Ronaldo

He’d benefit hugely from the exact type of winger / midfielder that we’ll never go for. But signs are he’s a brilliant footballer who will adapt. Great start to his career here.

@KaKa reminds me of a bloke who tried to sell me a fake watch while I was eating at a restaurant that actually did tapas, Indian and Italian once. He lost his temper when I told him to leave us alone. Kaka, be happy. It’s all good.

An average PL keeper is probably someone like Verbruggen at Brighton (though he’s going to get better, obvs). Are you seriously saying someone of that quality gets nowhere near the saves Pope made today? Hyperbolic nonsense.

Gordon doesn’t work away from the wing. I have to admit I think it’s madness to keep expecting otherwise.

Jesus

We didn’t do anything in the second half to warrant coming away with anything and you know it.

He’s turned some difficult situations around but this one might be the most challenging. We don’t have a cheat code this season and are really going to have to function properly out wide and through the middle to pin teams back, keep it and create opportunities. My instinct is he wants to evolve our style of play but we didn’t make the acquisitions to do it. Particularly, losing out on Mbuemo and settling on Elanga instead is a massive game changer.

This season’s going well isn’t it. Got exactly what we deserved there mind, sadly. Loads of effort, spoiling, blasting it out of play and chest banging notwithstanding.

Does Les Ferdinand make a remotely astute point ever? I can’t stand him as ‘our’ pundit.

I really want to hate Jill Scott based on her airbrained / banal nonsense in that format but she owns a coffee shop round the corner from us and she’s absolutely one of the loveliest people you could meet. Shearer seems to live rent free in Keane’s head. For some reason he hasn’t matured past that particular hostility. Weird.

In 2023? There’s no way we’d have let him go for that.

On the other hand he’s got 70 goals in just over 2 years and will get at least 50 over the next 2 seasons there you’d think. Not his number one fan but that’s not madness.

What two results have we bettered? Villa and who?

Right, which isn’t his fault. The situation where we’re almost in October and haven’t had a natural striker all season is mostly down to circumstances out of his control. I feel sorry for him in that sense. There is a counter argument on what the hell he was thinking trying to retain Callum Wilson admittedly instead of having his replacement tied up by June.

I don’t think he wanted us to lose our best player no. I don’t think he wanted us to lose out on Mbuemo, Ekitike, Pedro either and play 4 of our first 5 games without a striker. Arguably 5 out of 5 depending on how / where you see Woltemade. None of this was his choice. Of course I feel sorry for him.

You’re not serious are you?

I did say on the other hand. He’s been backed financially but these aren’t his first choices, by a long way. The club made an absolute mess of the summer and he’s left to pick up the pieces.

I do feel for him. After treading water to get 5th it should have been the summer to consolidate that place up there by spending what we’d saved / sold for 2 years. Instead he has to find yet another solution and with players that didn’t make his first or second round picks. On the other hand, I’d question why we still have nothing approaching a playmaker in the squad. Potentially the signing of Elanga too, who looks horribly unsuited to our play when we’re condensing it in the opponent’s half.

He was absolutely abysmal.

It’s Yorkie.

We must have started with one of the tallest sides in PL history today. It’s tragic.

Set piece guy needs sacking, like. They’re absolutely abysmal.

Two points worse off. But nobody said it was disastrous.

Nearly twice what we’re doing now then. I’m not being all doom and gloom but we won’t get away with being workmanlike side out wide and in midfield this season, for obvious reasons which I’m not going to name.