Ronaldo

You've got to love the FA Cup, like. It's magic.

I'm enjoying this Scunthorpe stream, like. Our fans have an entertaining assortment of mongs if nowt else.

Cup-tied or not, seeing 'Ameobi' in a potential starting lineup in 2017 makes me be a little bit sick in my mouth.

Colback in the Beardsley role, surely?

Not sure what happened to the £32m+ profit we made a few months back, either.

Unusual of Rafa to talk about who he's starting.

I remember Man U beating Ipswich 9-0 and scoring at least 6 of them in the second half. 94/95 I think.

He came on against Fulham late on during one of our many mini meltdowns under Pardew (2-0 had become 2-1 and we were making hard work of it) so he came off the bench and absolutely fucking smashed somebody with a flying forearm Nah Fulham scored after the substitution. I was watching it in Naples, Florida and remember thinking when he came on (2-0 up, 5 mins left) that if anyone could fuck it all up and turn it into a draw or defeat it'd be him, and he almost managed it.

Easily the worst I've seen play more than 50 games for us.

Please tell me nobody wants Sammy to start, man.

With Glenn Roeder, quarter final in 2006. Hardly constitutes a serious go, like. We got 3 narrow wins over lower league opposition.

I love Rafa but yeah, I definitely would. Love Howe's approach to the game, his teams always far exceed the sum of their parts. In other words he's done very well at Bournemouth. Proved absolutely fuck all in comparison with Rafa.

Which is pretty bizarre given their defence of Pardew and his players when we were losing 3, 4 and 6-0 at home every other week.

People rated him because he was a young player that showed a lot of potential in an awful side, not because of his tweets. He was a positive player who'd run at and beat men and displayed some great technique with some of his finishing. He's regressed massively and I don't see anyone defending him really but let's not pretend he was always shit and it's fair enough if people wanted to give him a chance under Rafa. Yep.

Eh?

In the hypothetical long run I know it'll work. Problem is, the prospect of having any long term with Rafa is completely predicated on being successful this season. His system has big limitations in this context but he just won't stray from it. Playing just one defensive midfielder is the most cavalier he'll ever be. We have to accept it and just hope we bring in players who'll make it work to the extent we pull well away from 3rd.

I don't think he's limited on the ball at all. I think that he's got a decent range of passing on him, he's just not somebody to rely on to create things for you. Yeah, he's certainly not limited - that's a weird conclusion to come to. He's displayed some really good passing (cute short passes, as well as more expansive stuff) and has made some really impressive driving runs. He shouldn't be your main creative central force in midfield but he's a very capable partner for someone of that ilk. Are you both on glue? You both concede he has limitations on the ball.

Hayden won several tackles in important positions leading to attacks yesterday and usually does, which is why Rafa likes him so much. The problem is that he's extremely limited on the ball and when asked to play a little bit out of the realms of his comfort zone in lieu of Shelvey he was always going to be found wanting.

Controlling the game really doesn't mean you deserve to win it, like. It just makes it easier.

It all depends on what we do in the window, really. If we don't invest we're likely only one serious injury (Shelvey, Gayle) away from finishing outside the top two.

I think he's absolutely immense at this level but given that we'd hypothetically play with one striker in the PL it'd be foolish not to buy someone of greater quality.

You'd have to be in utter denial not to come to that conclusion at this point.

Alright Charnley. What do you mean by that? We sold all of our best players and made a profit of over £30m. It has to be factored in. Of course we should be doing better with the players we have, but I expected our squad to be far stronger at the start of September and we're paying the price a bit now for the lack of genuine quality in several positions.