Chez

It's early days. Gronbaek is another attacking midfielder, so is up against Dibling, Fernandes and Sulemena. Would you drop any of those three at the moment? Not immediately replacing them doesn't mean he's a squad filler. Behind those three mentioned there was nothing else really, so there was a need to add another option. He'll get his chance and if he shines then we will be very keen to sign him.

The different style and expectations may well be a factor, but lets not ginore the obvious, he was dropped by Juric. I'm pretty sure that will have contributed a lot to his thoughts of leaving. What player is happy to sit on the bench when they have another side keen to sign them? Perhaps us not wanting to sell is a strong signal that we value him and hopefully he responds accordingly in the remaining games this season.

Tell me, where are Saints in the current rolling three year financial cycle? I presume you have analysed the accounts for the last three years, plus you also know what's going to appear in the next set of accounts? If not, then how are you able to conclude that: "we wont sell any players this summer for financial reasons, we will only sell them because they want to leave"?

I did not say relegation reduction clauses were not a form of cloth cutting, I questioned whether they were enough to balance the books. What is nonsense is your suggestion that there are no financial pressure to sell players on relegation.

I'm not banking on the opponent playing badly (although I certainly hope so), but Brighton are up and down, so could play poorly. We murdered them at their place in the second half and if you watched their game against Forest recently, you will know they didn't just give them room, they gave them the whole of the midfield, without any contest. If you are asking me what we should do if they don't give us room, it will be the same: have lots of players on the half turn, passing the ball very quickly between the lines, but obviously it will be harder.

Excellent. Hope he has a great game on Saturday.

If given the room, we need to replicate what we did in at Old Trafford, which was having lots of players on the half turn, passing the ball very quickly between the lines, with the likes of Dibling and Fernandes epecially showing off their tremendous first touches to make that work. The second half at Brighton was built largely on getting the ball to Dibling and him beating a man and breaking through the lines. We need to see much more of that. Our defence hasn't been able to keep the ball out of the net, so maybe attack - which has been severely lacking - is the best form of defence?

The solution to our leaky defence is to remove a center back and have Fernandes as the only other CM? I'm all for going to a flat back four, but a 4-2-3-1 with Fernandes as part of the 2 sure is attacking. I'd get Downes back in and leave Gronbaek on the bench. Aribo provides fresh legs for Downes

I fancy us.

Is it? Here's some fag packet maths. PL income from TV and prize money is roughly £120m for the bottom placed team. Which is roughly the same as our wage bill (£114m) the last time around in the Prem. The parachute payment is roughly £45m in the Championship. Now cut that £114m wage bill by 40% and see if it equals £45m.

He will likely leave because he wants to play in the Prem (so will be open to another move), but also because we need to cut our cloth accordingly.

If he was good at Burnely, why didn't a PL club better than Burnely (and us) look to buy him at some point, or at the very least take advantage of the fact he was available on a free last summer? I didnt know what he was like as a player when he signed and I still don't.

a quick Google has the NHS website telling me that a "nasty torn calf muscle could take up to three months to heal". That might require surgery, three weeks in a fixed cast and three weeks in a stretchy cast followed by light pysical activity. Your guess is as good as mine why, 5 months later, there is still no sign of him.

Nonsense. We sold £160m of talent and spent just £20m because we had financial pressure to do so. Burnley sold £100m of players last summer and spent about £45m. Are you suggesting that £55m difference is just sitting in their bank account?

Does Burnley, Sheffield and Luton's situation have any bearing on our own? It's very difficult to compare clubs' finances, as each will have spent differently in terms of transfers, be carrying different amounts of debt, have different wage bills going up and then coming back down, different acceptable losses and actual opportunities to make sales.

Yep, wIth Taylor offering cover, and no one going out the door, I just don't understand why we needed Wood. I guess Martin knew he was going to play five at the back, and he will have wanted lots of cover.

He's got some good physical attributes, but he looked really poor last year at a lower level, making all kinds of basic errors. It therefore looked like we had missed a bullet when not signing him the summer before. Obviously, Martin had seen those attributes close up and I can see why he/we took a punt on him, but from the little I have seen of him since he came here, those issues - poor decision-making and pass selection for example - still need resolving.

I don’t have an issue with players being criticised on here. I was pointing out what a non-entity Smallbone was when he played for us in the PL last time. I also pointed out what a pussy he was in the tackle last season. But this season I’ve been surprised at the vitriol on here since he returned from injury. He came on against United, made one poor pass and then took pretty much all the blame for the defeat. Since then he has become the whipping boy, despite hardly figuring. If he starts and plays badly, fine, criticise away, but when I see him being singled out despite only having come on for five minutes at the end of a game, it annoys me a bit.

Still surprised Wood was picked ahead of him.

Try anything except a change of formation?

It could be argued that Les hasn’t been picked to start in every game because some performances haven’t exactly been great. He’s up and down.

Some very good points. He also is faced by the issue of having a large number of players fully invested in RMs possession at all costs game. Even though that wasn’t working in the PL, it’s not easy for players to just give that up having had success last season.

I remember watching him in his first few games and saying he simply wasn’t good enough. Too slow of body and mind. He was always desperately throwing himself to the ground, which sounds good but a good defender is on his feet matching his opponent. At that point he was a £5m punt on a young back up and it didn’t matter too much, but when he’s your so called first choice cb you have a big problem. He’s too weak to match big powerful strikers, too slow to match quick ones. He makes too many errors. He’s not up to Premier league standard.

everything about the game of football annoys me right now.

At one point deep in the second half, Aribo moved back to left centre half, manning went to left wing back and Wellington went into the middle but actually just joined Manning. Les had gone off. Smallbone replaced him and was on quite an advanced position. The central midfield area was pretty much vacant. Juric needs to explain, because I am struggling to understand what the hell we were doing.