Nexumaster

Excellent Marathon Man reference

I think it will help having Shelvey back to put those balls long beyond defenders for him to run onto - hence getting more involved later on. He'll either break free or draw a foul more often than not 1v1.

Put the Ki in the engine and start her up? No? I'll get me coat.

This. He has his flaws and limitations but I think he's trying and doing a lot better in this system. Hope he can bag more goals though!

"How I do it openly and extensively and am doing it right now" this did me in

New manager bounce in time for our game?

They are pretty fit, tbf.

Not sure why I've factored my evening around watching this...

Love it. All this talk of "have a go", you have to know your limits and while I'm sure Rafa go into it wanting to lose, I'd rather us lose by 1 than 5 or 6 since it can be costly and also mentally will take it's toll on defensive players who constantly get blitzed.

I think Ki gave up a much higher tempo and it took Watford by surprise - be interesting to see if those subs have earned starts in Rafa's eyes.

One thing to be thankful for is the transfer window finally closing before the season has begun. We've had a shit window in terms of bringing people in but at least there won't be rumours about the likes of Lascelles leaving while we get the season going.

Lose games by one goal - feel like that was our luck last season too.

How does everyone spamming the replies make them stop tweeting anyway? Surely 99% of their followers aren't clicking on the comments to their tweets regardless It's more that there will probably only be one person managing their account (or one small team in rotation). They'll be using some sort of social management deck which will get loads and loads of notifications and messages - thus making it hard for them to manage the account. Either that, or the number of replies is so out of the ordinary that they'd rather not post anything and have all those negative comments on their main timeline. If you tweet them regularly yourself it will go to "Tweets & Replies" rather than the main showing.

That's made my morning.

We need to sack off all our strikers and start again. Sweet Jesus, man.

Two hot garbage performances. All they need to do is pressure Shelvey early and we go nowhere. I don't blame Rafa though, since our strikers are trash and Perez isn't the mercurial talent we'd need in that position.

I actually quite like the gold. Wearing my black and gold shirt at work today for the footie-shirts-at-work malarky.

Yeah. Either way you look at it, he's a shocking inclusion. I'm not even saying it because I think Newcastle players should be in there, and I can't say who else I'd put in as I don't know other team's squads well enough - but I find it hard to believe he's a hot pick from any angle.

Which ones in particular? I have to ask who you'd rather play? We're just not great in general. Livermore, Welbeck and Lallana are the ones I scoffed at most. I'm pretty sure there are other lesser-known players who'd fit the bill who've played more and played better. If you're taking a midfielder from the team rock bottom of the league, bang on to go down, we must really be in trouble.

Southgate is off his face looking at those names.

I've gone for five. We need to beat Huddersfield and are capable of doing so, but even if we do I worry about us getting anything from Leicester, Arsenal and Everton.

Agreed. I would imagine Rafa has been having a word regarding decision making for when to hit it long, when to drop back, when to bomb on etc. Made a subtle, but definite difference.

To be on 34 points after Southampton would be dreamy, as you'd hope the teams below us wouldn't pick up as many in their 3 games. Agree that I'm not banking on us beating either of them though.

They've only played us once this season. No shit. I mean the 15/16 season too, beating us 1-3 at SJP and us only narrowly beating them away.

These always look ropey when I see them play other teams, but then when they play us they look decent. Pretty sure that says more about us than them though.