Gottlob

A huge result and I thought we deserved it though it was a really scrappy game. Schar was excellent, and Willock showed much more initiative on the ball so at times with him and Saint-Maximin surging forward we actually seemed to have genuine pace in the attack despite the lack of end product. For me Longstaff takes up some good attacking positions and is our best all-round midfielder on the ball, and I thought he was an asset when he came on. Wood looks pretty hopeless. All in all though it was an energetic and positive performance aside from the crucial three points.

He was briefly effective under Benitez when Perez and Rondon had forged a good relationship and Almiron could stretch teams with his pace down the left. That pace and work rate might make him a useful player for some sides, and perhaps our best option still is to play five at the back and stay compact in the midfield while using him and Saint-Maximin on the break. But Almiron is one of the worst attacking players I've seen when it comes to his use of the ball. We've never played him as a number 10 as far as I can remember, and he doesn't have the skill set to make that work in the top flight.

Watford have made four signings for a relative pittance already this transfer window, three of whom played today and managed to look like footballers and athletes. Meanwhile we've been busy convincing ourselves of a job well done after splashing £25 million on Chris Wood. I know that none of the movers and shakers at our club have been in their positions for all that long, but there are deals to be had which don't involve protracted negotiations or acts of desperation for heavily inflated fees.

Chris Wood will slot in nicely alongside the squad full of players who people wanted to see sold if not lynched after the result at the weekend: ageing and one-dimensional but previously capable of slugging it out for a side in the bottom half of the league. He won't improve us in the long run and perhaps the cavalry isn't coming. But right now we don't have another striker, so a few winners is all it will take for him to more than recoup his fee.

Why was your mate getting you to smuggle the rum out of his own house? It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. It doesn't make any sense.

He's obviously better than what we've had, but I do worry whether his nebbish character and funny English make him a bad fit for our current squad. Like Rafa he seems detail-oriented and a hard taskmaster when it comes to what he expects from his players out on the pitch, but he lacks the same sort of gravitas, seems to rub some players up the wrong way, and could easily become a figure of fun. He'll obviously get plenty of scorn from the press after every disappointing result.

For twenty years Manchester United were the golden goose of the Premier League and were handed all of the decisions every week, yet they still managed to cultivate a siege mentality as though they were the ones being hard done by. What sort of warped mind buys into that way of thinking? We know the answer: Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, and Cristiano Ronaldo, bullies, abusers, and rapists. You had to be mentally deficient to play and succeed under Alex Ferguson.

I think people would be more inclined to pledge if they knew they were going to get an area of jurisdiction come the day of the takeover. People would feel more involved if they could pledge their monthly pound knowing for instance that when the takeover occurs, they and a small group of their fellow trustees will have decision-making powers regarding the type of potatoes which might make the matchday chips.

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/steve-bruce-arsenal-post-match-poop-1759595 'I was sow pleased with how we played in the first half, but obviously sow, sow disappointed with how we performed after that. Obviously we put in a few of the new signings today who we'll have to bring up to speed, but the Premier League waits for neither man nor beast and I've been telling the players that. At the end of the day you win some and lose some, but what you don't want to do is give away gowels like what we did in the second half. Not to put too fine a point on it, we pooed worselves the night.'

His left eye framed by a curl which his lips can scarcely muster, he's heard of his namesake, the short-lived Italian actor, but on the pitch he's languid rather than dashing: never one to lead the dance, his passivity gives the mistaken impression of a come-hither.

Less Argentine-Italian than Italo-Mexican, as a child he watched games of polo through a chain-link fence and wore a broken bandolier which he found by the dump. Slung low around his scrawny waist, he was no conquistador but a sunken crevice.

He sounds like a too-cute-to-be-rakish Argentine pivot player, slight of build, wearing his floppy hair with an undercut, most content away from the pitch nuzzling up in a woman's heaving embonpoint.

The problem with female football commentators, is that they don't like it up 'em! At least not on a cold night in Stoke etc. I can only presume that Match of the Day are practising sabotage in appointing a woman with an horrendous voice who is as cliche-ridden as any of the men. Otherwise there are some good female commentators, good female analysts like Eni Aluko and Alex Scott, and I don't want even my colour commentators to be solely comprised of male ex-professionals, especially since male ex-professional footballers must be one of the thickest and most sheltered and least reflective demographics on the planet. Seriously it's astonishing the discrepancy in analysis between former footballers and former athletes in other sports, perhaps not coincidentally especially some of those sports that give relatively equal billing to men and women, like tennis and track and field.

There's always a strain of support at least on the internet which seems to think that firm avowal of results and trophies makes them themselves winners.

I'm not sure that the forwards would ever see the ball in these teams with two deep-lying midfielders and five at the back. If you have Debuchy and Enrique as your 'wing backs', which they're not really, then Cabaye and Tiote in the middle and three up top, there's not much pace and a dearth of options when it comes to carrying the ball up the pitch. I'd go with Disco's team: Krul Debuchy - Lascelles - Coloccini - Enrique Sissoko - Cabaye - Jonas HBA - Ba - Remy feeling that Cabaye offers more balance and creativity than Tiote, wondering whether Perez might offer a bit more than Remy when it comes to linking the midfield and attack.

It's probably those ill-fitting Tommy Hilfiger shirts.

In conversation, sometimes mumbling so only I can really hear what I'm saying, I always refer to teams by their most hilarious nicknames, so Manure, and Liverpoo, and Nuked Arsehole U-shited, Slumberland and Smell-a-ton, Pork and Ham Codspur, Transmere, Wet Spam U-shited.

I renew my call to swap him for Vurnon Anita.

I will not respond to my denigrators who imply I am wrong or haven't read the report, and instead hark back to that time I spotted Peter in Sainsbury's. As he dribbled a can of baked beans up and down the aisles of the store, a thought crossed my mind: he is just as good even now as Lionel Messi. He was as skillful as Messi, he had all of Messi's footwork and feints, no doubt he could pass like Messi, and shoot like Messi, and he had the face of a young Lionel Messi.

Peter Beardsley a racist, I think I've heard it all I tell ya. When he was passing him all those goals, Andy Cole never seemed too bothered! Peter probably doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'racist'. It's a good thing the PC snowflake brigade are chasing him now and not in his pomp, cause back then a little shimmy, a drop of the shoulder, and he'd have been off, and the ball would have been in the back of the net, and there'd have been no time to wonder. Nowadays he'd probably sell for £150 million and he'd be the first player to take home £1 million a week, but he was no prima donna. He was just like Lionel Messi, he was skillful like Messi, he could pass the ball like Messi, he could dribble like Messi, and he had a face like a young Lionel Messi. I saw him once in Sainsbury's and he was absolutely no hassle.

Any possibility we can arrange a two-for-one swap deal, Anita for Colback and Shelvey?

I predict a training ground bust-up with Jonjo Shelvey inside six months.

Allan Saint-Maximin You're one in a million When you perform to your maximum I play this on my theremin *play on theremin* *pause* (all shout) Weyyerbugger man!

Being publicly rejected by Sam Allardyce while chasing after Steve Bruce feels like a new low for the club, an embarrassment for the fans, and not something humorous or left-field enough to reignite any interest in the coming season. If we're going down this route, I'd have preferred something like a Joe Kinnear/Gerry Francis double act, or we could have just given the job to Shola.

Is it the quintessential studmuffin Joel Gertner?