Verbal Kint

When you look average progressive passes per game I think he fell below Romeu and was nowhere near the top of the league though? Ditto chance creation? I expected his chance creation stats to be much higher given his set piece ability.

Wasting your breath on here. Fans on here will find a way to blame him for every goal we concede from here on out. For what its worth I thought he showed why he's no.1 still in that he came and claimed crosses that forster just wouldn't do, and considering how dodgy our CBs look in the air, it shouldn't be underestimated how important that is right now

Ridiculous contract and pay rise to give to a player who already had 4 years left on his previous deal. With the new approach referees are taking to letting more tackles go, and therefore fewer free kicks being given, I struggle to see him replicating his scoring from last season. Take away his free kicks and there is nothing special there and he certainly isn't worth 100k a week

A better striker and we win that one. Awful misses from Armstrong

There was a softer way to do it though. We could have sat him down last summer and told him he was not part of the first team plans and he wouldn't be named in the 25 man squad for the next 2 seasons, nor would we allow him another loan unless a club would take on all of his wages. Not saying he definitely would have moved, but it would have given him a decision to make and I don't think you could have called it bullying. Pointless trying it now as he would just sit it out for a season. But 2 seasons of it and he might have had to think harder

It seems extremely unlikely to me that Ralph was begging the club to keep him... It needed stronger leadership above him to say "this bloke is on an enormous contract. He is either your clear no.1 or we need to do everything we can to get him off the wage bill". I could be wrong but I'd bet that conversation didn't happen, but it should have

Last summer was the time to try this I think. Instead he was welcomed back with open arms to the first team. What a surprise he wasn't then interested in taking a huge pay cut to join celtic... Dreadful keeper

I'd like to see us target Gazzaniga on a free. He's improved significantly since he was last here and at 29 is at a good age for a keeper. Whenever he came in for Lloris he seemed to do a good job and I think he would prove to be a decent free signing considering the limited transfer funds we will have to play with. If we can get rid of Forster this summer and have McCarthy and Gazzaniga for this season, and then next summer we can assess McCarthy's situation to see if we either extend or release with a view to prioritising that position in the market

Out at minimum should be Forster Cedric Hoedt Stephens Clasie Elyounoussi Boufal Carillo Austin Gallagher 4 in to replace them

The stats from whoscored.com give a slightly different impression. I'm not one for stats but as you seem pretty obsessed with them I'll indulge you. Their total key passes stats reads: Redmond 29 JWP 20 Armstrong 19 Targett 17 Bertrand 16 Ings 15 Elyounoussi 14 Hojbjerg 13 Cedric 12 Lemina 9 What's interesting is that of JWP's 20, 13 have come from set pieces. Remove the set piece stats from all of the above and JWP is actually bottom. Even when it's worked out as an average per appearance he is still behind all of them except Cedric and Lemina, and it's very tight with both of them too. If you want to make the argument that JWP should be in the side for his set piece ability alone then by all means make it (although any set piece taker's key passes stats are going to be artificially inflated), but the stats seem to suggest he isn't good for much else. At least with Lemina there are plenty of other things he brings to the table: significantly more interceptions, tackles, successful dribbles. Lemina has already had, and will continue to have, a far more successful career than JWP., because he's a far better all round player

It was obvious from previous seasons that he would never be good enough and yet good old Les rejected 10+ million for him in the summer. We'll never get an offer like that for him again

Time to be pragmatic. There is an enormous rebuild that needs to happen at just about every level of the club and in particular you could easily name 10 or more first team players that need to be moved on, and that will probably take at least 3 transfer windows to do it. Whilst that's going on we just need someone who can keep us in the league whilst we rebuild the foundations. Big Sam

This

If you're using stats then his "expected assists" stat has him 45th in the league, which suggests the chances he's creating are not exactly clear cut... I think he's improved this season but that isn't saying much

It’s a horribly unbalanced squad that lacks quality in most areas, but what makes that so much worse is how much these players have cost us. The only positives I can take from the season so far is that I think Hojbjerg and Lemina have the potential to be a really solid pair in midfield and can control games. I’ve heard Les and Ralph talk before about how we need a big squad of senior players but I just fundamentally disagree with that when we rarely play European football. We have a senior squad of about 30 players and it’s just too many, hence us sending players out on loan all over the place. There are at least 10 players this squad could do without and if you replaced them with 4 or 5 quality players, as well as showing more faith in some of the youngsters (Reed and Gallagher come to mind), then I think we’d be much better off. H.Reed is now having a good season with Blackburn following on from a good season last year and should be in this squad fighting for a place. He had some good games under Koeman and the fact he can play in a few positions would also help the team out. Gallagher also has a lot of good attributes and surely could offer us more than the likes of Austin right now. Having a smaller squad and making them feel a real part of it is half the battle and at the moment I imagine Gallagher knows no matter what he does in training he won’t be getting a game any time soon. He at least deserves a chance to show if he’s good enough when so many others look so poor. It’s pretty clear that Hughes decided in the summer he wanted to play with 3 at the back and 2 up front and therefore chose to overload the squad with central defenders and strikers and wasn’t concerned about wide players. After 60 mins of the season that predictably went out of the window (our CBs simply aren’t good enough to play in a back 3) and now we’re paying the price for it with only 2 wide players and neither of them are good enough. Despite Redmond looking better so far he still doesn’t commit defenders enough or ever go past them and Elyounoussi just looks slow and weak. The final ball from both is terrible and as a result we lack creativity. Hughes must take some blame for that as he was obviously shaping a squad for his chosen formation but Reed and Wilson shouldn’t have let him do it and they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for recruitment. Of the new signings, Gunn looks talented but clearly shouldn’t have been a priority when we didn’t have a buyer for Forster (how nobody has lost their job over his contract baffles me) and Armstrong will struggle to play in a 442 which makes that signing all the more confusing. Ings is being misused IMO by being asked to play a bit deeper and the other 2 new boys just don’t look good enough despite costing a lot of money. We need a clear out and it’s difficult to see how we will get takers for a lot of them, but frankly Reed and Wilson got us into this mess and now they need to get us out of it in January/next summer if we stay up. Forster, Cedric, 2 of the CBs, one of Targett/McQueen, Clasie, Davis, JWP, Austin, Long, Gabbiadini, Carillo can all go. That’s 12(!!) players that wouldn’t be missed if you replaced them with 4 or 5 quality signings, but like everyone else I have zero faith in the club to identify the right players. I’ll also add that in a team desperately short of creativity and excitement I wish Boufal was still here. We simply aren’t good enough to be ignoring players with his sort of talent and under a new manager I still think he could come good.

Woeful game between 2 awful sides

Of course he should. He's come out of position and dived in, not won the ball and created the space for Morata. He's dived in about 5 times today without winning the ball, and on two occasions they've scored because of it

This is spot on

He was ****ing woeful again. Barely won a header, consistently let Benteke back in to him without doing anything to stop him and some of his attempted clearances in some of the scrambles in our box were laughable. He's ****e

We are a very poor side and I'm amazed Palace didn't equalise in the last 20 minutes. Hoedt was dreadful again, consistently bullied by Benteke but a fortunate clean sheet means he'll keep his place now. McCarthy made some great saves but also flapped at crosses that should have resulted in goals. Long was fantastic up front holding the ball up and giving us an outlet, and Lemina and Hojbjerg were very good in midfield. The rest were pretty crap

A team full of 15 million+ players and it's absolutely crap

Lost at home to a **** side

Crap defending from crap defenders

Zero chances created so far against a very average side. ****e

I couldn't name a single positive about him. He's slow, very poor on the ball, regularly loses the aerial battle and allows strikers to bully him all game. Watching him reminds me of the video of Neil Warnock giving a half time team talk at huddersfield where he has a go at his defenders for letting their forwards back into them constantly. Hoedt and Stephens are exactly the same. Weak physically and even weaker mentally A dreadful defender and we should be selling him at the first opportunity