saintwbu

In He's lost our two biggest goal threats in Mane and Pelle and not had them replaced properly, and players like JWP, Clasie and Davis who provide absolutely no goal threat whatsoever are now having a more important role in the side. When RK came in he had a clean slate almost to build his team, he brought in Pelle, Long, Mane, Tadic, Toby, Fraser and Bertrand as well as Elia and Djuricic in January on loan. So far Puel has brought in Boufal, Pied (long term injury), Redmond and Hojbjerg, who apart from Pied are 23, 22 and 21 years old respectively. So he's brought in 3 unproven youngsters as opposed to RK's mix of experienced pro's and proven premier league players, and who knows how much of a say Puel has really had in the signings - I find it hard to believe a guy who came in from France went to Les Reed and said "please get me Nathan Redmond from Norwich". Let the man build his team, we are not going to go down, and currently theres 10 other premier league teams who would love to be in our position. Yes, we are boring, but I put that largely down to boring players. Mane was the most exciting player we have had for years, he hasn't been replaced, of course we are going to lose a lot from that. It comes to something when our centre half is our best player, and our most likely matchwinner too. It could be argued that is reflective of the manager's style but for me it comes down to a very average squad with one or two fantastic players. God how we could do with a Pelle type now, would even put up with listening to that prat who moaned about him every minute of the day if it meant we could get him back.

An unjustified reaction considering how **** he is

People are misinterpreting the rule change, but the eventual decision was still as far wrong as it could've been. There was barely any, if any, contact made on Dele Alli in the box, it was not a penalty. It was possibly a foul outside the box when Redmond pulled his arm, which possibly would have warranted a red as it wasn't a genuine attempt to play the ball, but that contact ended a good half a yard before they entered the box, so he deemed it not a foul. Just awful all round. Whether we'd have won had he not made such a terrible error, probably not, but anyone who thinks a red card at 2-1 doesn't affect a game is absolutely dangerously mental, and anyone who says you can't blame a referee for losing a game is just as much.

Really loved Mané here, about the only Liverpool player I can say I actually like, and even better when he's piling the pressure on Ron.

Yeah I knew about the loan spell which is kind of why I wasn't sure why he was so fired up haha, I assumed he'd be on good terms with their fans. Can't think of many players that get booed by a club they were formerly on loan at! Weird bunch.

Any idea why Bertrand was quite riled up?

Constant pressure from us for about 70 minutes, a striker missing an open goal from a yard out (for the second time in two games), barely conceded a shot to Stoke, crossing balls directly out of play yet again. But it's the manager's fault...

Why is Martina being booed?

I said it a few weeks ago but whilst J-Rod is getting in positions to miss sitters then he isn't 'finished' like some of the drama queens on here would suggest, he's just lacking match sharpness and confidence

Like Austin was you mean? Berahino please, will make runs off the shoulder and needs a new lease of life

Just posted on Instagram that he has just been told he won't be offered a new contract

We had Lallana and then we had Tadic, there was never room in our side for two players of that nature. His class was always visible, but he'll frustrate, just like Boufal will. I hope our fans are more patient with Boufal than they were with Gaston.

Wigan were on a downward trajectory for years, that can't be blamed. Spurs had Europa League last year and had their best Premier League season for god knows how long and nearly won the thing! Of course it makes things more manic schedule wise but to blame poor performance on it has always been a complete cop out. Gary Neville blamed it for Man United's poor performances last week, whereas i'm sure he wouldn't be blaming the Champions League for if they were in that.

The second goal wasn't his fault? The corner went near post i'm not sure how he's supposed to come and catch that, it then got flicked on by a palace player and deflected off JWP to Tomkins. That was a terrible goal for the team to concede, not Fraser. The first was a freak accident, i did comment to a friend at Arsenal how it was worrying me that he doesn't take a touch when he kicks it even when he can, because it leaves him susceptible to bobbles, but hey it happens. After his injury last season we were worshipping him when he returned with 6 clean sheets, and we've seen just how bad it can be with Stek last season so let's not be too hasty.

I know it's a fad to moan about Redmond playing 'upfront' but he doesn't, he plays left wing which is even more annoying! Every time he sits on the left he slows the game down, cuts inside, and then doesn't shoot or cross. Once against Everton he popped up on the right and beat 2 players and set us away, yesterday after half time he did exactly the same, why is he obsessed with being on the left it's such a waste!! As for Forster, i don't agree with the excessive criticism of him this season, but at the Emirates on Wednesday I said to my mate 'it always worries me that he doesn't take a touch when he clears it, because if that bobbles then he's swung his whole body into that quick and it'll be too late to recover it then' and then it was like I was in a bad dream at Selhurst yesterday watching that happen right in front of me. p.s. Hojbjerg is ****ing ****

After the bit in the first half when Sims tried to skip inside and slipped over their player, which led to Everton getting a decent chance, I said to my dad "he looks quick I wish he'd just knock it past the defender in that situation and go round him, their defence are all slow". Then he finally did it in that fantastic run near the end, so gutted he couldn't create something out of it but it was probably a mix of tiredness and indecisiveness. What a performance, great moment to be part of that standing ovation as he left the field.

I was listening to an Everton fan talking about a 'benchwarmer' for them driving a Lamborghini, but I couldn't work out who they were talking about. A few of ours drive Range Rover's which I guess are less extravagant than a Lamborghini but hardly a beat up Renault Clio! Probably just seeing what they want to see to be honest.

Thought he was absolutely atrocious against Inter, painful to watch towards the end, looked clumsy and nervous. But last night he looked like a totally different player, light on his feet, agile, quick across the ground and creative. He still gave the ball away a few times very sloppily, particularly near the end when he passed it straight to Coleman (i think) to allow them to attack again, but it did look like tiredness had crept in. The Hojbjerg of last night will be a very good player.

I don't see how a manager can be responsible for players not converting more than 1 of 20+ shots on goal. If we aren't creating those 20 shots then perhaps the manager would be at fault, but if someone can't convert from 10-15 yards out numerous times during a game then i don't think that's anything to do with the manager's 'plan'.

Toby is a fantastic defender, and maybe if you studied the defensive ability of Virgil and Toby it's possible Toby would come out on top (perhaps not though). But Virgil is a match winner. He showed last night, if we aren't winning, he'll do something about it. Not just scoring goals but bursting through and getting attacks going. Absolutely incredible athlete, i had a mate sat away from me last night who is a Chelsea fan and i rang him at half time to discuss the game and his exact words were "I can't take my eyes off Van Dijk, i've never seen anything like it".

As well as a head injury about 20 minutes into a league cup game that would've helped him regain some sharpnesss the other week. Calls for us to just give up on him are ridiculous, nobody knows whether he's going to be the same player he was before his injury until he has a decent amount of game time to regain some confidence and lose some rust, which he hasn't been able to get because of constant injuries that are not related to the original serious one.

I agree. I don't think some people appreciate how difficult it must be for a centre half (Yoshida is on my mind here) to not play for weeks, and then slot in during a Premier League game and play to his full ability. Yoshida is now playing almost weekly and is putting in some brilliant performances, i'm sure it's not a coincidence.

Not to mention how late in the second half he blew for a free kick to us in their half and we played on and he let us! Presumably he thought the first pass after the foul was us taking the free-kick but the ball was definitely moving and i don't think any of our players knew he'd blown for it, a complete mess from the first whistle to the last.

I thought the Europa League was supposed to hinder league performances? The way I see it is that we now have almost every player in the squad playing regularly, and being as sharp as possible when they are called upon, I think Puel's squad rotation has been absolutely spot on and hopefully we will reap the benefits even more when in the latter stages of these competitions (if we get there). What a job the man is doing, I think he's fantastic.

What a night! The first half played out exactly how Inter wanted, assisted by a ref for whom being called incompetent would've been a compliment, making his own offside call against JRod in the first half set the tone and then being pushed around by Inter players during the penalty incident summed it up, appalling. I think the criticism of JRod is harsh, as someone above has said I think he was making good runs but not being picked out, he was often drifting wide (where he played before the injuries started) but didn't have a Lambert in the middle to help him out like he used to, and regarding the runs I said exactly the same of Austin against Sunderland in the league, he was criticised for his performance but other players simply were not picking up his runs early enough. Also, JRod still hasn't had the crucial run of games to get up to speed because he keeps getting injured after one or two! Hopefully his luck turns soon. More positively, I thought Virgil was awesome but its expected, so when talking about who I thought was MOTM after the game to friends I completely forgot about it, my mind turned to three players in particular - JWP, Yoshida, McQueen - If anyone had have listed those three as potential man of the match candidates for Inter at home at the start of the season they'd have probably been banned from here for their own safety. I thought all three were absolutely superb, particularly in the second half. Also noted that JWP has squared up to an opposition player against Prague, and both Inter games this season, which is something I've never seen in him before, he seems to have unlocked a little bit of aggression in his game. Also loved that McQueen, the least experienced player on the pitch, was the first to spot Inter's gamesmanship at the penalty. I think last night summed up how people can see game's completely differently, because I have seen a few people on twitter and on here saying they thought Hojbjerg was good - I thought he was absolutely atrocious and most around me were begging Puel to take him off to put him out of his misery, we felt sorry for the lad with about 15 minutes to go. It did seem he'd been told to slow the game down once we were 2-1 up, but some of his distribution and decision making were frightening, I also think Romeu playing it straight to their player who got a decent shot away was the result of Hoj's pass to him forcing him to stretch and then only be able to poke it around one attacker but straight to another. His performance was compounded when he was chasing Icardi (i think) and literally just stopped, and allowed him to run on his own into the middle and get a shot away, it was astonishing. But hey, we won, so all's well that ends well.