Charlie Wayman

Automatism is so much part of our game that Ralph will not change a winning team unless forced to do so. The manager's view of the FA Cup SF will be quite different to a player's. Ralph will want to re-build the momentum and automatism that we had at the start of the season so that he has a good chance of winning and reaching the FACup Final; individual players to a certain extent will be expendable in pursuit of his aim whereas each individual player will desperately want to start at Wembley and will do his level best to avoid injury against WBA. For them it's a catch 22, if they play flat out against WBA they could risk injury but if they play half-heartedly to avoid injury they could well be dropped for the SF. AS Ralph said yesterday, he has now for the first time in ages a quite strong bench to call upon. The message from him could not be clearer. For these reasons I expect yesterday's team to start again against WBA and Leicester and do well against both. All being well we should coast to a 3-0 victory at the Hawthorns.

A bit harsh, he played a lot of minutes for Poland and was clearly a bit leggy today. Maybe Ralph should have considered resting him but probably didn't trust Salisu enough to risk leaving Jan out.

Get off his bloody case you repetitive loon, he's been out for eleven weeks and needs time to recover match fitnes.

What an excellent performance. Ok, one or two players were leggy and took time to get into their stride but once we got our act together there was never any doubt about the outcome. Class above Burnley who seemingly only have long balls into the box as their main armament. All of our goals were brilliantly executed from open play so well done to our front four who created a myriad of chances and were clinical in their finishing. Jimmy WP deserved a goal from his superb shot. Theo needs a couple of matches to sharpen up his fitness but he was as usual a bloody nuisance to the Burnley defence and capped it with a sublime assist for Redmond's winner. MotM has to be Ings, playing for his transfer I guess but that was a £60m goal if ever there was one. Good change of tactics by Ralph late on to ensure our victory. 👋👋👋

Come on chaps think positively. We have nearly everyone back from injury, Ralph has had a couple of weeks to work with most of his players, one or two back from international duty where they performed well will aim to push on and impress, we may be in for a surprise. This is one that we should anticipate with relish. Despite the stubbornness and pedestrianism of Burnley that often frustrates more accomplished sides, I think we will come out of the blocks with pace and determination and overwhelm them early on. We could be 3-0 up at half time. Bring it on!

No doubt there was a prior arrangement between the club and the England set up that JWP would play only two matches from three at most even if selected. As it turned out he played so well against San Marino that that possibly he would have been an automatic starter against Poland, so the vague story was concocted to explain his absence. As for team selection, would it be too risky to start with Theo & Ings up top?

Not for Scottish fisherman who are moaning about Brexit because they can't sell their catches to the French it isn't and they voted for bloody Brexit.

Cheer up lad, lockdown will soon be easing and you'll be able to go outside to play tennis, golf or five-a-side or whatever keeps you sane normally. Think, no more keyboards or endless worrying about things beyond your control.

OR None of the above. 🤨

Chelsea seemingly want rid of Timo Werner. Let's get him here, he's a Ralph man through and through. Great replacement for Ings. Swap deal?

No sure the bloke on the left would agree with you.

As both these guys are away on International duty this pic must be a few weeks old. Strange to announce it now?

You should post more often. Succinct, nutshell, realistic, common sense - a most unusual recipe on here.

You are only supposed to leave your house for essential purposes.

Besides which he isn't very good

Wasn't that a different world? Covid has changed everything.

Do you not see the irony in suggesting that an ex-Academy player (star?) might be blocking the pathway for a current Academy player (rising star?)? I thought our aim was to field a team full of ex-Academy players so that we wouldn't need to bring in people from outside

He played well last night but let's not get carried away, it was San Marino officially the worst international football team in the world. He has not miraculously transformed himself into Lionel Messi. What was interesting was that Southgate played him in the AMF role and told him to stay high up the pitch. Here he plays DMF with occasional forays forward. It's different having the ball behind you most of the time rather than in front but he settled into the role as the evening bored on.

...but he is rarely outstanding and does not have the ball skills or vision of KWP.

Logically if we were still able to vote for MotM on match days, all we would have to do is add up the points each player has earned from fans for coming 1st, 2nd or 3rd each week. Of course there is always bias toward strikers if they score a goal or two so KWP and OR would not necessarily get the accolades they deserve.

Good luck with that!

Do a swap with Aguero.

It's a cup tie, anything can happen. Yes, Leicester are a good side but so are we and arguably our style of play is better suited to the sudden death knock-out style of the FA Cup. I think we will win this comfortably (2-0) although it's weeks away.

Could have been worse but not much. Three of the top 4 PL clubs in the SF, we really have bucked the trend.

The mistake Bournemouth made was to concentrate on trying to disrupt our play by early pressing rather than concentrate on their own game. Sadly for them they were not good enough or fast enough to do it, at times our slick, fast inter-change passing left them struggling and frequently hopelessly out of shape. What was good is the way we responded to their naivety by then attacking the gaps in their shape and for once finishing clinically helped of course by Bournemouth giving us space and time. Great win and on to the next hurdle. It is likely we will face PL opposition and a team that knows better how to deal with our tactics but with Ings & Walcott back we should still be able to give a good account of ourselves especially if our automatism is on an upward trajectory that seemingly was rediscovered on the training ground last week. I have been a critic of Redmond, not because of any lack of ability on his part but for his inability to focus and concentrate completely on the game in a single minded way. In the days when we were able to watch games, there were often times during warm ups when he really wasn't putting the effort into exercising properly, giving the impression of just mucking around. He seems to be easily distracted (as indeed we saw in his post match interview yesterday). If he can concentrate on his game 100% for 90 minutes than as we saw yesterday he can be quite the player, so let's hope he can keep it up.