huss9

Sels - couple of dodgy moments. the parry straight to the opposition and a couple of awful clearances. Anita - looks like he'd been told to hold his position as he rarely bombed on even when space opened Clark - poor Mbemba - much better Dummett - not a good game the back four in general first half were poor. opposition often just jogging through and not being tracked - the build up to their penalty was direl. Ritchie - class apart. knew he was gonna score the pella as soon as grabbed the ball once the ref had pointed to the spot. Shelvey - again better but needed to work harder when not in position. Gouf - nowt silly and nowt special - decent half chance first half. Hayden - starting to step up and getting up to speed. Perez - starting to look a little more lively. Gayle - at last some movement from him. Ref - who the hell gave Gayle's handball? Ref didnt flag, and ref initially gave the goal, i'm sure. also should have given Reading 2 yellows before he finally did start getting his cards out.

hopefully rafa's getting angry and the players and charnley start pulling their collective fingers out.

unfortunately knockaert may think he has a better chance of making it to the premiership if he stays on the south coast.

hmm. hints of having to sell to buy.

class

feels as if we cant make any huge bids for players such as knockaert until we know how much we get for sissoko - if we actually manage to sell him. get £30m for him and probably be £15m bids going in for players.

looks like jolback's back in then

unfortunately we are not in a position to pick and choose. we basically need to get the best we can attract. theres a lot more money floating about and the few quality players who would play in the championship or whose clubs would let go to us are limited. dont really want crouch but needs must.

he does contribute bad. those unneccessary free kicks he gives way putting us under pressure.

that goal!!! RIP.

ha ha, yes. my kids were asking me what we were singing instead of "gini wijnaldum" so had to tell them it was "bog off wijnaldum".

we need a real leader in the middle of the park. the likes of nolan in this team would easily have the rest of the midfield raise their game.

my bad, thought i'd seen him on the bench.

not as surprised as the crowd when he put in that cracking cross for ritchie - that shocked everyone!!!

on the bench first game, but dont know about this weekend.

mbabu seems to be a bit of a conundrum. whilst others look great in training, get picked, then dont do it on match day. seems this kid is the other way around. seen nothing wrong with hime during his (brief) playing time but he's still not getting picked. may be an attitude problem in training??

recruitment thus far hasnt been the greatest.

he was our best midfielder on saturday but thats not saying mcuh. could still have done so much more.

mbabu behind him would have helped. is he still injured. think we should be playing him until he is loaned.

Remember last season, it took time for the confidence to come and Benitez mentioned it as an issue after almost every game. We've now got loads of new players, most of which never played regularly in front of fans like ours, and the added dynamic of us being strong favourites for the title. Benitez himself has only been in charge of the club for a dozen competitive games. It's going to take a while to find a rhythm. Benitez will get it right, but he'll need some more options in this squad. Lacking in pace and goals at the moment. Ashley needs to make sure he gets whoever he wants one way or another. It's not like we're short of cash. not short of cash but there is a shortage of quality willing to sign for a championship club.

hid a couple of times behind opposition players when we had possession instead of moving into space and demanding the ball. that was really infuriating.

Remember last season, it took time for the confidence to come and Benitez mentioned it as an issue after almost every game. We've now got loads of new players, most of which never played regularly in front of fans like ours, and the added dynamic of us being strong favourites for the title. Benitez himself has only been in charge of the club for a dozen competitive games. It's going to take a while to find a rhythm. makes sense, just damn frustrating having players who lack confidence at home to a really shit huddersfield team. gotta really look at yourself as a professional footballer if teams like that make you shit your pants. the flags and the crowd may have been intimidating when they walked out but that all went after kick off. then it was 11 vs 11.

i disagree. Last week 2 definte defensive CM's with another in the team. Today 2 players sitting with a hardly attacking Anita with them. Took him till hallf time at home to Huddersfield and a goal down to tell Shelvey to push on and even then he took off width to do it. I love that Rafa has made us a football club again but he's given me no confidence in 12 games. No confidence in 12 games? We spent half of those on an unbeaten run, no? Perhaps he doesn't trust his defence yet and, judging by the evidence, rightly so. They also need drilling for the new style. Don't think today was 2 sitting midfielders, Shelvey has attacking quality in this league (see the last time he was in it, tore it to pieces), he's not some sitting duck that doesn't contribute going forward. Anita I agree with, I don't like that situation - we need balance and quality on the flanks. Unbeaten run ? We beat Spurs afterwe'd been relegated and they'd exploded after losing the title. T Am I being mental here or did we not go 6 games unbeaten at the back end of last year? That's half of the current managers total games for the club, in which he's had to impart his ideas onto new players twice... Those games...we were poor V Palace amd WBA, crap teams and we weren't better than them, Villa away, must win and at no point did we look like doing it, Liverpool couild have been out of sight by half time (that first half was as bad a 45 as I've seen NUFC play in the premier). If you look coldly at results we done well. If you look at performances....well thats something different. We were an abomination last season, to get us as close as he did was an achievement, 2 games more we would have still been a PL side. Turning NUFC around from top to bottom is going to be impossible without time. should still be able to get the odd point off our relegation rivals huddersfield and fulham.

could do with moving on sissoko quickly (der, obvious I know) - at least it would add some clarity to the size of our remaining transfer budget.

think pre-season should have been tougher in terms of the teams we played.