Stottie

Possibly sacrilege around here, but Man City are better at keeping it in the corner in the final minutes than Alan Shearer. More entertaining too.

The commentators never point it out, but Man U's team cost/are paid at least as much as City's, aren't they? Yet they don't try to play football against them. It doesn't matter if it kills the league this time as a competition, you can only want them to lose.

Man U can't even win double save of the season.

Ref in surprising show of some bollocks. Well done son.

Two assists for Lukaku.

Up to five, but only by rounding up. Four point seven or similar. I saw Brighton get shown up by Huddersfield, so I think them and Swansea are worse than us. It's then take your pick out of about four sides, including us and West Brom. Pards decided McClean was a better sub to bring on that Chris Brunt, so there is hope there.

We let Leicester dominate for about twenty-five minutes in the first half, but they only scored with a long ranger that should have been saved. The only easy chance we gifted Leicester was Okazaki's at the end, and we had to score it for him. We gave Vardy basically nothing all game. He mightn't be likable, but he is a very good striker who scored a worldie last week was it. In isolation the game wasn't too bad. If you wanted to, you could cherry pick that we got back into it and looked more likely than them to get a third. We're a bottom half team, so "look like winning" is about as good as it will get. What is genuinely disturbing is when you take this game in the context of our last ten games. Several of our players are clearly struggling, even ones like Merino who looked good a couple of months ago. There seems to be a malaise, and its hard to see how we can turn the corner on it. Since we don't have another RB, the struggling Yedlin has to stay in, but I'd drop Lejeune, Manquillo and Darlow. I'd play Gamez over Manquillo if Dummett is not ready. I'd keep Gayle in and maybe play all three CMs. I would also tell them to get in the refs face when two of them get elbowed within five seconds. Accepting things like that meekly is all part of the malaise. That incident alone was worth 0.5 on the relegationometer.

Interesting theory. However, didn't we pick up points earlier in the season thanks to goals from Lascelles, Clark, and that one from Merino? I don't think it was the formation. To get full value out of Gayle, I think we need to play Shelvey, and it is that that might screw things up. fwiw, I subscribe to the theory that Gayle is capable of doing as well as the historical average for leading Championship strikers entering the PL with the same team. It's 40% fewer goals per game. For Gayle, that would make him a 12-13 a season striker, entirely reasonable for a midtable side. This assumes that there isn't some weird fitness or mental thing going on with Gayle, which was kind of hinted at during the summer. https://experimental361.com/2017/07/15/how-do-goalscorers-fare-after-their-team-is-promoted/ If I may criticise Rafa yesterday, I'd have kept Elliot in and dropped Manquillo. Elliot's save percentage is about the same as Lloris (who's slumping a bit) and above Pickford's. I don't like Elliot but he's more mediocre than useless. They'll be at least five worse than him in the league. Brighton's is for certain. I'd criticise Rafa on this because we've seen Darlow makes bad decisions, rushing out for balls he'll never get, and it makes the whole defence nervous. The other Rafa criticism I'd make is that his substitutions could almost be scripted and should be more proactive. We're on a bad run and are crying out for some spine in the team. Lascelles can't come back soon enough for me.

I think Elliot saves the first and doesn't flap at the crosses. He's let a couple of soft ones in, but wasn't as ropey as Darlow. The team is struggling enough for confidence as it is without Darlow adding to it.

He gets into good positions otherwise he'd have nothing to miss. His problem is an inability to kick the ball.

Poor from Merino to give it away so casually, but I think blob saves that. Otherwise we've been second best, but we're still in it thankfully.

Liverpool away and Man U home up next for him. Should be bottom three by Christmas.

If Swansea winning keeps Clement around, maybe its a good thing. I see that Pards brought McClean on at half time....

Brighton look absolutely terrible. I like Hughton, but they are hopeless.

Hope Joselu's got his tackling boots on. They're more effective than his shooting boots.

Sounds positive to me. It backs up that the silence so far has been no news as good news. Hope Rafa gets money to spend in January!

Josh King has a great dynamism, but the stats people seem to think his goals in the second half of last season are a classic case of an unsustainable hot streak. https://statsbomb.com/2017/07/joshua-king-and-the-hot-foot/ With a player in hot form, an increasingly mad market, and inflated fees in January, there is a real risk of overpaying. fwiw, for stats people, another classic case of a hot streak was us finishing fifth under Pardew.

If those numbers are Transfermarkt's, they have Lascelles down as 5 million euros. Staying on that site, it shouldn't be forgotten that we have the youngest team in the league. It means they'll make mistakes, but they should get better. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/premier-league/durchschnittsalter/wettbewerb/GB1

We're not a good enough team from open play to risk losing his set piece delivery. He's not hopeless, like Rory Delap was when not taking long throws, but is in poor form. I would have had him down to chip in with five or six goals this season, so he's definitely underperforming there. Yedlin's been struggling too, so that won't have helped either.

1-4-1 in their last six away games, inc. drawn games at Stoke and West Ham. The win was at Swansea. So not as good as their home form has been. 6 for, 7 against in those six games, so this might be another tight home game that could go either way. Looking at their team on paper, you'd think free-flowing, destroy teams on the counter, where we are weak, but that's not been playing out for them. Whoscored says they're weak at defending set pieces and against throughballs, so Ritchie and Shelvey it is!

Aye, you'd think we still had Pardew and Carver. We've not been good enough, and the game is playing out like all the "I told you so"s would suggest, but it's not long since we've been dramatically worse.

Ritchie FFS. I thought Hazard would take his pen that way as well. The neutrals and just as expected crowd will be happy, but Rafa must be fuming.

Not too bad, we gifted them their second, but also made the most of their errors for our own goal. I rate Gayle, so good to see him get a chance to play and score. I don't know what formation we are playing, but I'm happy to see Rafa mix it up.

Looked like a foul on Mbemba but an awful giveaway by Ritchie before that.

Maradona with a bright yellow bow tie!