Saint Pete

But in my opinion what you are suggesting is exactly what shouldn’t be happening with VAR and what most fans don’t want. Where is this going? More and more cameras, longer and longer delays while officials pore over them, referring the images backwards and forwards between on-field and off-field refs in order to make marginal and often very subjective decisions that don’t always have a clear-cut right or wrong answer anyway. Looking for 100% perfection from VAR and asking it to officiate on absolutely everything is not the right way to go, it will never resolve things in the way that some want it to and we’ll end up with 3 hour matches! I’m not against VAR as think it is generally helping to get fairer decisions and removing some of the bias towards bigger teams. But it needs limiting to correcting the really clear officiating errors, that was the way it was sold when it was first mooted.

Agree with most of what you said above apart from the first sentence. And the bit about going on to better things in the future. His ego will get the better of him wherever he goes eventually, he just doesn’t seem the type who will work at his game to improve and ultimately that will mean he won’t be popular with managers for too long.

I honestly don’t think anyone would have even spoken of that incident after the game had there been no VAR, I think pretty much everyone (even on here!) would have accepted it was outside the box and they could see why the ref on the field gave a free kick. I think on the whole VAR will prove to be a good thing in the long run, but they should operate it how it was sold in the first place, which was to eliminate the clear howlers made by the on field officials. At the moment, the VARs seem desperate to find things to overturn, often when the “evidence” is very inconclusive, like in this case.

Never ever a penalty that and everything that is wrong about VAR currently, interfering in decisions that it doesn’t need to, where the only clear and obvious thing is that there is no clear and obvious error by the ref! Maybe VAR should make a rule that if they need to review a decision for over a minute, they stay with the refs original decision as it can’t be a clear error if you have to watch it that many times? Having said that, I will take the win and 5th place in the table 😀 Particularly in a game where we really never got going. Very poor in the first half, aside from a superb header from Vestergaard just before half time which is always a great time to score. Our defending worried me all game but nothing unusual in that, apart from the defending from set pieces which was especially atrocious. Not sure who’s idea that high line from free kicks was but it needs a rethink for the next game. From open play, Vestergaard did play well though today, so fair play to him. We were a bit better in second half and the quality and work rate of Ings clearly helped us. Noticeable that others like Armstrong came into the game more once they had Ings buzzing around them. Now that Ings is back, would expect Djenepo to drop out to the bench and Theo to drop back out wide, although I would consider bringing Redmond back in for Theo as well if he is fully fit again.

Why the fuck is Adams playing it backwards when he had acres to turn and go forwards!

We’ll probably need it the way we have defended.

Have to say, if that was at other end I would be livid with that decision.

Great stuff, redmond and Ings. Fancy them to create something here if we can keep the door shut at the other end.

Armstrong getting in the game at last, promising signs.

Better from Armstrong there, close from Theo.

Yup, if we carry on defending set pieces like that we will concede, guaranteed.

I agree we should have made another sub earlier today. But our core problem that generates those stats is that our defence is not consistently strong enough to withstand pressure from quality sides when they up the pace. To beat sides like Utd you will have to withstand pressure vat points of the game no matter what subs you make, and you can't defend like we did for goals 2 and 3. If you do, you will keep losing leads like we do.

Got away with that Vestergaard. Bit shoddy from us so far.

Get the impression Sheff U are good example of team not coping well with behind closed doors football. They look like a side who really need the home crowd factor behind them to generate the energy in their team and help them compete against better technical teams, which they don’t have now.

I know we are all feeling euphoric today but let's be honest, if Man U or another of the usual suspects really did come knocking for Ralph, it's likely he would go and you couldn't really blame him for that. It's just a fact of life. Fortunately I reckon Man U will be more interested in one of our former managers who is freely available at this point so shouldn't be an issue for now. But if we continue this kind of form it's natural one of the "big boys" will come calling at some point. Best thing to do is enjoy Ralph and the team he is building while we can, it's great to watch what he is doing with these players!

Absolutely superb performance from us tonight, especially given we were without 2 of our most important players. Dominated from start to finish and could and should have had more goals. Thought the front 2 were excellent especially Adams in the first half who set the tone and really stepped up his game to show he can lead the line with Ings out. He looks like he belongs in this league now. Djenepo has his best game for quite a while, and Armstrong was lively on the ball throughout. But JWP man of the match for me, unbelievable energy and a real leader of this team now. And as for Ralph, it’s incredible what he is doing with these players. To be honest I still don’t think we have a great squad compared to the quality Poch and Koeman had available to them, so it makes what Ralph is doing right now all the more impressive.

Hmmm, bit surprised at that. Didn't think we would change from the winning team last week. Ralph must be impressed with what he is seeing from Theo so far.

Great finish JWP!!

Unbelievable goal 😃

Yep, tend to agree. Fact is the club don’t seem willing or able to make another permanent signing to replace Boufal in the squad so whoever we sign is only going to be a temporary fix. With the talk of a takeover and potentially a better chance of investing properly in players once that goes through, this kind of deal makes some sense at this time. I would ideally prefer someone a bit more creative on the ball, but Theo will at least give us another more experienced option who has a reasonable record in front of goal.

Yes, I personally would like to see us signing someone with more creative abilities to backup Armstrong, which I don’t really associate with Theo. But I guess if Ralph thinks he can get a tune out of Theo then fair enough.

There’s a good chance this could be true as Williams loan signing rumours being widely reported now. Would make sense for Valery to go out somewhere he would play regularly at this point. And I guess Man U may be happy to loan us Williams if we say he is first choice backup to both our full back positions which should mean he gets some decent game time here.

Always feels good to get a win going in to a break and the 6 points on the board now takes the pressure off next trickier game at Chelsea when we come back. Really encouraging to get 2 clean sheets on the spin as well, credit to Vestergaard for coming in and doing a decent job 👍 Hopefully a few new faces coming in will also freshen things up for everyone and provide some more competition for starting places, so all looking more positive. Proves how important last weeks win was in getting us off the mark, no matter how scruffy it was.

Also sounded hopeful of more signings, although no details given understandably!

Seriously, if we don’t sign at least a permanent replacement midfielder for Hojbjerg in this window, I really don’t think expectations should be put on Ralph to continue to pull rabbits out of hats and achieve much more than survival with this squad. Whilst we know big money signings are not the be all and end all, it’s worrying that the other teams we are competing with in the mid to lower part of the table seem so much more able than us to sign players to improve their squad options. We really do seem to have regressed to being the paupers of the premier league under Gao. It’s unavoidably noticeable how threadbare our squad is now when you look at our bench, caused by a gradual downgrading of our quality outside the first 11 over the last few seasons. A lack of quality coming through from the youth teams obviously hasn’t helped either. We’ve been fortunate lately with injuries but that luck will surely come to an end soon, especially given the high energy style Ralph employs, which should make it even more important to have decent backup options available to give the first 11 a rest. Oh well, let’s hope we still have irons in a few fires but can’t say I’m confident!