Ronaldo

We've been poor in about half our home fixtures this season, though. Hardly a one off.

Aye, no middle ground between two traditionally top-tier clubs transformed into title winners by billions in investment and Huddersfield 'lets stick it reight up thissen' Town.

Given that we're obviously so reliant on his pace out wide might it have been prudent to buy a winger with serious pace in the transfer window? We didn't need him, though.

They're an awful tinpot club managed by an awful prick in an awful city populated by mostly awful people. Don't need a mini-Stoke in the PL to go with the original.

If he's here in a year, Rafa won't be. I'm pretty certain of that.

I find it very difficult to imagine you've seen him play much this season. That is king-sized tripe. Physically he unfortunately just isn't the same player he was at West Ham. Not even close.

He snuck into the playoffs in '10 with 70 points, and 72 in '13. Absolutely not pissing anything.

Had lots of pace in the 4 positions out wide, mind.

His legs have just gone. It's a shame because I like him and I still want to see him starting more games than not but he's just never physically there for 90 minutes.

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.