AyeDubbleYoo

I heard the deadline was Friday.

I reckon about 7 at the moment, we're doing well but there's still a significant chance we won't go up.

Thing is, Ranger has had a difficult and thankless job to do in recent games. He can't show much going forward because he's being asked to play with his back to goal, hold it up and play it backwards.

Suggests we are at least trying to get players in, so it's a good sign. I can't remember him that much, but he's an experienced player for the squad, so thumbs up. Another wide player or two and a little man upfront would do nicely too.

It's a mystery to me why so many pundits and commentators seem not to rate Enrique. I rate him as probably our best player at the moment... luckily other clubs might be believing the press and not coming to buy him.

Will be a big indication of our season, how we respond to this defeat. Hopefully the confidence is robust enough to withstand the disappointment, and we won't collapse. We need to go 100% positive in the next game and foget about trying to scrape 1-goal wins. Put two up front and get the pressure on the opposition.

I wish I was so sure that Butt will be dropped... I'm worried about that.

Not far off, I might go for Barton instead of Nolan if available. We don't need to be worrying about 4-5-1 and swamping midfield in this division, we should be picking teams that put all of the pressure on our opponents.

I'm up to 1.3

Yes. 5 Live Sports Extra in the UK. Only on digital radio though I believe.

At least he's playng now! The first 50 he was completely unknown.

In that case why not punish the other players who dived that same weekend in one go? That way not only do you send out an emphatic message but you don't look like you've singled out one player for the sake of it. Go through the video footage and you'll probably find an instance of diving in every single game last weekend. Punish them all, and you've set the new standard. Punish one player randomly and you've created a farce and look like an unprofessional and biased organization. Their aim afterall is to police the game fairly. I would have like to see that, no doubt. I'd love to see every game in the top divisions reviewed on video for diving... I suppose the problem might be that a system like that would take some setting up and staffing - UEFA were trying to react to the outcry about Eduardo instantly. Maybe they made an error by acting like this rather than setting up a longer-term plan, but they've compunded the error by letting him off now IMO.

Must be the only player we've sold who hasn't scored a boatload of goals every time he faces us, it's quite refreshing.

Exactly, I don't understand the argument that he was treated 'unfairly'. If UEFA had shown some backbone they could have used this as the first of many crackdowns on cheats. As it is they've backed down and basically admitted that they aren't going to do anything to stop this diving ruining the top level game.

That when people dive they should be punished? I think that's exactly the precedent we need to set. They do get punished, they get booked.. They don't though, because the referees don't have the balls to enforce the rules and they wouldn't be backed up by the authorities (as we've just seen, they're essentially spineless). In every game there are maybe 5-10 incidents where a player goes down when he needn't. I'm not saying all of those are outright 'dives', but a lot of them are.

That when people dive they should be punished? I think that's exactly the precedent we need to set.

Ridiculous decision IMO... how can they now suddenly have changed their minds? In law for an appeal you need new evidence, presumably they looked at all the available video the first time around. Was too much to ask that someone in the football powers at be would actually have the balls to stand up to the top players and top clubs it seems. Very disappointing.

I really hope we can build in January, and being top of the league will make us a real draw for players. But I fear that if the club is not sold then nobody will be coming in of any note, and we may even sell the likes of Colo, Jonas and Enrique. Hope I'm wrong

I'd actually like to see them given a go, it would be novel for defenders not to be able to just double team the single striker... they would have their hands full IMO.

I think it was Kadar, wasn't it?

Do we still need to go through the weekly "this will be a tough game" routine, or can we now say that we'll probably roll over most teams? I'm uneasy with being too confident, but surely we should beat Blackpool fairly easily?

I thought that the subsitutions were a bit too safe if anything... I would have liked to see us try to keep the pressure on Cardiff throughout.

He still seems to be not great in the air, although Bothroyd is a handful for anyone. It is worrying that every time he seems to go up for a header, the ball ends up behind him! Still, we haven't conceded many goals so he can't be struggling that much.

We need the numbers more than anything else. With 46 games this season plus cup games two centre backs isn't enough. Even if he doesn't make the first team straight away he should see plenty of action. Yeah, agree totally with that, I just don't want to see Colo booted to the bench just yet.

Think it would be an error to bring in a player of Cort's standard to immediately replace Coloccini. If Colo leaves in January then fair enough, but he hasn't been bad enough to warrant a dropping IMO. We've hardly conceded a goal FFS.