Cronky

Yes, the players end up playing too many games, but Pep is the last person who should be complaining. In fact, City have been able to take advantage of the situation. They effectively have two first teams and can easily rotate the squad whilst their opponents are forced to field the same players.

Villa looked good against Arsenal, and as long as Watkins stays fit, they should be fine, I'd have thought. He gets them goals from all sorts of unpromising situations.

No, you're not. The FFP evidence against them is overwhelming and that gives the whole enterprise an unreal flavour. They also stifle teams and are boring to watch.

He reminded me of that Harry Enfield character - 'You don't wanna do this, you wanna do that'.

It was interesting what they picked up on - eg the way a player approached the penalty spot and put the ball down.

It sounds like Postecoglou is concentrating on instilling his basic strategy, which is to play an all-action aggressive style, with a big effort to squeeze the space and recover any lost possession far up the pitch. It worked very well at first, but a team is liable to pick up more than its fair share of injuries and cards, and may run out of steam later on in the season. And when the pressure comes on in the final stages of the season, you may need more strings to your bow. The thought is that Postecoglou will later develop his team's capacity for other strategies, as situations change in a match, and to suit different opponents. At the moment, it's the cavalry charge, but are his players starting to want something more?

Eric Dier was asked about the difference between Conte and Postecoglou, and this is what he came up with - https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/football/tottenham-eric-dier-explains-how-ange-postecoglou-differs-from-antonio-conte-and-jose-mourinho/ar-BB1ljFA3 Make of it what you will.

I seem to remember that 2% was the chance of us avoiding relegation when Eddie took over. It'll be interesting to see how Spurs react now that they're coming under a bit of pressure. They've started really well and have been favourites for the top four for a long while, and it's started to slip away. Their supporters are starting to grumble. Postecoglou is new to the very top level, and won't have experienced this sort of pressure before. He has to keep his players believing in what he's asking them to do, and two defeats in his next two games will make that difficult. His methods are said to be a bit unusual (ie no work on tactics) and it'll be easy for the players to start blaming him rather than themselves if things start to go wrong.

Spurs' next three games are with Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Ours are with Palace, Sheffield United and Burnley. That 10 point gap could get slashed to 3 or even 1, and then it'll get very interesting. Spurs started the season very well, but seem to have run out of steam. That high-tempo, aggressive game may have taken its toll. And maybe other clubs have sussed Ange out a bit - there were signs of that on Saturday.

I don't fear the Man U game at all. I think our players will relish it.

Chelsea need a striker, not a change of manager. If they can land Osimhen, that'll make a big difference.

No need to look backwards with regret. The run-in is fairly straightforward and the team is now playing with confidence. The teams around us aren't pulling up trees so I'd be disappointed now if we don't make 6th. Even 5th is possible. Villa look good but something's not quite right with Spurs.

I think it would have come down to not being a 'clear and obvious' error. The ball did hit his arm. Having said that, the player was unlucky, because the ball came to him unexpectedly after a deflection, and don't think there was a deliberate attempt to handle the ball. I think the ref made the wrong decision, but it wasn't 'clearly and obviously' wrong.

The Bournemouth fans were right - the guy is a genius. On paper our defence was lousy - second choice keeper in Dubs, Krafth-Schar-Burn at centre back, with Anderson and Murphy not in their ideal roles as wing-backs. With 27% possession, we beat a CL standard side 4-0. Go figure.

I'm not sure how truly independent this regulator can be. I can see the value of regulations to govern expenditure and debt, which would apply across the board. That sort of regulation exists in various areas of the financial and commercial sector. But the regulator's remit also seems to extend to deciding how much income should be redistributed from the wealthy to the more impoverished. That seems to me to be a political decision, rather than one of independent regulation. The EFL clubs seem to have decided that whatever the Premiership offers, they're bound to get a better deal from the independent regulator, for which read the government. There is a strong case for evening out the income differences between the PL and the EFL, and between the Champions League elite and the rest of the Premiership. The current situation tends to ossify certain groups, and leads to owners taking risks to bridge those gaps which can lead to financial difficulty or falling foul of the FFP regulations. If the new regulator can come up with a coherent plan to improve that situation, then fair enough. The current reality is that there are different vested interests, and a genuine overall consensus is well nigh impossible to achieve.

We're then in the territory of how to define 'obvious'. You can't completely remove the element of subjectivity.

I don't think the aim was to 'solve' anything. It was just to make the decision-making around important decisions a bit better, by reducing the number of howlers. It's never going to be perfect, though I think some improvements will still be made as the officials grow in experience. I do suspect that many of those who are moaning the loudest now, were the ones who were most keen on bringing it in. And the worst culprits are ex-players, who spent a large part of their careers moaning about officials and can now continue unabated.

I'd see this as more of a grey area. If you want VAR to get involved in issues other than matters of fact like offside, then you have to accept that some decisions will be debatable. OTT reactions like O'Neil's - 'worst decision I've ever seen' - don't help. There is a case for disallowing the goal because the player was in an offside position and he took up that position in order to obstruct the keeper's vision and movement. It's something that we see every game. Yes, as it happened the keeper could probably have seen the ball and wouldn't have saved it, but should we be expecting a ref to make a judgement like that?

It may help if there is some clarity about punishments in advance - ie an overspend of x automatically leads to a punishment of y. I think the problem with the current system is that clubs enter into a long process of dispute and the outcome is uncertain and only clear after years, potentially. You then have the issue of clubs who have been adversely affected by a rival's misdemeanours suing them for compensation, when in fact the damage has been done a long time ago. It all ends up in the hands of lawyers rather than the people with responsibility for the game. Removing these delays and uncertainties may be the best way forward.

Mathematically safe from relegation. Yay!

I think if a club like Man City trigger his release clause, he’d be off. I wouldn’t blame him. It’s a short career and opportunities like that can’t be guaranteed to recur. He has made a huge contribution, so I’d wish him well if that happened. I’d much prefer it if he went to Barca or the like though.

His skill on the ball is obvious but he isn’t particularly strong. He’s still only 19, but I do keep wondering whether his best role is further forward. We still seem to be getting linked with left backs, so it wouldn’t surprise me if in the end we let him go. That would be a shame because I’m pretty sure that at some stage, in some role, he’s going to come good.

Presumably that was considered a goal-scoring opportunity, in which case that goes way above the usual interpretation. English refs I would agree are more consistent. Having said that, I would like to see the definition of 'goal-scoring opportunity' broadened a bit. At the moment, it seems in practice to be along the lines 'would probably have scored', rather than just 'had an opportunity to score'. If they made the punishment more appropriate ie a penalty and a yellow rather than a sending off, then I think refs would find it easier to give. Those sorts of fouls in that situation are more deserving of a penalty than some of the fouls in the area that get given. And before anyone starts, there is no practical reason why the law can't be changed.

ABC - anyone but City for me. Apart from the overwhelming question marks over how it's all been funded, they are so boring to watch. They strangle the opposition of possession, and turn games into attack v defence.

From West Ham's point of view it was a classic case of relaxing too much after going into a two-goal lead. The danger is that the opposition throws everything into attack, gets a goal back, and then the momentum of the game is entirely changed. Once we got that goal, we looked like winners. Last season, our back five always seemed better than the sum of its parts, and that was down to Eddie's preparation. This season, there's been a lot of chopping and changing due to injuries, and the vulnerability of some individuals has been exposed - in particular their lack of pace. There's a lot of speculation about whether Eddie can take us to the 'next level', but our available squad this season hasn't looked anything like the 'next level'.