lines us up well for next year with Gabbi, Austin, Redmond upfront (screw the rotation). That would provide lots of offensive pressure.

At least Gabbi is creating issues upfront for the D. I want to see him and Austin together, would give the D lots of runs and pressure to think about.

Charlie Austin for me. He will likely still be the top scorer for the season even though he played only 13 games.

Just realized only Crystal Palace has as little points as we do over the past 5 matches, 3 pts. Every other PL team has more.

I can't really lay this on Puel. Take a mid table squad, take out its leading scorer (Austin), and two stud CB's (VVD and Fonte), and what do you expect will happen. If anything the fault should be on Reed for lack of depth in the squad.

I agree with this. You can't just march the same 11 out there for all 9 matches. So Puel made a determination after looking at the schedule where to sit players. After advancing in the EFL, and the priority of the PL, I can't knock him for this.

38 goals works for me.

I believe Austin scored 6 goals in 13 games, putting aside the "non PL" league goals he got. You can ding him for making penalties I guess, but at least he makes them unlike others. Long currently has 1 PL goal in 17 games, and Rodriguez has 3 in 13 appearances. Its an apples to apples comparison because early on Austin wasn't starting either, plus they have played in the same system with the same players. 6 goals in 13 games is something like 17 goals in 38, which is pretty much what he did with QPR too. So of all our guys he does have a track record of scoring. Look I like Rodriguez, and I also like Long although I think he should be a change of pace off the bench ideally. I'd love to see a traditional 2 striker setup with Austin and Rodriguez upfront. Put Redmond and Long outside, with Boufal and Tadic inside. My issue is that people seem to need to "pick" one striker to like. Austin came in and did what he was supposed to do, fill Pelle's stats, which he did. He also gives us more of a presence in the box and air than the others do, however the others bring something to the table too. No one striker is the perfect Arguello. I see no reason for anyone to be bashing Austin. What exactly didn't he do, and where would we be without his goals.

When Austin got hurt he was accounting for something like 45% of our total goals. This was 2nd in the PL I think, and rediculously high. They guy is by far the best finisher we have. He was on track for 15-20 PL goals. He did this with the same formation and players that Long and Jrod are playing with, so not ideal, however he was getting it done. He is also much better than the other two in the air and around the goal. The players knew this and had a lot of confidence they could score when he was in there. With all the complaining about lack of scoring now, and losing Pelle, here is a guy who was scoring and was replacing Pelle's output (in fact probably exceeding it), but you'd rather knock him? You can't say results matter to the strikers we have now, but "looks" matter when discussing Austin. Given a full PL season Austin has proven he can score 15-20 goals. He had 18 with QPR and was on track for that this season. How many other strikers do we have, or does any team have, that can say that?

Either that or we just get it over with and move VVd and Yoshida up to strikers. Might as well put our two most dangerous scorers closer to the opponents goal.

Here's my lineup for next week: Forster Long-JRod-Sims-Bertrand Boufal-Redmond-Clasie-Romeu VVD - Yoshida

Maybe this is our secret strategy. We are playing the inverse alignment, our backs are really strikers and our strikers are really defenders?