Ronaldo

And younger than when we signed him 6 years ago, bizarrely.

100%.

He spent his career at Bolton, then us (in a rotten 2 1/2 year period) then West Ham and Leyton Orient. That isn’t the career of someone with an outstanding football IQ. He was a fine goalscorer with 2 strikers in front of him to free up a few yards of space but he was a bloody awful midfielder.

Nolan was absolutely invisible in midfield during our relegation season and often in that first season back. Swapping him for Cabaye was golden.

How have I never seen that? ‘Fuck off you, ya blert’ when he’s climbing onto the pitch. ‘Get him done’ when that bloke gets his knife out.

Yeah Barton’s dickhead being a dickhead, no surprises there. On the other hand, the grain of truth is that there’s an oversupply of female presence of poor quality (like some of the men, fair enough) in football programming at the moment. It often stands out like a sore thumb, as much as I’d absolutely love to see a smart, experienced and strong young woman obliterate the opinion of a [nope] like Merson or lazy and arrogant twat like Neville. I put on SSN about 3 weeks ago, on a Monday or Tuesday night: There’s a middle aged woman with short grey hair in a tracksuit on a training pitch saying ‘men need to reappraise their attitudes towards women’ or words strongly to that effect. Literally not one person has finished work, come home, reached for the remote and put SSN on to hear that shit. Nobody wants it. It’s overprescribing at best and it does absolutely fuck all for the women’s game, the promotion of which is supposed to be the goal.

As much as I appreciate Callum we genuinely play all of our best football without him. Not to say he isn’t an excellent goalscorer and option off the bench.

The slammer. Reminds me of that Peter Sutcliffe musical skit on Brass Eye.

Not bothered about Brighton and Man U. I expect us to finish above both and if we don’t we’re not CL material anyway.

Fraudnandez?

Disgusting really. Tiny stadium too.

I can’t get over Mendy, mind. He’s an absolute clown. Dubravka isn’t great but at least he’s generally solid.

Shak did you watch the Bournemouth game? Ritchie literally cannot run. Why do folk keep putting him in starting Xls?

Mendy??

I don’t know how Young is still playing. He looks an absolute accident waiting to happen every game.

Stepping stone to what? A lot of people really need to wake the fuck up to what the club is now.

I don’t think anyone comes close. Stronger and classier than Coloccini, more to his game than Woodgate and a far better brain and attitude than them both.

I don’t usually like to go too mad about young academy players because the bar is lower with everything they do but he genuinely looks a player. One of hoped for side effects of the whole mentality / culture of the club changing with the new owners is proper players breaking through instead of the usual rubbish and it looks like he’s the first. Fair play, he was superb.

Miggy, as lovable as he is, just lacks the extra quality needed too often.

I wonder if there’ll ever be a striker as good in isolation as Drogba. Unbelievable athlete.

He meant PSG.

Mental take by TCD. He’s obviously nowhere near 100%. I do think he needs a more advanced, creative midfielder behind him to see 100% mind. That would make us pretty unstoppable.

Bout time Trippier scored to be fair.

Loyalty points is the new Brexit.