Minhosa

I was at the game today so in the second half, he was right in front of us. A couple of observations, aside from the clear error of the penalty, were that he looks like he's carrying weight in comparison to the first game and also he looks quite hesitant in boths his aerial challenges and also his tackles. I'm saying that from the position of liking him btw. He's often late to jump when going into an aerial challenge - an Andy Carroll would terrorise him based on today. He'd also need to sharpen up, again aside from the pen, in his challenges. Get in quicker basically. He's got a lot of quality though.

But they can still get promoted.

Get in QPR.

Because it was completely accidental, Shelvey was rightly panned for it because his intentions were blatant. The two incidents are worlds apart in their intent. Completely disagree. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. There is no need for him to turn his foot back in that direction into Lovren's face. Having played a lot of football I'd say that it was almost certainly intentional.

Always is .

If one of our lot (i.e: Mitro or Shelvey) had of done that to Lovren (Lukaku kicking him in the gish) there'd be hell on. Would be coming back to it all through the in-game commentary etc etc. Lukaku seemed to get a total pass.

Thought Gini was absolute dogshit today personally. Shitfest of a game too.

Going to this and fancy us to get something.

If we do the inevitable, which is to sell him and fail to bring in a replacement, we are literally a Josulu injury from being fucked. Gayle is still not looking fully fit nor is he proven at this level. We'd end up with Perez up front. It would be ludicrous to sell him before next summer and even more so to sell him to a rival. Which means we'll probably do it.

Join up with Leazes Flags and call themselves 'Flags of St. James's'.

Yes it should be. Thought so. Two deliberate handballs tonight in the Sweden game and it cost me £260 on a bookings bet. Arses.

Is a deliberate handball in the box, resulting in a pen, not an automatic booking?

What's the words to that song?

He's our weakest link ATM.

Played well today. He seemed in the zone and unlikely to lose his head.

This Investor talk will be the source of the contract talks with Rafa. Club is more attractive with him tied in longer term.

I'm all for it BUT only if it's a takeover. Do not want any partnership nor investment alongside Ashley. This will be our last opportunity to get rid of the cunt for years.

That Pickfords got a big fat ass on him for a young bloke.

International Break incoming....................Are these cunts about to bury some bad news?

I generally like him and think yesterday was one of his weaker showings. I mentioned in the match thread that he was heavily taped up from the off so he's perhaps not 100%. He just needs to impose himself a bit more on games, like Merino, with more aggression. He's certainly got the potential to play at this level effectively though. Don't doubt that.

Yeah - I was sat on his side during the first half and he had hardly any space, very little in the way of support from Yedlin and few options when he did have the ball. One of the major down sides of the one up front is that whipping in an early ball, unless 100% accurate, is pretty much redundant or wasted so I feel a bit for Ritchie in that he can't just swing his leg at a ball early or first time as it'll look shite when it's immediately cleared. If we had two up top that would enable him to be much more effective against organised, deep, compact teams like Brighton were yesterday. And this was where my criticism of Perez came from yesterday. He was SO far away from Joselu that he offered no support with late runs into the box. We so desperately need a proper number 10.

Comparing the worth of Merino to Sissoko is like comparing a Ferrari to a knackered old BMX, with one tyre and a rotten seat.

Thought he had a fairly solid game today.

Interesting that Rafa played Merino the further forwards of the pair. May have just been me, but it looked like Shelvey had put a small amount of weight back on. He certainly didn't look as slim as the Spurs game/preseason.... I liked how they were interchanging positions. You could see as soon as Shelvey came on that they got players to stick to him, having someone who could fill the role and take some heat off him was actually nice to see. Just a shame that neither had more direct targets to consistently play towards. Agree - we looked pretty anonymous in the final third. That's what you get much of the time with Perez though. They had 11 men behind the ball for the last 40 minutes of the game and restricted space really well after going up, tbf. I'm not sure how Rafa thought we were going to open them up enough without someone to aim at and mix the tempo of play up. It was even the same first half though mate. I've got serious doubts about Perez's ability in that role and Rafa seem's entirely reliant on him at the minute.

It was interesting watching the dynamic between him and Yedlin in the flesh. Yedlin very often stays way too deep/defensively minded and leaves Ritchie out on a limb. There was three or four times today where Ritchie, with the ball at his feet, was looking up and watching, waiting for Yedlin to advance and he didn't. If that's an instruction from Rafa then it was a mistake as Brighton could've been got at down the flanks. Bruno is as old as time and Suttner isn't that good either. A missed opportunity today but we'll beat these at home.