afar

That's awful news, RIP.

Should have scored Cameron, easy for the keeper.

Tearing them apart right now, great pace to the game at the minute, amazing that we are still getting beat.

Not surprising to me. Academies/Centre's of excellence have a p*ss poor record of developing players who go on to have a full career in the professional game. I really think that youth development should be taken out of clubs and put into regional centre's with a broader access point and a focus on the kids' development, not the club's interests. Would love to see it run through universities, a bit like in the US. There would still be affiliation to the areas where professional clubs are to allow sponsorship and support, and it adds in a bonus that those who don't make it get some form of education to support them afterwards The US system won't work for football for many reasons, one of which is that footballers are ready to play earlier, the average age of NFL draftee is between 21 and 23, a lot of youngsters have made multiple international appearances before then. You would need to employ some form of scholarship system, the reason a lot of these athletes are allowed to get into university is because of that, they wouldn't meet the criteria form an academic standpoint, the scholarship system is offered by the University because they make money from the sports program, that's not likely with university football teams. There is also no competition for US sports, unlike in the UK where a talented youngster wants to make money from the game but can't do that at home so he'll have the option to wait until he's at least 21 or go to Barcelona, Bayern or PSG academy.

That was the same Ritchie that turned up for a while last season, not good enough today. Mixed bag season, he was terrible versus Spuds too and should have been sent off, average against Huddersfield, but excellent in our three wins. Guess if he was excellent every week he wouldn't be playing for us, we need him to step up next week though, as without Shelvey he's our only creative outlet.

Agree, people discounting Mitro's link up play while bigging Joselu's, makes me think they haven't watch much of us, even last year when Mitro was disappointing in front of goal, he was still heavily involved in our link up, the Leeds game late in the season, where we really should have won, he got stick from Sherear for not scoring but discounted his all round game that day which was excellent up to the point of putting the ball in the net. He seems to have started this season with his eye for goal back and has continued to bang them in for Serbia. I would start him ahead of the other two against Liverpool, however suspect Rafa will give Joselu another chance with Gayle on the bench and Mitro at home watching goals on sunday or whatever.

At least Joselu is in those positions/doesn't get himself banned for no reason. That's where we are, basically. He's scored the same amount of PL goals that Mitro has, despite the ridiculous ban he got.

Mitro has scored 2 in 2, he's still our joint top scorer despite playing about 20 mins of PL football this season. I agree none of our options are really up to it but not sure why you persist with the worst of the three, especially when we only play one up front that front man needs to be taking the chances that fall to him, his last four chances haven't been half chances they've been clear cut ones, not to take any of them will cost your team games.

Shelvey when he came on was the only one that looked likely to either create or score himself for us. Not saying he played that well when he came on but Hayden has been very poor from what I've seen this season outside of the West Ham game, we don't have many options in CM, but something we'll need to change there, we are carrying a lot of players right now and games like today show that you just can't keep playing without 11 men contributing.

Perfectly put

When you play with just one up front, that player needs to be banging them in, or creating chances for others, e's doing neither and offering little in the link up play to warrant his inclusion

Just echoing what i was saying after the Stoke game and got chewed out for, he's a 5 million striker for a reason, a six goal a season front man. And you can see it clearly in the last couple of games, need to change it.

We have, to be where we are after 6 games is great, need to not get beat in the next two though, or the good start will feel a long way off.

Yes it's completely different game if that goes in.

Well done Brighton but honestly we've not shown up today, specially in the 2nd half. Poor performance all round.

Just a dreadful performance, nothing good to take from this. Brighton are a poor team.

It's exactly the same, created most of the chances, we miss them all, they score from the one they have.

What, why pointless sub

Knockheart thinks he's a better player than his is, bang average for me like.

We'll get one more chance here I'm sure, they are looking leggy and nerves will start kicking in

Not great

That is terrible

It. Is so slow, movement off the ball is bad now.

Ritchie has been woeful today.

Time to go this route with Gayle coming on for Perez and a move to 4-4-2