Saint Martini

Transfermarkt has him as left-footed and they a usually pretty accurate with these kind of things. I really like this deal but it does raise some questions about Hoedt. To have two left-footed CB's in a back-four is very unusual so for me this either means Hoedt is on his way out or we committed to a back 3/5 for next season.

At the same time they're talking to Justin Kluivert without Ajax' permission....

He's never played in the PL. That would be his twin-brother Martin, who effectively got relegated last Tuesday.

We're at exactly a point per game at home (16 from 16) and one under away (12 from 13). Considering the teams we have left it's not unlikely we'll finish with more points from away matches then home matches.

Thought this was quite a good image. Doesn't look to bad for us with 3 top-6 matches (no-one has less in the bottom 10). We play less matches against the bottom teams then several others but I'm not sure that is necessarily a problem at this stage of the season. Teams like Everton and Leicester don'y have a whole lot to play for. WHU look quite interesting, if they don't pick up some points this month they'll have one hell of a run in.

No, Stuart.

I've played amateur football in the same team as McManus.

One of them trying to clear the ball and it goes in off the other.

Anderlecht just signed an attacking midfielder. Spartak allegedly wanted Hanni from Anderlecht as a replacement for Promes. Deal back on?

Positive me: We are leaking to the press that we won't pay more to put pressure on Spartak who are willing to all but want milk a few million more. Negative me: We won't/can't pay more and Spartak aren't interested in selling for the amount offered.

Since the game wasn't streamed anywhere I had to make do with the radio commentary. There was a lot of criticism for bringing on Yoshida but at the same time Pellegrino got slack for not bringing on someone string in the air in the previous match against Watford. On the radio the Kabasele chance was judge to be an horrendous sitter but when I saw it on MOTD today its a very difficult chance (on an angle, relatively far out, goalie in position). If that was their biggest chance in the second half then we were quite comfortable. It would be nice if we could score a bit more with the chances we create and hopefully Carillo can help in that department.

Since these are stats from Ligue 1 I guess its "relative" to other strikers in that league first and foremost in the same way goals scored in a season are best compared to other players in the same league. These stats just show that he gets in good positions, and is quite involved in build-up play aswell (XgChain). Not saying he will be a success but I'd rather look at these stats then the listen to the opinion of random Monaco fans on a messageboard as an indication of what kind of player he is. But in the end we'll all have to wait and see and hope he comes good.

Ben Pope‏ @Ben_Pope 4h4 hours agoMore Today marks my last day with @MKDonsFC as I begin a new challenge as First-Team Analyst @SouthamptonFC. Would like to thank everyone at the club for the memories and opportunities I’ve had over the last 2 and a half years and wish everyone great success in the years to come #COYD

https://twitter.com/mixedknuts/status/956929697492987904 I like the look of that and Ted Knutsons judgement carries a lot of weight with me.

Having trouble liking players from Amsterdam? Promes has been one of the attackers that at least look like scoring even without Robben in the team. He can play centrally in a 4-4-2 but also as a winger in a front three. And maybe most important, he creates his own chances with his speed and trickery which makes him less reliant on a functioning team around him.

They generally do more harm then good so I'm with you.

You might want to check his scoring record. When Feyenoord signed him as a 27-year old his record was 10 goals for Cesena in the serie B. Not saying he is the answer but at least he is a bit bigger then the other forwards we have. Pellè came here on the recommendation of Koeman who had worked with him and knew how he functioned best. The same applies to Carillo who played for Pellegrino in Argentina and was roughly 1-in-3 then.

Don't you think both Boufal and Hojbjerg have improved a lot since last year?

That's not true. All players that were sold were definitely worth keeping and we showed or small club mentality by selling them. Zaha is fast but so were Rashford, Lingard and Martial. Somehow our back-up fullbacks dealt with that. Palace are playing very well and perhaps we should approach this match like we have approached the matches against Arsenal, City and United. Organised defense and quick on the break instead of trying to push them back and exposing ourselves to Palaces pace in attack.

Fair enough. I'm not saying xG is the answer to everything but look at the shot locations we hade versus Huddersfields. We should have scored more then one and did a decent job in preventing big chances from them (except for Yoshida losing his man för the equaliser).

Getting rid of Pellegrino right now would be short-sighted and a bit harsh. It has taken him a while to get good performances from the team but for me the team has been performing reasonable since the middle of October (a bit inconsistent though). We've hade som very good performances against Arsenal and Man City but only one point to show for it. Leicester was a low point but the result flattered Leicester, we hade som really big chances early in the match and missed them. If I had to grade our play (and not the result) in all matches since the middle of October it would be: Good: Arsenal, City, WBA, Everton (7 points) Decent: Burnley, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Huddersfield (2 points) Bad: Leicester, Brighton (1 point) Awful: Liverpool (0 points) Our biggest issue is not putting our chances away and conceding from relatively difficult chances from the opposition. Contrary to last year this isn't because were are not getting opportunities in the box. We are just missing rather big chances. Austin is getting a lot of cred for his goalscoring recently but he has missed a couple of sitters too. I think the players are not going to benefit from a new manager with new ideas. We need consistency after two summers with new managers. In the end I don't think the team is a lot better then it is performing but I do believe that are performances are better then our results. I don't believe changing our manager will get us better performances. I thought firing Puel was a bit harsh but the performances at the end of last season were truly awful. Pellegrino so far has not been close to those performances except for Liverpool and Crystal Palace (that was a horror show we were lucky to win).

How the **** does this have anything to do with him being Dutch? Keep your xenophobic bull**** to yourself please. We've been here before the last few years. Lovren, Schneiderlin, Wanyama, Shaw and now van Dijk. Maybe it was a mistake keeping him, but in the end we needed to show the other players we would try to keep everyone. We can't be sure either that we had a decent offer on the table in the summer. In the end it's all speculation. I'd sell him if the price is right, otherwise keep him.

We didn't have the best of matches offensively (which is something you see all the time for Burnley's opponents) but on the other hand they created next to nothing. If you look att xG for the match we had 0.9 xG and Burnley had 0.1. This wasn't our worst performance by far. Source: @Caley_graphics

All of them except for Cech have very few shots on target and a low xG which makes it hard to outperform the xG against (which makes it flawed). Cech however is having quite an average season by the looks of it. Perhaps Forsters gaffes aren't that frequent and he "makes up" for them with other saves.

Statistically the 5th best goalie in the league so far... Discuss