Ronaldo

I'll be surprised if we have a better keeper than him here by that time.

It's only important because there's a chance we might not. As others have said we needed a couple of quality attacking players to help us break teams down and establish a foothold in the game at home. We inexcusably didn't get them and as a consequence promotion will go down to the last couple of fixtures.

None of which will happen Bimpy, let's be honest.

I didn't go to the game but the fact we surrendered 70% of the possession in the first half and (according to most) were persistently hitting long balls to Dwight Gayle suggests absolving Rafa of all blame is equally as stupid as the posts you're referring to.

I think he'll probably be off, like. A likeable lad but what a ridiculous signing overall.

14 years to day since we were playing Inter off the park in the Champions League and it's now hard to be too pissed off about getting dicked at home to the 7th best team in the Championship? Aye, OK.

We've got 9 left. Hopefully.

We haven't had a proper attacking midfielder or left winger all season. It's pretty indefensible, like. No fault of Rafa's either. He made it clear we needed both before the window opened.

I think Decky said we had just over 30% possession in the first half. I think that says everything it needs to.

Our focus is almost solely on letting the opposition play themselves into trouble, though, Mick. Taking the game to the them and making things happen for ourselves doesn't exist as part of our attacking philosophy until we have no choice but to chase the game.

I reckon Paully's little heart sank when he realised it wasn't Coloccini.

They were 5 seconds away from losing at home to Leeds a few days ago, too. Leeds should've been 3-0 up going into injury time according to my best mate who travelled.

It's admirable of Mick to defend Rafa but he's talking shit there, like. Virtually everything our players intentionally do on the field will be a product of training ground drills and tactical instruction. We've seen what happens to players whose actions don't correspond to what they've explicitly been told.

If Shelvey is to stay in the team we need 2 much better midfielders to play alongside and in front of him.

Ritchie spent most of the game having a go at Colback, his positioning was shocking and he hid for most of the game but he wasn't the only one who was poor. Lascelles was an abomination throughout, Anita was nowhere near the players he was defending against. Diame had a shitter, Gayle couldn't get on the end of the constant long balls, Shelvey was terrible in just about everything he did, Dummett had an absolute shitter. Surprised you didn't include Darlow. Looks like he was poor for 2 of the 3 goals.

I think it tells its own story that a player obviously nowhere near PL level is the only one to come out of this with any credit. Aye, we don't need an overhaul if we go up, though.

Not sure a poor home performance constitutes a blip. We must be something like tenth in the league for home form, and that obviously doesn't account for narrow victories against woeful teams. Aye, you can't say this was a blip, like. We've won 11 out of 19 games at home. It's a theme.

Jesus. We need a new back 5 if we go up. We're an absolute shambles when we take risks and leave them a bit exposed.

This is correct.

Feels like this cliche gets trotted out every other game. Aye. Losing 3-1 to Fulham will make them all better players.

Bimpy, why do you have such a problem with people being defensive of Rafa? It's pretty fucking natural, like. Mistakes or not.

I don't think we've got a choice but to try 4-4-2 at home now, like. We won't, though.

He asked for 2 players before the window started and nothing happened. Not his fault he was ignored but it's time to change the approach at home now.

Losing 2-0 at home to Wolves was worse. Wolves.

The thing for me is (and I love Rafa) is he doesn't get how to use the home support. That where Keegan nailed it. Then you need to look at your support, because he was a master of exactly that at Liverpool. Playing good football would help. It's terrible to watch. It's true, mind. We play passive, predictable and ineffective stuff at home and it's hardly conducive to getting the support involved.