saints-cris

Almost at the point I’d be happy with a drama free loss (no scandalous decisions, no injuries). Somehow my poor deluded football brain tells me we never win there, law of averages says we have to at some point, and that maybe, just maybe we’ll pull something out the bag. Probably not though. We probably need something to go in our favour to get something (Christ we’d be due some) and just battle on from there. Hope we put a performance together.

Genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a worse performance from a refereeing outfit in my entire life. The handball is as stonewall on first, second, tenth viewing. How they spent 3 minutes looking at it and thought ‘yeah, no problems there’ is beyond inept. The Romeu / goalie incident is almost being glossed over, which says how poor the decisions were overall. The goalie made a mess and got away with it, simple as. As for Ings, it’s all been said already, but this is not what VAR was brought in for. It’s embarrassing that we may look back at these incidents wondering what on earth was going on in football back then. Add into the mix the extra 3 injuries and I can’t remember ever a more unenjoyable and more irritating match to watch.

Absolute class above them tonight, against a team that were set up to make it difficult. We’re where we were under Poch/Koeman now. Brilliant to watch, positive, attacking, energetic. A joy to watch. Whatever happens this season, it’s been beyond enjoyable. Special mention to Stephens IMO who had to do a tough job at a very uncomfortable position but did his job well.

Would like to see as few square pegs in round holes as possible. Keep JWP in CM and KWP at RB please. Do that and we only have one player out of position rather than 2 or 3.

Top class first half, about as good as you'll see an in-form team get dominated from first kick to the last. A third would've been deserved to be honest. We're now 5th in the table since playing the games behind closed doors, over the course of about 15 games. And I think top 6 in points since a year ago. I think we're there or there abouts where we were under Poch / Koeman now. We're in a great place right now.

I'm all for the Walcott link. He'd be more reliable than Boufal, plus evens out our cover on the right hand side. Boufal, Redmond & Djenepo all play on the left whereas we only really have Armstrong on the right. He adds pace (he's still fast!) and will hopefully be revitalised coming back. Overall, he would balance the squad and improve the depth and give us something different. Hope it happens.

Won’t get many more comfortable 2-0 wins than that this season. Apart from a tiny bit of pressure middle KD the second half it was 2nd gear all the way. And they still didn’t create any chances of note. KWP, Vestegarrd & Romeu all very good, but a proper 7/10s across the park today. Into the break with a couple of wins and hopefully a couple of signings. Plenty of positives.

Le Telegramme saying a fee has been agreed..

Honestly just get the 4 points from our next two and we're there.

Totally agree, in a game where they will sit on their penalty area and surrender 70% possession, Long's good qualities aren't best served in a game like this.

They have been brilliant, however if they only win the League, as strange as may sound that could arguably be a disappointment. The great sides win doubles/trebles, not just the one.

A game where if we concede first it's going to be horrible.

Was a bad day at the office. A lot of our success comes from JWP/Hoijberg in centre mid, Redmond, Ings etc. Most of which wasn’t available to us yesterday. Hopefully our proper RB’s are available next week and we can get a bit back to normal. Some teams just kind of have your number, and West Ham just play a way that really tests our weaknesses. Fair play to them, their plan worked a treat and we didn’t really react to it. Only thing that frustrated me yesterday was a general lack of urgency. Seemed a bit lethargic from the off. Meh, we’ll still be fine and we’re kind of where I expect us to be now. Win a couple, lose a couple.

They played him and Haller up top together, and you're right, they bullied us. I suspect he'll play Antonio up by himself tomorrow, possibly Haller with Antonio on the wing. No way will Moyes play only 2 in CM.

First trip to the Athletics stadium for me, really looking forward to this one. Pressure is really off us now and hugely on them. They'll be targeting this one as a game they have to get something from. They won't be in much rhythm having basically played 'try not to lose by too much' type football the last few games and confidence will be low. Expect them to be up for it though, and if we can handle their long ball game better than we did at home I fancy us to get something here. If we get the first goal it will turn toxic. Don't actually mind West Ham myself, but when things go wrong for them they do make it very entertaining for the neutrals. I'm going 1-2 win.

I think it's fair to say we're going to be OK now. We'll pick up another couple of wins and a couple of draws, even more likely with less pressure on us. It's possible we could fail to pick up any more points (in 11 games ffs) and still survive.

Team picks itself really: Mcarthy Valery, Stephens, Bednarak, Bertrand Armstrong, JWP, Hojberg, Djenepo Ings, Long Subs: Gunn, Vestergaard, Romeu, Obafemi, Adams, Smallbone, Danso Think it will be a tough game; worst home record v second worst away record. Hopefully they will be slightly distracted by their League Cup Final next weekend. Must not lose, but I don't see many sides below us picking up much. West Ham away to Liverpool, Watford away to Utd, Bmouth away to Burnley.

Pretty unenjoyable as a whole that one. We did everything to play into Burnley’s hands, starting off with a nice freak goal in the 2nd minute. Good platform for the mm straight away. the weather was pretty chaotic and you could really see it effecting there game, however thought at half time we were looking much the better side and would go on to win. Second half though was absolutely terrible, never got going and ran totally out of ideas. Fair play to Vydra as he took his goal brilliantly. And that was always going to be enough in the end. We had to do more after that but never threatened. Wouldn’t say Burnley can say with confidence they deserved all three points but their game plan certainly suited the conditions better than ours.

Very talented, with a mental block. Will never reach his potential as he's clearly content half ass-ing it. He had dreams of Utd and ended up in Turkey. We're not going to get our money back on him, so take the cut price and move on. I'm sure I saw a stat where he's only played about 38 games out of nearly 80? Him being on our books is stopping us having a good player who will actually play for us and give us more options. Time to move on from this one.

As silly as it sounds I am still looking just a tiny bit over our shoulder (even though I am extremely sure we will be fine now), but I want to get to the 40 point mark as soon as we can. I think we should get a couple wins from these next 5 games and realistically that will be us most of the way there. This won’t be a game anyone will really enjoy. 1230, half asleep atmosphere and two very contrasting styles. What concerns me the most is that the one thing that can really negate a good pressing game is an effective more.. lets say.. direct style of play. Burnley are in a good spell right now so will be confident of nicking it. If they take the lead, the game becomes extremely tricky. We’re playing well at the moment and confidence is high, so fingers crossed for a sneaky win, though I don’t think a draw would be a disaster.

Incredibly unjust, and knowing that the media will make nothing of this only makes it worse. **** Son, the cheating horrible bastard. Hope we take the many positives from this game, that's what I will be focusing on. We look a bloody good team now and I hope we get to 40 points nice and quickly, to make a daring push for Europe (and beat Spurs to it); we can dream right? We played very well for almost the entirety, without a specialist RB. We should have kept the lead and won it, but boy do we play some nice stuff now. A far cry from the last few seasons. Onwards and upwards.

7-8 points wouldn't be a disaster. I think perhaps people have underestimated how tricky our games have been. We've played Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool, Leicester, Wolves all twice; whilst the sides below us have most of them still to play. Get to 40 points and we can relax, the next 5 games I think we can get ourselves there. Top sides left to play: Watford: Utd, Liverpool, Leicester, Chelsea, City, Arsenal (6) Villa: Spurs, Leicester, Chelsea, Liverpool, Wolves, Utd, Arsenal (7) Hammers: City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Wolves, Spurs, Chelsea, Utd (7) Brighton: Wolves, Arsenal, Leicester, Utd, Liverpool, City (6) Bmouth: Chelsea, Liverpool, Wolves, Utd, Spurs, Leicester, City (7) Us: Arsenal, City, Utd (3) We'd have to really arse it up from here, when you consider that half of some of these sides remaining fixtures are against the top 7! Yes there will be some surprises along the way, but we have done our hard part, the others still have to do theirs and I'll be stunned if they do as well as we did.

Danso now staying. So we have essentially finished this window with less players than we started. Awesome. Wouldn't mind if it was the rubbish we currently have out on loan, but not the relatively thin squad of players we do have.

Shame to see Yoshida go, proper servant and always came across fully committed. Whilst I can't really defend us somehow ending this window with less choice in defence, CB is an area we do have a fair few options for. Even without Yoshida, we have Stephens, Bednerak, Vestergard & Danso. Yoshida was out of contract in the summer so hopefully we get a few quid out of it. Am sure everyone will wish him nothing but the best!

Ornstein on the Athletic saying no more incoming planned.