The Prophet

Semenyo has required patience and good coaching to become the player he has today. He's been quite frustrating in previous seasons.

The ref was poor today. Blowing up for nothing every few seconds made the first half a pretty dreadful spectacle.

He's busy. He did a lot of positive stuff, but also got caught in possession a fair few times and of course gave the penalty away. Still not convinced he improves us at this minute in time, but there's talent there for sure.

At least Miley, Barnes and Gordon have a reprieve.

I'd say he was brilliant in both Champions League games.

He's had some brilliant performances to date, but also some poor ones. Today was definitely the latter. Not all of our signings will hit the ground running. We've seen Gordon and Hall take time to get up to speed and learn what Howe wants from them. Knowing what we're like, he'll no doubt get written off and hounded in some quaters, but very few players fail to progress under Howe in the medium to long term.

Kept an eye on Anderson. He was very Eddie Howe. Some stuff came off, some didn't, but he kept on plugging away.

Comfortable days work in the end, considering we were pretty disjointed.

Just letting players be dragged to the ground in the penalty area again. Cool, cool.

Quality block like.

It's only the second time they've started together mind.

Very bitty game with neither team able to get any real fluency, in part due to a ref who's giving absolutely everything. We started to gain momentum at the end of the half, getting the ball into the big man a lot more. Continuing to do that will be key at the start of the second half.

Hall’s in the England U21 squad so maybe this is just a way to get him out of that and fully fit.

Thankfully the Twitter ITKs are almost certainly putting two and two together and getting five. What benefit is there to drip feeding the news?

He's one of the best CBs in the league, I'd be gutted.

Who cares though? As long as he's decent and it doesn't kibosh our PSR position.

Potentially.

No pre-season could set him back months.

Looks as though he miscontrolled it.

Delightful miscontrol.

Always looked a decent player, just a highly questionable attitude.

The injured chap plays RCB though iirc.

Play different sides, don't they? Far more likely they go and get Guehi.

Nah, he was pants. Who knows though, he may have learned and improved since his last English gig.

Given Hall doesn't sound quite right yet, it'll likely be Burn at LB for a few games. As soon as Hall is back up to speed, he has a difficult choice to make. Burn brings great leadership and has barely put a foot wrong for a while now, but Botman is simply a better footballer and improves the way the team play overall.