Teddeer

Agree, absolutely ridiculous. Kante should have his arms by his side otherwise it's a penalty.

Isn't it 10 points from 12 games?

Agree, I thought they were the better side for periods against Spurs and very unlucky to come away with nothing.

Ah, didn't realise that. Harry Reed will also attract interest as he's turned into a good player.

If Fulham go down there are a few players who will generate interest starting with Anderson the centre back. I wouldn't mind us going in for the left back Robinson who would fit us well - maybe they'll take Bertrand in part exchange 😄

Will be keeping a close eye on Fulham v Spurs tonight at 18.00. Hoping Jose starts with Bale in the side and, if so, I fancy Spurs to win by a couple of goals. Jose being Jose he'll probably do something else and screw it up.

It's embarrassing to hear big strapping footballers screaming like little girls at the merest of contacts. It is even more evident with televised games played with no spectators. These wimps/cheats obviously have no shame.

Salisu did whinge a bit and, whether he was hurt or not when accidentally slapped, he would do better to hide the fact. You never saw John McGrath letting on that a centre forward had hurt him!

I'm pretty certain the Villa fans would have been saying they couldn't see them losing last night as they have more quality. Not suggesting we'll lose and, like everyone, hoping for a resounding victory but these things don't always follow the script.

I don't recall the high defensive line costing us too many goals. From what I've seen we invariably catch the opposition offside. I might be wrong and stand to be corrected.

They are handling being down to 10 men far better than us.

Judging by the way they're putting themselves about today if we aren't right at it on Saturday there is a chance they'll turn us over.

If we fail to match their effort it will be criminal and we will risk losing the game.

Adams is being forced to feed off scraps because we are creating very few scoring chances. When he misses a glut of chances will be the time to berate him. Right now he is receiving zero service mainly because of the fact that we are content to continually recylce the ball and go backwards rather than attempting to apply some real pressure to our opponents. We are far too easy to defend against and Ralph needs to address that.

Indeed. Just watched Wolves bring on a highly rated young American against City. The first thing he did was try to dribble the ball out of his own penalty area. Needless to say he got swamped by City players, lost the ball and it eventually broke to Mahrez who slammed it into the bottom corner. Lesson learned the hard way.

Time to get Armstrong making those driving runs but more centrally. He's very good at ghosting past opponents and I can see him winning lots of free kicks within JWP range.

Looking at our remaining games I think we'll get a minimum of 13 points and that was being conservative. Of course we have to end this slump first and hopefully we'll do it this weekend.

Equally, who will create the chances for those who will score the goals we need to win? Ralph is reported to have told the Echo that Danny isn't scoring and that is one of our problems. Actually Ralph, Danny isn't really being supplied with the chances he needs to score goals. You couldn't say he's missed a glut of chances.

Surely you did the same predictor exercise for us. If so did we grind out the 7 points to keep us safe if they manage 13?

If you could only have squeezed 'winter' in you'd have had the full set.

Ralph is becoming a bit of an enigma. Is he a top manager or not? It seems to be either feast or famine with nothing in between. I'm sure the two 9-0 defeats weigh heavily on his shoulders and must affect his tactical decisions to the detriment of the team as an attacking force. Is he now afraid to take the risks that could result in another heavy defeat? The longer this barren spell goes on the more people will question his ability to manage the team. Nobody has a divine right to be exempt from paying the ultimate price for bad results. With the imminent return of a couple of key players it is time for Ralph to re-vitalise his troops and get some much-needed victories. If these don't come over the next group of less arduous fixtures (aside from City away) and we get dumped out of the FA Cup by Bmuff I would expect action to be taken. For now I really hope that Ralph can turn things around because he has shown that he can get us playing well with good results. When the team is on song we fear no opponent yet there is a dangerous fragility to that attitude as we are finding out. Injuries to key players have not helped but this does not fully excuse or explain the current slump.

Unless we are brave enough to commit a few more men forward they won't need any CBs or even a goalkeeper!

He was making a poor attempt at sarcasm when suggesting Redmond was played out of position and should have played centre midfield.

I don't hold with this idea that Everton didn't get out of second gear. They were desperate for the three points and, if stepping up a couple of gears would have clinched the game earlier, you can bet they'd have done it. They had no extra gears they didn't use. For all the fears about our defence I thought we kept things reasonably tight and the stats prove we didn't afford them too many chances. Not many are mentioning it but, our biggest area of concern right now is creating chances and scoring goals. Ok, some of that may be down to playing Bednarek as right back and we certainly miss KWP's forward runs so, hopefully he'll be back soon to add that to our game. However, it is more than just missing him - we are far too slow in transition and not prepared to risk flooding bodies forward so every attack just peters out with little or no end product.

Agree with much of what you say, not brave enough or bold enough to take risks so we just keep playing round in circles and going back towards our own goal.