Jayson

Missed both goals ffs

If Anita's meant to be able to replace Guthrie, he should be on the pitch replacing Cabaye right now. Hes said he can play more attacking, suprised Bigs on the pitch.

Come on lads need some magic !

Get Perch in midfield to play his Cabayesque throughballs, sorted

Considering we have Ba, Cisse and HBA on the field, absolutely. Should be playing to our strengths. Which would be pass it solely to HBA whos being heavily marked, or kick it long to avoid our non attacking rest of midfield.

Fucking brilliant PERCH

Its always going to be difficult when you're playing 2 holding midfielders & your left winger cannot cross/barely attack whatsoever. Then people complain about long balls Going through Barfa is literally our singular option, thats why theyre trippling up on him.

Save Harper

Playing with two holding central mids doesnt help like. Need someone who can dictate attacking play in the middle.

Class by Santon

More like dont get insecure about the ability of our squad to cope without sufficient evidence that that is definately the case. Especially not when the setup you're disagreeing with has recently been lauded for their ability to evaluate players ability.

The thing you're missing is you're not just disagreeing with me, you're disagreeing with what our setup has chosen to do. Im providing you with reasoned responses as to why. It is their estimation that we will be able to cope, they are the ones who have evaluated our players before the season started not me bud & you have no basis whatsoever to disagree with them until the results back up your pov. Last season is on their side. We had a first choice defence against Villa btw & its a bit presumptious to claim that defence wouldnt have conceded similarly against Everton given their form. My point about cups is that it has the potential to improve our younger players, who due to that experience may help us compete more strongly in future competitions & that the league is more important for our status as a club.

No it doesnt. Results with our back up players so far dont suggest we've been left short though do they? It does impact our ability to compete in cups, but this is acceptable if it leads to getting stronger players in future isnt it? Especially if you can use it to give experience to your younger players instead.

The goals scored last season by Best gained us 7 points, the goals scored by Shola gained us 1 and I wasn't a fan of Best but I think his movement pisses all over the movement of Shola. What were the better results where Shola was present when Best wasn't? If one of Ba/Cisse get injured, we could play the other upfront & play an alternative formation or use Shola as a link up player for them. They would be the spearhead, not Best/Shola. Best scored 3 of his 4 before Ba started scoring. Shola got more assists after that time. As said, this is all irrelevant as Shola wouldnt be a certain starter regardless.

Well to pad it out a bit, I'm fed up with being accused of being a spoilt kid for wanting moderate investment and the club to have a desire to improve. Your post encapsulates that attitude and I'm fed up with reading it. If we set a budget for transfers, how would it make sense to spend over what we estimate that players value to be? With moderate investment that would directly affect the amount we can spend the next time. What if a better player in any position becomes available then next window? Break the budget to get him or miss out? Also how do our scouting team rate the prospective additions in comparison to our current side, is the improvement worthy of the fee being asked? If its slight improvement, would it be worth relying on our current players if we cannot get them for the price we want so that we can find a bigger improvement in future? Is there not a lot more to this situation beyond "i just want moderate investment"? Everyone wants moderate investment man, but it has to be sensible & you have to plan ahead. They have been doing this, this is why we have improved.

Our forward line is weaker, we're 1 injury up front from playing forwards who will have a better than a goal every two games record for us in the league to one with a record of less than a goal every 5 games. 1 injury doesnt automatically make Ameobi a starter. Even if it did, hes atleast combined with one of our better strikers equally as well as Best ever did. Id say his link up play is better than Best's was myself. He was also present in better results than Best.

There's that bullshit again. Uh Llambias has cited the reason for a lack of transfers as them being "to pricey" & people are unhappy with how little we spent. What do you think that suggests people think Dave?

Keep in mind that people were also concerned that we had no cover up front and our backup to Ba and Cisse is a statue. Who helped us get a draw against Everton in the last minutes ofcourse. We did go with one striker for much of last season quite successfully if you remember, we have 3 now. Alternative formations exist.

What are you on about man? Who cares about those clubs? We should look to continuously improve ourselves. That's it. Nothing else to it. Your assessment of how desperately we should add numbers to improve is obviously up for debate. We had the 3rd best form in the country from January onwards last season. Our current squad achieved that. As i mentioned before our best results this season have been without both Colo, Simpson & Tiote in part. What is your basis that suggests we should be going out of our way to match other clubs fee's to maintain or improve? Whats the basis for it beyond insecurity? Because the results dont back it up.

Solid argument

Too much "we couldn't afford it" talk there. Nonsense, as we all know. So what's the real reason, then? Being far too cautious. This quote sums it up... "They worked on those glory transfers and all the dramas behind them - glory and bust, with no success. What was the success? It was basically. 'I've signed a player!' That has to end. It has." if they say we couldn't afford it then the reason we wouldn't have signed a player is cos we couldn't afford it. We pay our fees outright in one go and are trying to make the club self sufficient, if we have £6m in the transfer pot and the selling club says we want £6.5m then rightly or wrongly Llambias is going to walk away. i might not agree but wouldn't say it was nonsense. We spent about £3 million. That's not acceptable, regardless of any spin they may try to put on it. January should be interesting. £3m net spend's a pretty lavish window for us under Ashley if you look at it properly. While it actually is ( ) that doesn't help their case. The less we've spent over the years just looks worse and worse as the trend continues. Aye it looked awful last season. If only they had some kind of basis to the idea that they dont need to run the club at a loss to achieve success. A 5th place finish might back that up somehow. Wishful thinking though anyway. Lets ignore context and moan about how much we spent constantly. We sold our best player months before to fund signings and we'll possibly still be spending that money 2 years on. How's that for context, Derek? Bit of a random statement if im honest. Im not fussed how long it takes to spend it aslong as we improve in the long run. You're like a kid at christmas, you could care less about the implications involved in getting the presents. You just want new toys.

What we spent during this summer has no bearing on where we finished last season and will be seen as a success/failure based on the results of this season. A season Llambias has targeted that we can drop 3 places and it would be seen by him as a success. Obviously but the previous season should have earnt some belief in our model at this early stage, why would you disregard its history? Keeping in mind, that our best results so far this season have specifically happened when Coloccini & Simpson have been out. The players everyones concerned we dont have back up for.

Too much "we couldn't afford it" talk there. Nonsense, as we all know. So what's the real reason, then? Being far too cautious. This quote sums it up... "They worked on those glory transfers and all the dramas behind them - glory and bust, with no success. What was the success? It was basically. 'I've signed a player!' That has to end. It has." if they say we couldn't afford it then the reason we wouldn't have signed a player is cos we couldn't afford it. We pay our fees outright in one go and are trying to make the club self sufficient, if we have £6m in the transfer pot and the selling club says we want £6.5m then rightly or wrongly Llambias is going to walk away. i might not agree but wouldn't say it was nonsense. We spent about £3 million. That's not acceptable, regardless of any spin they may try to put on it. January should be interesting. £3m net spend's a pretty lavish window for us under Ashley if you look at it properly. While it actually is ( ) that doesn't help their case. The less we've spent over the years just looks worse and worse as the trend continues. Aye it looked awful last season. If only they had some kind of basis to the idea that they dont need to run the club at a loss to achieve success. A 5th place finish might back that up somehow. Wishful thinking though anyway. Lets ignore context and moan about how much we spent constantly.

They know our fanbase well then. Glad to see he accepts our squad isnt big enough. Says the model does allow compromise but depends where we are as a team then lists Cisse? Suggests we saw getting an additional striker last Jan as more important than RB this window. Suppose Anita's arrival may have been the reason for that.

How do you improve from being Manager of the year? I'm being whooshed aren't I?? Get a team to play attractive football for more than one half every six games. Colo out, Tiote out, change attacking formation to negotiate your best players personalities & you're ready to judge his "growth" on the first few games. Aye reasonable ofcourse.