Elma

Bad news but it's the only position left where we still had decent cover. We lose Isak, Bruno/Joelinton or Tripper at the moment and we're really up against it.

January worries me. Have a good January and we'll be in a decent position. Only three league games but it's Liverpool (a), Man City (h), Villa (a).

Gutted by that. Always wanted to play Barrow as it's my best mate's team. Guaranteed we'll draw Maidstone now.

Chris sutton thinks we'll win 3-1. Mind you, in the same preview/prediction he suggests we lost to PSG in the week, so he's maybe not the oracle on this.

I'm still trying to get over Liverpool. Had we won last night we'd still have had to beat Milan to guarantee progression. The only difference is we're now relying on Dortmund getting something. A win or draw against Milan will also guarantee third as a consolation. Couldn't fault us last night in the circumstances, so don't feel bad at all really. Just slightly disappointed an otherwise good referee didn't stand up for his original decision.

I don't disagree with VAR in principal, and let's face it, now it's here it's not going away. The implementation of it has been a mess though. Bearing in mind it was introduced to correct glaring errors, I'd take lessons from cricket and make the following changes: 1) No automated VAR or officials in the VAR room - only technical staff to assist the on field ref when reviewing pitch side. 2) Each team has one VAR call per game, retained if upheld but lost if misused. Manager/coach has to alert the 4th official within a reasonable period (say 30 secs?) of the incident to trigger a review. 3) Ref automatically goes straight to the screen for every VAR call to reduce delay (bear in mind there will be fewer VAR calls) and he can get a second view of the incident. 4) All goals are automatically reviewed by the automated offside system they used in the World Cup and which was stupidly (IMHO) voted down in the Premier League. 5) Keep goal line tech as that works a treat (with one famous exception). The above would mean the decision is always with the on field referee, he gets a second chance to review anything contentious without any undue pressure from a contemporary in the VAR studio, goal offsides are reviewed quickly and consistently with no human input/error, and there will be fewer VAR calls/delays per game.

That's still my favourite ever goal - and yes, if I remember correctly it was against Barnsley in the cup.

Played for school and university, originally as a full-back at school, ending up in goal, and then reverting to full-back at university. Played centre-half for Sunday league sides as I got older. Decent passer of a ball and crosser from deep, but chronically slow after having perthes disease as a kid, so was never in danger of playing at a higher level. My eldest brother got as far as Newcastle reserves and England schoolboy caps, and my other brother got to county level.

According to flight radar they took off five mins late, at 14:35 yesterday. https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/t39409#32c83525 EDIT: Apologies. Just seen others have already posted this.

Seems not to have been cat related judging by later posts, but the UK is one of the few countries in the world where you are not allowed to land with an animal in the cabin - it's got to be in the hold. A few airlines have the facility on outbound flights but when we brought out cat from Turkey, we had to fly him to Paris, train to Lille, and then I used the tunnel to drive to Lille (there and back in one day from south-east London) and bring him through that way in the car. They have a pet check facility at Calais for cars coming through the tunnel. Although we did it ourselves there are people offering pet courier services into the UK for this reason, just shuttling backwards and forwards between France and the UK, for pet owners who don't want to put their pet in the hold. EDIT: To be honest that could well be the real reason if he hasn't made the flight. If he's booked two seats without checking UK regs, and just turned up with his cat he wouldn't have been able to board. If he's happy to put Tiddles Botman in the hold and has the right paperwork otherwise, then they might be able to put him on a later flight. Otherwise the cat is staying behind and he'll need to make other arrangements.

If anyone is sick of their phone/radio and wants an excuse to launch it out of the window, Bruce is currently on Talksport 2 chatting to Simon Jordan. Might be an old interview/podcast.

Forest have been in some great positions but the final ball is delayed too long so that the runners either run offside, or they let Villa get back in. So slow decision making in the final third.

I'm just relieved there wasn't social media in 1932.

We've done it before back in Keegan's first spell. Won 4-2 at West Ham.

On BBC ratings currently Maguire is their top player on 3.94. Longstaff is our worst on 7.09. Somehow Targett has 7.61. ?

Roughly what I was thinking. Although I suspect if Bruno comes on it may be for Willock who I don't see playing a full 90 on a heavy pitch.

Isn't the ballboy a multi-millionaire now?

We once won 4-2 at West Ham with six fullbacks in the team.

Was at Barrow v Notts County today in League 2. First time at Holker Street. Was great being so close to the pitch. Low quality first half but improved second. Barrow missed a great chance to win it in stoppage time.

I've just had to apologise to my mate from A Coruna for that piece of daylight robbery. Schär is cracking them in against PSG in the Champions League while they are stranded in the Spanish third tier. Up there with Rob Lee, Shay Given and Barry Venison as the best payers we've signed for relative peanuts in my lifetime.

In my late teens/early twenties Venison was my favourite centre-half. Some people class him as a full-back but he switched over and was immense. Got an England call-up at that position too. His performance at Villa when we won 2-0 in October 1993, and Woodgate's when we won 2-0 at Charlton in March of 2003 are the best two NUFC centre-half performances I've seen live.

This looked so much better. Wish we would go back to it.

Not just for us but also Everton and Arsenal, who have had their game switched from 5.30pm on Saturday to the 4.30pm Sunday slot. I guess they took a punt on us being drawn on the Wendesday and Arsenal being the Tuesday. If one of those fixtures had been between two non-Champions League clubs then they could have just got it right first time around.

He wasn't great, but I know someone at the club who said he was an excellent professional, always helping out the kids teams etc. He also took a significant pay cut to leave as he didn't want to sit on the bench. He was never the same after that horrific injury, and we stupidly agreed to pay him something like 60k a week, but we've had some wasters and I don't think he was one of them.

I lived in Istanbul for 3.5 years and Beşiktaş are my team there. I think he'd do quite well personally.