Taylor Swift

That has to be a fucking penalty!!!!

Great ball, Jonas.

Sessegnon looks quality. Tiote needs to take him out.

Nice save, Krul.

We'll push them back eventually when we settle.

They're defending with a really high line but so far we look calm and looking to play it on the ground.

R Taylor is so fucking shite.

Let's fuck these cunts up.

5 and a bit hours to go. Thank fuck I have a 3 hour meeting coming up that will kill some time.

It's not a priority position. We would lose out if we replaced him with a similar quality player, which is the most likely scenario, because of the instability in defence. Colo would be the only starter remaining from last year.

R Taylor is the English version of Philip Lahm. Trust me.

6pm start here.

I don't think it's a surprise that our points record is good when refs who have retired were reffing us. Back in the day, we were hot shit. Elleray, Durkin, Winter (to an extent) are all refs who reffed us back in KK's and SBR's days.

His 2nd was meant as a cross

So Inter got a treble-winning season + 81m for Ibrahimovic.

If we defend high and all our players are disciplined with the offside trap, then there's no reason why we can't do a 'Barca' against them and just pin them back. Obviously it's at their place so we won't be able to dominate for the whole match, but I see no reason why if we survive the first 15 minutes or so that we can't start to defend higher and higher, increasing the pressure on their midfield and defense. I'd say that they wouldn't be able to hang with us and will have to drop back to defend deeper, and that will benefit us because we'll have more of the ball, but also because it's easy to defend against a team which is slow and thus unable to effectively counter-attack, especially when they have to start from their penalty area. If they were brimming with pace then we'd be torn to shreds on the counter-attack if we defend high, but they're a team that's quite slow so we should be able to handle them. This plan, of course, depends on Tiote not making silly mistakes when passing and for our defense to have the composure to pass the ball into Cabaye's feet and not bypass him. If we launch the ball up again and again because we're under pressure then they'll be the ones who force us to defend deep. But I'm confident because we have pacy players in our team and the ones who aren't pacy have good technique (Barton and Cabaye).

They don't have pace in their team at all. Gyan isn't the fastest striker, even though he's a good one. Elmohammady is the only pacy player in their team, and his control is iffy. But he's a right winger which means that the position that will be tested in our team is LB. It's good then that we have a top quality LB to stop him.. oh wait. Anyway, Larsson is slow, Sessegnon has decent technique but again, is not the fastest. Their center midfield pairing between Colback and Cattermole is again, quite slow. I think we can defend much higher this game and force the pace. With players like Cabaye, Barton and Jonas in our team, we should be able to dominate the ball and play the game in their half. I think we'll see much more of what Pardew has been talking about in this game because we have better players in midfield. I'm pretty confident, even if I'm still uncertain about where the goals will come from.

It's good to hear that he played the whole match. Hopefully he'll start against Fulham at home in 10 days. He looks a decent player on the tube. I also wonder whether Abeid will be promoted into the first team sooner rather than later, and I'm guessing Ferguson will start this Saturday against the mackems. It would be a stupid decision to start R Taylor at LB if Ferguson is fit enough, even if he - Ferguson - can only play for an hour or so.

Or maybe it's piqueing.

Wow, NM is back And apparently hasn't changed one bit

It looks like Ramsey isn't all the way back yet. He still looks a touch slow. The agility isn't there yet, for some reason. It's probably fitness. I really rated him before he got injured. Him and wilshere will be great in the middle, with Song as the DM. They need a good winger because now theyve only got one in Gervinho. If Rvp can stay fit then they'll be a good team.

He still looks and plays like he's uncertain about what to do. There isn't the natural calmness that Williamson projects, and of course I'm not sure if Taylor has the discipline to form a partnership with Coloccini with how often he drifts into spaces that he doesn't belong in. So yeah, I'm still not sure about him, but this is probably his last chance at making the shirt his own. There shouldn't be any more excuses. He's old enough now to have gotten the stupid mistakes out of his system, so we'll see.

Position?