AyeDubbleYoo

I think we can all see how good he could be, with that pace and power. It's so frustrating. He's only 19 FFS.

If it happens I'll just concentrate on that bit TBH.

exactly. forgot how to play rb today I think the main reason that Lennon swapped to the left is that our LB is literally unbeatable.

'Course, I just hope we're relatively safe so we can ease him back in and he can get a few special goals. It's all about next season for HBA really.

I understand what you mean, but that's none sense tbh. If he had passed to Lovenkrands, you wouldn't be sat there saying that he doesn't have the striker's instinct to shoot. Strikers are there to put the ball in the back of the net. Whether by scoring themselves or providing chances is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Well I agree with that sort of, but if you don't have the hunger to get goals and the instinct to shoot then you won't make a very good striker. At least not unless you'r a non-scoring one like Kevin Davies. Obviously I wouldn't have been criticising him if he squared it and we'd scored. That doesn't mean that I do have to criticise him because he didn't! Bit of a logical stretch that one.

Haway people, to expect a young striker to pass when he's in that position is total nonsense. If he doesn't have the instinct to shoot in those situations, he shouldn't be playing up front. If he was 30 with 200 goals in his account he might have had the maturity to look up. But at this stage in his career it's a non-problem.

Actually Kazeiro, I was shouting at the time that Loven should have gambled at the back post. Don't think anyone was really to blame for us not scoring there, it was just one of those unlucky situations where it ends in a near miss.

Ranger is so clearly better than Lovenkrands, Best and probably Shola, but he's a very young lad with everything to prove. I've got no doubt that he'll go on to be much better than the three of them from what I've seen, but I can understand why we're easing him in slowly and playing more experience heads for most games. It's just how football works, unless you're a freak like Rooney.

If there's a game that Kevin Nolan clearly won't be any use in, it was this one.

Good game from him today, in games like this he does help to take the pressure off at times.

It will be interesting to see how much he takes away from our system and our defensive game, if anything. That's my only worry. Still, with the supermodel-thin squad we've got there'll be plenty of chances to try things out.

Well, they all kind of stumbled to the side like someone had picked the pitch up and tipped it over. Reminded me of Star Trek when the bridge is under attack.

I would definitely like to see him get more game time. We should be taking Shola off on about 60 minutes.

Spot on, you play those positions on almost pure instinct, maybe if he was an experienced striker with 10 years top football behind him he would have been calm enough to knock it across, but he isn't. Only a tiny amount of blame attached to Ranger IMO.

Definitely with Tiote, Ben Arfa and Carroll we would have won. Then again, if they'd had Bale we might have got beat!

He's doing very well, I think the last two late goals have been more to do with the players he has to work with than any decisions he's made. He should be showing games like this to Mike Ashley to get him to open the chequebook again.

What a hero. Him and Williamson got turned too easily for the goal, but they were obviously knackered so I'll not slaughter them.

Knackered players and no quality from the bench. Hardly his fault. This is basically it. When James Perch and a 19 year-old striker are your bench options, better teams will get goals against you. Look at what Redknapp had to bring off the bench FFS... world's apart.

The reason we concede these goals is that everyone of our players is running themselves into the ground just to keep up with the Premiership. Until we strengthen the squad it will happen more. Still, good performance and great goal by Colo. Ranger looks like he'll be knocking on the manager's door for a starting place sooner rather than later.

I agree, to be fair to Ashley he's doing alright on that so far. More work to do though.

All of them would walk into our squad, all but one or two would walk straight into our first team.

I still get a little bit of excitement every time I remember we've signed him permanently, it's class!

I'm sorry to see Routledge go TBH, first because I think given a run in the team he could still do a job, secondly because our midfield squad is thinner than a really thin thing now.

What a dick. What have you done in the Premiership Luke? Eh? EH?

Man Utd were never going to sell Welbeck to Sunderland anyway, I'm sure they knew that before they took him on loan.