The9

I don't know what you think my post was saying, but I was clearly saying we are doing the same thing anyway, irrespective of the manager.

Shrug thing goes here... I'm long past beating the "I was right, thickoes were not" drum on that one. We lost all the "waaaaah, boring team" people who would have decided not to come back with our dire performances under Pellegrino the season after anyway.

Which is weird considering 95% of his reputation was built on Wales and Blackburn being defensive and difficult to break down even with less talented players. We've got much, MUCH worse at preventing balls getting to the defence since Lemina and Hojbjerg pitched up though. The problem isn't just giving the ball away up the pitch, it's being wrong side in midfield, not closing down quickly and winning it back before the opposition has the chance to do anything. I'm sure Kante's rapid sweeping up of the one loose ball on Sunday is burned in everyone's mind - we used to be like that throughout the team, but now we're just reactive.

Honestly, what would be the point of replacing the manager? Everyone since Koeman has done precisely what they've been told and played basically the exact same system, with the two exceptions of when we were dismal under Koeman and he went to 3/5 at the back, and the same thing when Hughes took over. It's not the manager picking the system, and judging by certain selections (looking at you, Stephens 2017 and Hoedt), it's not the manager with the final say on the team either. Same system, different results due to recruitment being more competitive, us not shifting our transfer position despite the huge change in available funds to all Premier League clubs, and the system itself being so well worn and familiar that everyone knows how to stop it, as well as it only really working when you have good enough players to create and finish within that system. So, none of that is down to Hughes, just as it wasn't down to Puel or Koeman. Pellegrino I'll happily accept was useless even considering all of the factors above.

Two home defeats and an away draw against Puel as Leicester manager, our last win against them was Jan 2017, when our manager was... Claude Puel.

Disciplinary Reasons could mean "decided he wanted to join another club"...

Seriously? Hesketh?

Giant horse balls a highlight.

Completely agree with you here.

Yup. Both sides were flying about the place in the first half but we absolutely dominated possession and territory and prevented them having more than one touch in our box. It was a superb display of outplaying an opponent who were by no means poor but just couldn't get anywhere against us.

Vestergaard is one of our best players this season and has reduced the likelihood of us conceding a goal every time the ball is crossed into the box. I'm happy about that. And he looks like a significant upgrade on Hooiveld (and Stephens). At this point I'd be picking a 3 of Bednarek, Vestergaard and Yoshida, but of course we'll keep picking Hoedt because if we don't there's no chance his value will go up. FWIW I'm of the mindset that if we do pick him there's no chance we make a profit either. Maybe Cardiff will want him in January.

Ings has been playing in the hole or even at his most advanced as a support striker for us though, playing off someone else, not up top himself. If he's up top he'll just have the same problems every other of our strikers has had in the past 3 years, no-one able to get the ball to them. I always find it interesting when people don't notice really obvious things like him being more successful due to playing deeper and someone else creating space for him (not entirely independent of modern CBs being remarkably bad at defending against more than one central attacker due to lack of need to most of the time).

The other guy shielding the defence, him alongside doing the shuttling. He was becoming quite adept at it in the Final Days of Puel and finally found a position he was contributing, so of course Pellegrino decided he was a support striker.

If someone could share the artists impressions, we'll add them to the pile.

We really were all over them. As usual without creating any decent chances. Best performance I've seen from us in some time. For a half.

I'd pick him in DM alongside whichever of Romeu/Lemina/Hojbjerg has been least cack recently and get us back to shielding the defence and struggling to create chances, at least we know where we are with that and tend to win a few 1-0.

It seemed bizarre because the first was an non-interfering offside which wouldn't have been given since the 1980s and the second was the ref bottling a blatant penalty against the away team by implying that wiping out a player off the ball was somehow more acceptable because the ball wasn't in playing distance. Even without the clarification from IFAB about 10 years ago that contact fouls (including obstruction where there is physical contact) are direct rather than indirect free-kicks, that foul was a penalty not an indirect free-kick, even in the 1970s - had the ref not completely bottled giving it.

The reason Armstrong isn't playing is because Ings is playing in his position. I'm not sure why we'd want to move Ings from a position where he's been very successful?

Even if they turn up they'll just be 5 yards the wrong side of their opponents chasing back towards our box. Can't see us getting better than a point and would be happy enough with that tbh. Wolves will end up top half along with Watford.

Of course this attitude wasn't hurt by the fact that we hadn't played any of the top 6 twice when Hoddle decided to leave for Spurs.

Clearly you didn't watch the match if you think Vestergaard had any chance at all of winning a header against a player 15 yards away from him when the corner was taken. The issue was the lack of marking of Matip, not Vestergaard seeing the threat unlike everyone else and very nearly stopping it.

Just for the lolz, Lyon were 20/1 to beat Man City last night.

Weird question, I would imagine everyone probably thinks Guardiola's system and detailed coaching would probably get better results. Many of those individuals could be coached to fit into the current City team and not look out of place. Probably not Long or the defenders, and definitely not Forster as he's not a sweeper. Guardiola's system is built upon excellent players retaining possession in an excessively attacking team though. It remains a question whether that system works with less than world class players as Guardiola hasn't managed a team without world class players, but I certainly wouldn't immediately say detailed coaching in a different system wouldn't improve the team and/or results.

Not sure what your evidence of that is: Here are our 2014/15 signings (Koeman arrived June 2014, Mitchell left Nov 2014 so could theoretically be responsible for anything up until summer 2015) - I've flagged the ones with obvious Koeman links. Dusan Tadic FC Twente £10,900,000 08 Jul, 2014 - signed from Dutch team - could be a Koeman call? Graziano Pelle Feyenoord £8,000,000 12 Jul, 2014 - signed from Dutch team - could be a Koeman call? Fraser Forster Celtic £10,000,000 09 Aug, 2014 - Black Box Shane Long Hull £12,000,000 14 Aug, 2014 - Black Box Florin Gardos Steaua £4,000,000 14 Aug, 2014 - Black Box Sadio Mane RB Salzburg £11,800,000 01 Sep, 2014 Black Box Toby Alderweireld Loan 01 Sep, 2014 Black Box Eljero Elia Loan Jan 2015 - Koeman Filip Djuricic Loan Jan 2015 - Koeman Ryan Bertrand Chelsea £10,000,000 02 Feb, 2015 Black Box Juanmi Malaga £5,000,000 16 Jun, 2015 Black Box Cedric Soares Sporting £4,700,000 18 Jun, 2015 Black Box Harry Lewis Shrewsbury Signed 01 Jul, 2015 From the timescales it looks like Mitchell gave it a few months to see if Koeman was as good to work with as Pochettino, and then went when he decided he wasn't. The signings of Djuricic and Elia on loans 2 months after Mitchell left pretty much summed up Koeman's position on our academy route to the first team (for which the club panned him when he left). Just for the record, here are the signings for the season after Mitchell left Saints - still a couple of "not obviously Koeman's choice" buys - but a significantly larger proportion of Dutch links. Players in PLAYER FROM FEE DATE Cuco Martina FC Twente £1,000,000 07 Jul, 2015 - Koeman Jordy Clasie Feyenoord £8,000,000 15 Jul, 2015 - Koeman Oriol Romeu Chelsea £5,000,000 12 Aug, 2015 - Black Box Virgil van Dijk Celtic £11,500,000 01 Sep, 2015 - Koeman (probably) Charlie Austin QPR £4,000,000 16 Jan, 2016 - Black Box There's also the point that Mitchell probably took a couple of key potential signings to Spurs (plus Alderweireld and Wanyama both joined Spurs after Mitchell left to go there). Aside from those two Spurs' transfer deals in Summer 2015 were Clinton N'Jie from Lyon for £8.3m and Son for Leverkusen for £18m - both of which look like viable Saints targets and the type of player we were signing at the time. In 2016 they signed Vincent Janssen AZ Alkmaar £17,000,000 12 Jul, 2016 Georges-Kevin Nkoudou Mbida Marseille £11,000,000 31 Aug, 2016 Moussa Sissoko Newcastle £30,000,000 31 Aug, 2016 - though I can't see us ever having been in for that one!

Hughes' preferred formation has always been variations of 5 at the back.