Baird of the land

Not a great draw but at least it is at home.

Depends if he wants to be here though.

No. We need someone to replace what charles offered and that is not jwp, especially not the current version of him. Plus right now he's a massive financial headache for west ham, no one should be rushing to help them out of it.

Gutted to lose him, leaves a massive hole in the midfield. glad it didn’t drag (given the seeming inevitability of it). Hopefully allows us to get a move on in recruiting a like minded replacement.

Happy we got the win. got to get busy with a replacement positive cm and a 2nd CF though

Not very impressive. Hoping we’re willing to bring Shea on.

Yeah, he's never struck me as someone suited to playing the charles role but guess we'll see if this a pragmatic short-term thing or a long-term plan.

We're also going to have a massive hole in midfield when Charles leaves that needs filling to hope to compete.

Sounds like being his ghostwriter would have been a hoot, trying to keep track of the changing stories and new claims.

Swaddle would rise up the ranks if only that didn't involve verticality

Where's Saints £1.4M book deal. Sadly other people, not him will face the effects of the lack of any rigour from the institutions.

This apparent fantasist professor story does make me smile.

I meant away to Middlesbrough. we won against Leicester because we dragged him off at ht. I hardly look back at the turn of the year and go our midfield of downes and jander were bossing it against Middlesbrough/pompey/sheff utd/watford/hull. His peak moments coincided with him being rotated in and out later in the year.

I don't recall watching and thinking he's pressing like jander does. Next time I see the ditch play I'll watch him closer. I've already pointed out games post tonda where he wasn't great. Maybe this season he'll play consistently at his high level every wed and sat and I'll change my tune.

I've seen De Jong for Holland and i can't say he ever reminded me of Jander but equally can't say i've ever watched Barcelona or Ajax. I think he's a good player but stick to my opinion that he is being overhyped on the basis of selective amnesia of his overall season output.