saint-crinny

Clearly has bags of ability, will be very up and down this season - young, away from home, learning English still, picked up a few annoying injuries, change of manager. People are right to look at Ronaldo's first season at United - 40 games, g goals. Not saying for a second he will be as good as that, but it's far too early to write him off just because we splashed out on him. Didnt hear any of this chat after the Aston Villa and Newcastle home games, when he destroyed them, or when he drilled in that finish against Arsenal either. Calm down, and give him time

Would be extremely surprised - feel like our days of looking at this kind of player are long behind us now, especially with MP in charge. In fact, i think there is no chance we'd be interested. Would be quite depressing after the talk of Coutinho if it did randomly happen. Also, hasnt he only started banging in the goals this season - unimpressive considering he is 27?

I think they are getting recognition now - G-Nev saying he was a big fan of the Cork and Spiderman axis we have. Come the summer, think we'll get a fair bit of interest for Morgan - he really has been superb this season. He's caused a split in the fans in the past - mostly because some people didnt seem to recognise what a great touch he has and top ability to read the game which was always most likely to shine in the Prem compared to the depths of League One - but think we all probably agree that he has been one of our outstanding performers this year.

For me there was a change in style in terms of the tempo without the ball - you could see the pressing style MP wants and in the first half Everton struggled with that. We havent played with that intensty without the ball before, and that took its toll in the second half, where as much as Everton improved, thought we also ran out of steam - which is probably to be expected. One other observation i had was that we seemed keener to whip in a few crosses last night - on another day that would have payed off and Lambert would have bagged a couple. Think we would have been reflecting on the game differntly had we taken a couple of the fairly straightforward chances that we had in the first half. With the form he's in, bet Lambert cant believe he didnt come away with a goal.

Yes MP has a reputation for playing pressing football, which Rickie may struggle with. He also has a reputation for prefering technically gifted players, of which Lambert is one of our best. If MP can't see that in the first few training sessions, and in the "research" he has been doing over the past few weeks, you have to worry. Sure Lambert will be here until the summer at the least (although after our recent decent form, i would have said the same about Nigel)

What about Forren? Any update

Stick with the 4-3-3 approach - Ramirez into the Lallana role and JWP into the central attacking mid role left by Ramirez switch would be my preferred choice.

Aside from the very elite, most players in Punch's position struggle to turn out consistently high quality performaces - it seems to be the nature of that kind of player. But when they are on song, they can win you games, which is why he is more than deserving of a starting spot. Great stuff on Saturday - let's hope he can remind Pards why he brought him to Saints by turning on it again and helping us bag a win against Newcastle.

The chant is used for a variety of reasons, have heard it sang at Terry himself (meaning - you know you are a racist) and also at Van Persie a while back (presumably in relation to rape claims a while back). Think it just gets levelled at players who have done anything that hits the headlines and shows them to a wrong-un. For that reason, i dont really get singing at Anton as i dont believe he has done anything wrong. Annoys me that a minority of our fans would do this. Can only reflect badly on the club, whatever the motivation for singing it.

Bizarre reaction on here as usual - a highly rated young striker attracting attention and we are 'supposedly' one of the ones monitoring. Not sure what the problem is - why would we not want to be keeping a check on Europe's supposed superstars in the making? Yes we need some defenders, but clearly he would be a signing for the future if we did actually do anything about our interest, so what's the issue? Every club in the league is probably aware of him. In no way does this mean that we arent interested in adding to our defence as soon as possible, in January Just moaning for the sake of it as usual - would people be happy on here if the club issued a statement saying, "Due to our current defensive troubles we are not even considering tracking young talent in Europe in any other position, even if this means that we miss on players who turn out to be world beaters." I would be irritated if we werent tracking talent across Europe - there are probably hundreds of players that we are looking at that - and this fella's agent is probably just doing his job and circulating a few club's names in the media.

Not strictly true, he stumbled around a bit and then plumped for "They tried hard". Brilliant

You could swing the alligator by the tail

Completely, just making the point that if Cole was ever inclined to come here, which he absolutely would not be, turning him down would be mental.

Maybe we should also turn down signing Messi on a free transfer in a few years time, if he is over 30.

You could argue, and i certainly would, that when you bring Ramirez back into the side, Lallana will be one of the players to benefit most. Ramirez is such an intelligent player, great eye for a pass etc, and he will bring him into the game more and more, putting him in more space to operate, as well as taking the creative burden off Lallana a little and attracting more defensive attention, therefore hopefully given Adam slightly more space to work in. To the original question, no way would i drop him. Who would you replace him with? Along with Lambert, Morgan and Gaston, he is one of our best players.

Im not totally comfortable with putting so much faith in a young kid at this level (maybe neither is Nige), but think JWP introduction might have helped in the second half. He does retain possession well and it wasnt like there were any big tackles going or much physical stuff that would have been too much for him. Posession is everything in the Prem - we dominated it in the first half and looked in control, lost it in the second and almost lost the game. Mentioned earlier i think the worst thing about taking Lambert off for us is the way it seems to sap the confidence of the players not having him there. So i dont totally disagree with taking him off - he wasnt really having much impact, but it doesnt really seem to matter if he is playing well or not, its just the players reaction when he goes off. Worrying, but i guess he is the one they look to, as well as Gaston, who we badly missed too. Especially when the game opened up. He would have run riot with that amount of space. Shame Mayuka didnt get on though - pace to burn and as many have said, he would rinsed them in behind. As good a CB as Hangeland is, he is not quick.

For me, i think i understand why he looked to bring on Chaplow for Punch - Yoshi was having a really uncomfortable game and he thought Chappers would provide better cover, as well as a bit more bite in midfield. But for me it was floored, because: - Punch was having another good game and really, was our only out ball in the second half - The game didnt require more bite - it was all about controlling possession - The move actually put Yoshi under more pressure - he was massively uncomfortable on the ball and being able to find Punch was the only thing that was helping him out. Punch was able to take it from him, hang on to it and importantly, take the game forward - All Chappers could do was lay it back to Yoshi again, and he looked more and more exposed - If Punch was struggling with fitness, which i dont think he was, would have prepared JWP who could at least hold the ball, even under pressure Agree with the sentiment on the Guly sub - for me, its the impact that Lambert coming off has on the team that is the real negative even if he isnt having a good game. Would have kept him on and brought on Mayuka for Jay. EVen when Lambo isnt performing well, he can still pick a pass through the defence and with Fulham chasing the game, it seemed well set for Mayuka to capitalise on this. Frustrating - this can't keep happening, especially at home when every point is crucial. For what its worth, I do think if Ramirez was fit we would have won the game. Easy to say i know...

I'm not really sure what the point of worrying about the attendance is. If it doesnt sell out, fine - it was on TV, people opted not to come or whatever. We got a wedge for it being on TV that outweighed the money we would have got if we sold an extra 2000 or so tickets. Why worry about it - unless we were about to start work on adding another 20,000 seats to SMS when we dont need them, which we arent, it doesnt make too much difference does it? I think we'd only be adding capacity if we were suddenly in the Champions League year-in, year-out, and if we were, we'd probably pick up a load more fans to fill it anyway. As we are a million miles off that, this whole debate is a bit so what. Personally, i've got my season ticket, i'm going on Sunday because that is what i love to do, and i'm going to have a great time (unless we lose, in which case i'll have a proper face on).

Keen to see what Mayuka can do from the start - great 15 mins from him today

Got to laugh at some of the comments in the build-up thread about how Arsenal aren't good enough to be 3-0 up after 60 minutes against us.

He has made some poor individual errors and i agree, strength and pace isnt the issue - Wigan being the obvious one - but the other errors in terms of losing his man repeatedly are going to cost us - just a few examples: - Losing Tevez for first City goal - Losing Hernandez late on against United - Clyne made a superb tackle to save a goal - Shanking off for a corner and then completely losing Van Persie for the winner against United It's these kind of errors that make him look out of his depth, not the individual ones against Wigan, which can happen to anyone (just hopefully not very often!) Hopefully he can raise his game - hardly fair to write him off after three games and two of them against last year's champs and runners-up - but i have some doubts, that have been there since last year in the Championship to be honest.

Think the issue here is that you can coach Jos to stop him making reckless tackles in the box and tell him to stay on his feet, whereas Jose's mistakes - losing runners being the biggest issue (Tevez, RVP - although clearly, better defenders than Fonte will come up short against these players) is a little bit more difficult to work on. Fonte was the weaker of the two CBs last season as well, in my opinion. For those reasons - i would expect that Jos keeps his place and partners Yoshida, once he is up to speed, with Fonte as a useful replacement for both if needed.

"Arsenal aren't good enough to be 3-0 up after 60 minutes". Loving the fact that because they have had a slow-ish start to the season and have lost RVP, a lot of people seem to think they won't be able to find the net regularly against us! A 2-0 win at Anfield, regardless of Liverpool's quality, is a pretty good result and it's not like our defence has been watertight is it? Podolski and Carzorla (great player) in particular are going to cause us a lot of problems - very worrying when you consider that we are pinning our hopes on a newly signed CB to shore up the cracks/gaping holes that appear in our back four! If we go behind early, it could be a long afternoon. We have to approach it in the same we did against United and ultimately feel we must get our noses in front again to have any chance of a result - if we can get ahead and then try and control it in the middle, which we defiitely have the quality to do, we could frustrate the Arsenal players and the fans will get on their back. For that reason, i think Lambert needs to start.

Think that was more of a reflection of how knackered they were by the time Scholes came and started cutting us open. Had Scholes started i dont think he would have had as much impact on the game - JWP, SD and Morgan were superb for 75 mins and probably would have dominated most Prem midfields playing like that.