stevegrant

Gone for 70. Keep them below 300ish and it's a doable chase in daylight, I reckon.

Have they confirmed that Edwards and/or Topley are injured/knackered? Seems strange to make those changes if they're available - both are clearly absolutely light years ahead of Wood. Wheal's OK, I think, although suspect he might be better suited to the 4-day game. Finding it difficult to look up his record now that Cricket Archive has gone behind a paywall

I find it hard to give too much of a toss about Wimbledon - their complaints about what the FA and MK did to them are valid, obviously, but they've always had a holier-than-thou attitude since forming the new club, and they've since turned full hypocrite by displacing Kingstonian from their own town in order to facilitate their move back to Plough Lane.

How the **** does Chris Wood still have a contract, especially considering his knees are made of balsa wood? Just dreadful these days

He had already played first team games for Plymouth when we signed him, so I think that's a bit of a stretch, tbh. Personally, I don't think either he or Hoedt are good enough for a side that aspires to be a regular in the top half of the Premier League. Perhaps alongside a more dominant leader, they might be able to be the Lundekvam equivalent alongside Svensson/Richards/Monkou over time, but neither of them are at that level yet. Whether we have the time to bring them up to speed is open to debate - the narrow escape this season suggests perhaps not. Bednarek, despite having had a shocker on his debut against Wolves and then being completely forgotten about for months, has shown much more in his short spell in the side than either of those two over the whole season, IMO.

Doesn't really matter either way, he's nowhere near good enough anyway - Berg in for him is a huge improvement.

I guess you could take that striped design and just remove the middle red stripe on the back - think that would probably be OK for the kit regulations.

Likewise. The first half was pretty nervy, but other than that excellent McCarthy save at the start of the second half, I never felt we were in any real danger after that. Their substitutions helped us, I think - they were causing us problems by getting the wing-backs wide and putting crosses in, but they took Olsson off to get Abraham on, so they had three strikers but nobody on the left side to actually put the ball in the box for them. Carvalhal then doubled down by taking Naughton off on the other side for Narsingh, and they ended up with two central midfielders at full-back in a 4-3-3, which provided no attacking threat at all and allowed us an easy out ball of playing it long to Long who was always going to beat Sam Clucas in the air. If Austin could have found a corner rather than the centre of the goal for one or more of his chances, the scoreline would have been much more comfortable, but I don't think the result was in any doubt once we went in front.

Yeah, that Pochettino chancer was dreadful, wasn't he?

Not at the current level of spending, their wage bill is around £2m The infrastructure there has improved immeasurably, but they're still only averaging crowds of 1900, which is also skewed by their occasional "free entry" deals for midweek games. They've been paying silly wages for mediocre players for so long, it's going to be difficult for them to attract players even of the standard of their existing squad on the wages they should be paying them.

Alex Crook is saying that he doesn't want to come, so I think we can take that as confirmation that he'll be signing as long as the two clubs can do a deal.

This, basically, although as stated above, I'm pretty sure that if he'd got proper representation he wouldn't have received a banning order, or at the very worst a reduced-term one.

Different City side this year, they've got a keeper behind them they can trust to mop up everything which allows them to play much higher up the pitch. Last year, they had Claudio Bravo who has been a shambles for them, and it was also a period when John Stones was making a lot of mistakes. They're simply not as vulnerable defensively this season, which means they can play with more freedom going forwards.

That "record" is up there with Huddersfield's 50-game unbeaten streak which featured a 3-0 defeat in the middle of it. They drew 0-0 with Wolves. Penalty shootouts are used as a method to determine who advances in a competition, but it doesn't affect the result of the match itself.

If he wants to get his paymasters to send us a £300m (conservative estimate) transfer kitty, plus a similar amount for wages each year over the next five years, maybe then we'll be in a position to go to the Etihad and play an open, attacking game against them.

Disappointing, as he'll keep them up. Unsworth's done a great job there.

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Worth noting that Ian Holland was second in both batting and bowling averages this year. There are a few glaring statistics that stand out looking at our season: 1. Our highest batting average is 38.12 (Bailey) 2. We registered only seven centuries in 14 matches (Bailey, Vince and Adams with 2 apiece, Ervine with the other) 3. Five bowlers averaged less than 27 runs per wicket (Abbott, Holland, Edwards, Dawson, Berg)

Still, they won the transfer window, didn't they, lads?

Got away with it two years running. If that's not a big wake-up call to those in charge down there, then nothing will be. As mentioned above, they've been great servants for many years, but it's time Adams and Ervine were taken out of the equation. That's two spaces for starters, anybody decent in the second division who we could tap up - someone like Duckett or Bell-Drummond, perhaps?

Unrelated note, Graham Onions is leaving Durham as he wanted a two-year contract and they were only willing to give him a guaranteed one-year with an injury-free clause triggering a second year. Would be a good signing, IMO...

Having a day rained off (well done, Edgbaston's world-class drainage system, once again ) might actually have worked in our favour. We now know exactly what we need to stay up, after Somerset were bowled out for 236. They can now only get a maximum of 20 points from their game against Middlesex, which means that we only need 8 points to be safe. If I'm George Bailey tomorrow, I'm choosing an uncontested toss and bowling first. Get 9 or 10 wickets to ensure 3 bowling bonus points, and then make sure we don't lose. Thursday will be a washout as well, so it's effectively a two-day game. Surely we can't lose in that situation...

A new low?

The thing with United at the moment is that their big wins have come against teams who just seem to be a bit weak mentally when they go behind. West Ham conceded twice in the last three minutes, Swansea conceded three in the last ten minutes, Everton three in the last seven minutes, so as long as we can stay in the game, we've got a chance IMO. Despite the goal difference, I don't think they've been especially impressive for the vast majority of the time, but they (like us) have had a pretty kind run of fixtures to start the season.

Martina was unusually competent, Schneiderlin was mostly anonymous until he conceded the penalty to make it 4-0.