The9

That isn't how "Best Goal" competitions work though. It's meant to be the best piece of technical skill, not the shovelled in rebound from 2 yards that happened to occur at the most important time... and if that's the criterion, Boufal's goal was also the only goal of the game against a side that would otherwise be a point behind us even now with one match to play, so we would probably need to beat Man City to stay up if he hadn't scored it.

Why wouldn't you vote for comfortably the best goal any team has scored in the Premier League this season, never mind just us? Lemina's shot was great, but you see 30 of those a season in the division, dribbles past entire teams where defenders run into each other, notsomuch.

Is the right answer.

If I wasn't for that last 15 seconds of injury time and Wesley Hoedt's deflecto-calf at Everton you'd have called that spot on. Impressive.

Leicester winning the League was 5000/1. Swansea are around 120/1. So just the 40-ish times more likely to happen...

I've got a fiver on it happening at 120/1 (Betfair Exchange, so the truest state of the market) which would cover the cost of my Championship season ticket, so win-win. Or lose-lose if you like...

Not true if they score 11 goals and we don't get any...

Formation change made all the difference. Swansea were clueless but all over us for most of the first half and we were second best and worried. Second half a lot more even but going 4-3-3 meant we actually had the opportunity to keep the ball up their end for a bit, and with two finishers on the pitch we always had a chance then. Professional and took our chances. I don't recall the great save McCarthy made, was it the header in the middle of the box, because it was given as offside before the guy even headed it?

We'd still be above Huddersfield if they lost to Chelsea and Arsenal no matter the Stoke result...

I am hoping the massive bo11ocking Guardiola will hand out later for their dismal showing against Huddersfield will only affect their performance on Wednesday against Brighton, and they go back to sleep for the weekend. They were probably distracted by the trophy presentation (and the presence of Everton-loanee Mangala in full kit) and won't be that bad at St Mary's. That 100 point target is still bothering me now they've already dropped the 2 points I was hoping they'd drop against us...

I'm fairly sure Gabbiadini has the ability, in a team that does more than just pass to the full backs and cross the ball nowhere near him when he's the only one in the box. Most of his early goals came from us varying play with the odd through ball, which we completely stopped doing around March 2017 until we played Wigan recently.

Not quite that simple, we relax against Man City and could walk into the only kind of result that could matter. Though every goal we win by against Swansea would be two more they'd have to claw back from the goal difference, so I think at somewhere like a 3 goal lead I'd be comfortable even a highly motivated top of their game Man City (which they certainly weren't on Sunday) and an inept, relegated Stoke, couldn't overturn the difference. And Huddersfield not getting another point might still offer a safety net too.

I agree with your point about Lemina, unconvinced by Hojbjerg doing anything like that (but they can't all play back there, can they?). We're a bit less predictable at the moment, partially the different formation, partially more pace to our passing and more movement, partially just Tadic's impact. As I say, it's not a hill to die on, they're much of a muchness. FWIW I usually watch the match back if I've recorded it, I just can't bring myself to do that this time... and I watched the Chelsea League match twice.

I have completely written off the Man City match in my considerations, and will continue to do so unless Tuesday and Wednesday's results mean it is our only method of safety (in which case I'll look to Huddersfield's point earlier for hope).

They basically need a point unless we draw with Swansea, and even then there's a chance two from us, Swansea and West Brom will win on the last day and overtake them. Also if we draw with Swansea then West Brom are still able to escape, if one of us wins that match and joins Huddersfield on 36 WBA are gone and there's only one relegation place to avoid. Though Huddersfield do have the benefit of playing their match the day after, albeit away to Chelsea.

Firstly, as of Sunday at 6pm they have guaranteed qualification for the Europa League group stages which begin on 20 September, 6 weeks after the season does. So that's most of your argument out of the window immediately. He might pick a weaker side away to Leicester on Wednesday because they're playing 3 games in a week and neither club can basically change position, but he'll still stick a decent enough team out against Huddersfield for his final match, especially as no-one remembers the penultimate one - they'll remember beating Burnley 5-0 and whatever happens at Huddersfield. Today's team should be a pretty good pointer - rested Ozil, Mustafi, Monreal (and Koscielny got injured) after Europe, but first choice everywhere else. Cech; Bellerin, Koscielny (injured - Chambers), Mavroponos, Kolasinac; Iwobi, Xhaka, Wilshere; Mkhitarian, Lacazette, Aubameyang. That's still a pretty strong team considering they played a European semi-final 3 days before. I don't think he'll give a monkeys about showing off the youth team, though he might have to pick the Greek kid again now Koscielny is injured.

He's overseen a huge rise in our non-tv revenues, so he's been a huge success in terms of his actual role. Whether he should be having input into team-based decisions or recruitment is an entirely different question - as is how great our revenues will be without the level of relative success we've had in the past 5 years.

I think we can agree on that. But what the hell have they been seeing on the training pitch that Hoedt and Stephens have been ahead of Bednarek all season?

You've picked the right games, with hindsight losing to Augsburg pre-season with Ward-Prowse as a support striker and gaps all over the midfield showed all the tactical nous Pellegrino had, and burning through winnable games with a bunch of tactically inept draws playing like Puel had pitched up and told them they had 3 matches in the same day is still what's costing us now. It's taken three games just for Hughes to put us in a position where our defensive midfielders aren't constantly wrong side and chasing runners from the halfway line towards their own box instead of already being there protecting the defence, how a team gets that out of position to begin with I have no idea. We were even doing it against Wigan. I think the win over the worst Everton side in years at St Mary's was a false dawn that bought Pellegrino time he did not deserve. And of course the dubious trigger-happy firing of Puel before him made them less keen to have to pull the trigger again - same with me, I thought he was awful but there was always something else happening as mitigation, and then the appalling timing of the "stick by him" announcement right before our entirely predictable twentieth (or so) tactical failure against Palace which was entirely down to the manager not responding to Palace's change of formation.

They bought Hoedt and Bednarek in the last one and with Van Dijk sticking around and Yoshida, Stephens and (in theory) Gardos, if anything we had too many of them at the start of the season (certainly now having lost the best one they don't look good enough, but it's taken time for Hoedt to show that often enough for it not to be luck or colleagues - I think it was already evident with Stephens/Yoshida by then but some people only see what they want). I think what you meant was "not buying two centre backs definitely good enough for the top half of the Premier League immediately". All indications are that Bednarek might have what they seem to think Stephens had, which would be great, but we still need at least one left-sided CB to go alongside him. FWIW I think Stephens might still make a decent full-back (maybe not the kind of full-back we use though) and he might be ok in the Championship if that happens.

Lemina was erratic against Bournemouth and gave the ball away far too much for my liking. Ward-Prowse's range of performance is less bad and less good than the various Leminas we've seen this season, and we miss JWP's set-pieces when he's not on the pitch. JWP's best position seems to have been alongside Romeu and he's hardly played there this season. I don't really think there's a right answer and there's not much in it, but I'd be inclined to go for the consistent, level-headed player over the potentially excellent/awful one. Hojbjerg is another with howlers in him, but his top level hasn't been seen since August 2016 so it's not such a factor. I'd pick Romeu all day long though. At least we've got options in those positions.

What's changed is that we can't be mathematically safe by beating Swansea, whereas we could have before Everton's equaliser. Now, even if we beat Swansea they can still overhaul us on the last day with a stuffing of Stoke and/or us losing heavily to Man City (7 goal swing plus however many we beat them by). So there will be at the least an element of uncertainty on the last day (unless we hammer Swansea, I guess; every one of the goals against them in a win is effectively worth two more we can concede if we lose against City). It also means Huddersfield getting any points against Chelsea (A) on Wednesday or home to Arsenal in Wenger's last match would mean we'd have to match their points total for those two games in our match with Man City as well as staying above Swansea. AND it means if we draw with Swansea, we'd need them to not better our result against Man City in their match against Stoke (and if they did do that, see above for the Huddersfield clause). It matters because of West Brom's revival too, if we draw with Swansea and West Brom beat Palace they can overhaul us with a 5 goal swing in GD - which is only a 2-0 win for them and a 3-0 defeat for us on Sunday, for instance (a 4 goal GD swing will still see us stay above them provided they don't score 6 more than us as they'd then have more goals scored). Both us and Swansea could then go down - though it's unlikely we'd lose by 4 goals more than Swansea lose to Stoke by, for Swansea to overhaul us on GD - if West Brom don't win by enough to get them safe). West Brom are down unless we draw with Swansea though - the final impact of that Everton goal was to keep them up til at least Tuesday, and they were 6 seconds from relegation on Saturday evening.

If you think Stephens should be in ahead of Bednarek I really don't know what to say... Ideally I wouldn't pick either Hoedt or Stephens at all, but Yoshida's suspension and our lack of centre-backs beyond that plus Hughes's preference (and relative success) with 3 CBs gives us a dilemma there. Redmond probably deserves to be in that team based on his recent performances too, though so does Tadic, and we can't then pick both Austin and Long if we have 5 at the back. We need someone who works like Long but scores like Austin, which was Gabbiadini for about a month in February 2017 but I can't justify him starting at the moment either. I'd also go with Ward-Prowse over Hojbjerg, as long as it's as a central shuttling midfielder alongside Romeu - he was getting good at that last season. Says a lot about Lemina's unpredictability that I'd take JWP over him. Hughes has a lot of previous (especially with Wales) in favouring volume and consistency over ability at the back, so he'll probably go with Bertrand, Hoedt, Stephens, Bednarek, Cedric, two of whom give me fits when the ball is near them. FWIW I quite like Pied as a right back and don't think he's much better or worse than Cedric, but we're probably not going to go with two right backs in a nominal 5-4-1/5-2-3/3-4-2-1/3-4-3 either (and they're all VERY similar formations depending on how far forward you put the full backs and non-central attacking midfielders).

Abraham is still there, he's not your typical target man though. More worried about the likes of Mawson from set-pieces.

God I love that some things are still constants on here even when everything else changes. Absolute bloody nutter and super-wrong at every opportunity. "Let's play three left sided players including two full backs in the exact same space and minimise the space for our best player in recent matches". Not quite the same as playing one with experience at CB to minimise mistakes there and one who's naturally attacking anyway and used to play far further forward.