Hughesy

yeah - but I don't suppose that tends to go down that well with the player and is essentially a waste of cash as you are paying players you can't use.

Are we going to offload some players to register all these guys or are we ok on that front?

Khazri to Sunderland - thought he was supposed to be quite good?

To lose HBA was ridiculous in itself, but to get rid of Cabella after one season just compounded the error. I can imagine Cabella fitting pretty well into a team with Wijnaldum.

People keep saying this. He wasn't released because he wasn't good enough. Nobody genuinely believes that. He was released because he fell out with the manager and influential members of the squad - like he did at previous clubs. This is no James Milner situation where people felt he genuinely wasn't good enough. The situation of his departure makes no difference to how monumentally stupid a decision it was - so no wonder people bring it up.

I still find it hugely depressing to think that some newspapers said that someone like Tuchel was actually interested in coming to us (not sure whether Dortmund had approached him at this stage). Could have thrown a load of cash at him and actually had a quality manager for the first time in over 10 years.

This basically. Will never get my head round Ashley's unwillingness to actually spend on a manager. it would actually suit the shitty blueprint to get a manager in who can get the most out of the players.

Just imagine if we'd spent this kind of cash when we had a team with Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Ba etc in it.

Can't make up my mind about this - I always thought he looked promising when he first started playing for Spurs, but have to say I hadn't realised that he had fallen out of favour to quite the degree that he has. Think he's got some natural talent and seems relatively quick so don't think it's the worst move in the world. Would rather we'd got a striker in though.

I assume this is a reference to Berahino and Pulis - http://www.thesecretfootballer.com/articles/the-secret-footballer/29898/strange-case-of-star-player-caught-in-middle-of-chairman-manager-transfer-standoff/

That West Brom game is an absolute must win now. Keep looking at our fixtures and trying to convince myself we'll be ok as we have West Brom, Bournemouth, Sunderland, Swansea and Palace at home..

Didn't help that we kept passing the ball behind him - kept killing his speed and ability to run at their full back.

£££££ Imagine they'll pay him in euros.

We've definitely got to be more intelligent about the way we play the ball up to him and/or the movement around him. Against West Ham and Man Utd we played the balls up to him at a height where he could use his body to hold the ball up - usually chest height or below. A lot of the balls up to him yesterday were aimless balls that we hoped he'd win in the air. On the occasions he did win it and flick it on, there was nobody running on to it and he was completely isolated.

Christ. It's not what we expect from him, it's what we expect from our main striker. We aren't getting it from Mitrovic, we haven't all season and it's one of the primary reasons we look like going down. I suppose it's borne out of some frustration at being at the match as well. People seem to be expecting him to be closing ppl down, winning every header, laying the ball off, scoring goals - there aren't many strikers who do that and if he could do all that, he certainly wouldn't be playing for this. Today wasn't his best game, but he missed one chance today. One. And in fairness, he didn't do that badly with it. It wasn't a glaring miss. I'd be interested to know what his actual conversion rate is compared to other strikers. Just think people judge him quite harshly - he bullied one of the best centre halves in the league (smalling) two weeks ago - he's clearly not shit. Clearly we shouldn't have ever been in a position where we solely relying on him for goals.

We can agree to disagree.. But I don't agree. Not much else to say I suppose. I think he's pretty one dimensional. I suppose time will tell.

I dare say if you had took him out of our team for every match since the start of the season, and replaced him with a goalscorer (like Austin) we'd have 9-12 more points on the board. He has 4 goals so far, a header vs Man C, a cracking left footer against Norwich, a 2yd'er vs Spuds and a Penalty against Manure. I am not sure we would to be honest. He's got a better all round game than Austin (and I think a higher ceiling of ability). We clearly should have bought both but I can see why we went for him over Austin. Happy for this to be quoted in years to come but I'm not convinced Austin will score that many at Soton. Wouldn't be surprised if Austin finishes the season with more PL goals than our striker. We actually seem to create a fair few chances, but simply have nobody to put them away. Austin would do that. You might be right - but how many chances do we create because of Mitrovic? He holds the ball up well and brings our attacking midfielders into play in good positions. Austin, from what I have seen, doesn't do that - he's a poacher in the box so he may not be getting that many chances in our team.

I dare say if you had took him out of our team for every match since the start of the season, and replaced him with a goalscorer (like Austin) we'd have 9-12 more points on the board. He has 4 goals so far, a header vs Man C, a cracking left footer against Norwich, a 2yd'er vs Spuds and a Penalty against Manure. I am not sure we would to be honest. He's got a better all round game than Austin (and I think a higher ceiling of ability). We clearly should have bought both but I can see why we went for him over Austin. Happy for this to be quoted in years to come but I'm not convinced Austin will score that many at Soton.

Take him out of our team vs man utd and West Ham and we wouldn't have got 4 points. Crucial in those matches - has a bad game today and he's crap again.

He's done that.

Some people have absolutely abysmal opinions on this guy. Genuinely baffled as to what they expect from him sometimes

won't do though the land is being sold off and the fans are not putting up enough fuss so unfortunately we are f***ed with this size stadium forever Tbh, we don't need a bigger stadium, we wouldn't fill it. Even back during the Robson era there were empty seats at most league matches, for the Champions League matches it was half empty. Maybe if we had Dortmund-esque ticket prices it would be different, but that's just a pipe-dream in modern top flight English football, never going to happen anywhere. Don't think it was quite half empty for our CL matches..

Only play off I'd like to bring in is one between the winners of the FA Cup and the team that is fourth in the league to see who qualifies for the CL. It will force teams to take the FA Cup more seriously, possibly break up the domination of the CL by the normal teams and they can even take that as the stupid 39th game and hold it in China or something.

Hadn't realised how relatively old he is - 24. I had assumed he was a bit younger than that.

Seems odd that West Ham fans are convinced that their song for Payet is original and are giving Arsenal fans grief for copying it - it's the Cabaye song.