Stottie

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!

Isn't that more than Harry Kane?

What a comedown for Everton. All that money spent on players, those names touted as their new manager, and then just settling on safe mediocrity. It sounds like the idea was to get Giroud on deadline day, but it's gone spectacularly pear-shaped (barrel-shaped?) since then.

If we fall behind and defend counters as badly as against Man U and Watford, we'll get a drubbing. Merino is back though, so I don't think that will pan out. Chelsea only scored one against Swansea and we're better than them. Keep the errors down and we might frustrate them.

The PFMs on telly will just call WBA a yo-yo club and laugh it off if, more likely when, Pardew struggles. He'll get away with it again. He lost 8 of his last 10 games at CP. It was only a year ago. Looking good for there being three worse teams than us in the league, I must say.

Of our recent results, only the Bournemouth one really hurts and we had a disallowed goal. Three points in that game and we'd be ninth.

At WBA, Pardew has no Zaha to bail him out with individual brilliance, and no obvious easy-goal-from-set-piece threat like Scott Dann (one in seven in the PL). We know what his set pieces were like from his time here. WBA look like they need molding into a team that will pick up regular points. They could find themselves really struggling.

After fourteen games Defenders: four goals scored Midfielders: four goals scored (if you include Perez' vs. Southampton because it was 4-2-3-1) Forwards: four goals scored :'(

I thought he was good against Man U, and don't get the recent criticism. He often runs out of steam though.

YESSS!

Onside, and lucky boy because that is a howler of a miss.

If Douglas' pre-match Twitter thinks Murphy for the injured Atsu is "very interesting", what will he say if Saivet is playing? ZOMG!! ZOMG!!

Just to speed up the process, perhaps someone should tell Staveley that Merino could realistically be worth what Kante went for, thirty something million. He's better than the two midfielders we got thirty and twenty-five million for not so long ago. Would due diligence on a football club pick up on player values?

Dunno about us scoring two (!), but yeah, against Man U we were good most of the first half and even after their strong spell, Hayden should have made it 2-2. Before it, we had the Bournemouth game with the bright start and the "offside" goal. I think all the last two games showed is that we go to pieces/cannot defend counters when chasing a game without Lascelles and Merino. Our right side was AWOL the entire game against Watford, but lets just call that a bad day at the office. I'd have to see it happen more before declaring panic stations.

I won't post it, but Liverpool's forum RAWK has a league table that judges teams on their results relative to their fixtures, the theoretical difficulty of fixtures being based on last year's table. It's in a thread on that forum called the "Alternative Premier League Table". If you are into stats, take a look. Ignore if not. fwiw, their relegation table has us as joint fourth bottom.

According to Football 365, he's taken sixth most shots among players with more than 800 minutes. Taking lots of shots has high correlation with goals scored. The current top 3 for shots per game is Kane, Salah, and (with fewer minutes) Aguero. During that streak with a goal every game, Vardy was taking loads, showing that it wasn't a fluke. For all his shots, Joselu has only scored with two "tackles". His positional play can be very good, he gave Murphy an angle to play the ball in both times against Watford, but he just cannot strike the ball.

Their squad is so unbalanced that it could seriously dent any up and coming manager's career. Dyche and Silva would be taking a massive risk on their reputations. They would be wiser to stay put and wait for a better job to come along.

Only five goals scored in our last eight games now, including not especially hard fixtures. We've conceded some bad goals in the past two games, but mostly on the counter when we were wide open. This wouldn't happen if we weren't behind. Our attack remains the prime concern. Joselu's inability to get a goalbound shot in in two great situations yesterday should be the last straw. He doesn't even look like scoring.

Ah well, I can't see how he can play Joselu over Mitro after that. Subs were far too late, so Rafa was poor too. Time to bump the relegationometer.

Christ almighty

I don't mind Diame starting, but his legs won't last long past half time.

Any hope of Pardle signing Jack Colback?