Taylor Swift

It takes a while to recover from leg breaks and ligament injuries. You look at someone like Ramsey and look at how long he's taken to recover to be a semblance of the quick-footed midfielder that he was before. It's been almost 18 months and just now he's starting to look like he's fully recovered. Even when he had a run of games at the end of last season, he looked slow and the agility wasn't completely there, similar to what I see from Ben Arfa. He was fully fit in the sense that he could play a whole match and not look fucked after 60 minutes, but he wasn't fully recovered. I can see the same thing happen with Ben Arfa. He'll recover his fitness much quicker and he'll probably be starting for us every match by mid to late November, but his touch and quickness will probably take until early next year to fully come back. And if you think that Ramsey's an isolated case then Valencia is another excellent example of a player who suffered a ligament injury/leg break, who even though fully fit now, has not recovered his touch and agility yet. He was playing towards the end of last season but didn't look like the player that he was, even though he was fully fit. I hope Ben Arfa recovers fully because I really rate him - he's potentially our 'Suarez' player ie. someone who single-handedly is the difference between winning and losing - but there are cases like Eduardo and Smith who had ligament injuries/breaks who never fully recover. For what it's worth, Ben Arfa looks like he's about 70% of the player that he was and this is after two matches from two pretty serious injuries, so it looks like he'll fully recover; it's just a matter of when.

Baggio's still desperate for N'Zogbia to sign.

It's common sense but I bet you only really Arsenal, Spurs and Man Utd do that, and now Liverpool may because they have an owner who's very modern perspective. Some of the other teams don't do it because it's a waste of resources when they can't compete with most clubs on wages and transfer fees, but clubs that can and should do - like Villa, for example - are clubs that I bet you don't do it. Sunderland and Fulham - both established Premiership sides that can spend money from time to time and pay good wages - would benefit from this kind of organization and structure as well, but I bet you they both don't do it. We're ahead of the curve here and it makes the likelihood that we find gems like Cabaye and Tiote greater than it is for the likes of Sunderland to find someone like Sessegnon.

Someone will abscond away with Nixon's journalism degree with English like that.

AVB is such a classy manager.

That fan is such a cunt. I hope Chelsea score.

Drogba off

Referee is nuts.

Dive by Helguson.

Lovely football, lovely goal.

Lovely football, lovely goal.

We're struggling to deal with the 4-5-1 when we play a standard 4-4-2.

They've had some tough fixtures and still are doing pretty well so it's not been a bad start. Obviously if Arsenal started the season the way they usually do then Liverpool would be at least three or four points behind and it'd be a challenge for them to get 4th, but Spurs had a few shit results so all three teams have an even shot at 4th.

If Arsenal win tomorrow they'll only be two behind Liverpool

Holy shit.

get in

We have a good first eleven but not the best of squads, yet. We keep possession well, can pass it around and score different types of goals, so yes we're a good team. But there is room for improvement, even with the good results so far.

It looks his agility/pace isn't completely back, which I hope is a sharpness/fitness issue rather than an uncorrectable physical issue, but he had a few nice touches and looked better towards the end of the match. I would start him against Stoke to make sure we're able to control possession. It'll be important to make sure the game's played in their half so we aren't subjected to the avalanche of crosses and throw-ins from dangerous positions.

Picked up the ball far too deep on too many occasions so he wasn't as threatening as usual, but he still had a good game and is very consistent.

Excellent play by Norwich. The fans are loving it.

Are you going to qualify that statement or do you think he's crap for real?

Good subs today. I can see the point in sticking with a winning team and I won't criticize him for starting Obertan, but now that we've won a game by changing formation and players, he'll hopefully be brave enough to change the starting lineup as well.

Did you really expect us to piss all over them? Wigan are already fighting for their lives, they had reason to be a lot more motivated than us. Grinding out a result in a game like this is pretty encouraging if you ask me. I expected us, not unreasonably, to play much better than that. You're not going to play well every week. That's the worst we've played over a full 90 (mainly down to complacency) and yet we still dug out a win and kept a clean sheet - speaks volumes. I've pretty much divided our season as pre-QPR and post-QPR, when we really started to click as a team. That was the worst 90 post-QPR, but it wasn't that bad in comparison to pre-QPR and QPR in itself. We defended ok. We gave them far too much time and space in midfield and couldn't put pressure on their midfield. They also exploited the huge gap at LB that we had throughout the match for some reason and that really pushed us back far more than usual and made it harder to launch attacks. Maybe it's just a tactics thing that Martinez cleverly exploited but I just think it's Taylor taking his time to move up and down the pitch, and thus not being able to generate any pressure on their attackers. Santon should be able to deal with these issues better, and thus I would like to see him start asap.

Any idea on the attendance?

Lacked sharpness but looked better today than he did last week, and looked much better as the game wore on, which is probably due to a few nerves after coming on.