Stottie

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?

His last silly signing for Liverpool was Raheem Sterling.

Again, I reckon the key factor is Rafa. Ashley could play hard ball and ignore calls for relegation clauses etc. but he's also going to have to keep Rafa happy as this drags on. Losing Rafa costs Ashley millions, if not turning off buyers altogether. If Rafa went and we got a PFM manager like Pardew, any ambitious owner would be looking at 5M to 10M to pay the guy off and then the instability and uncertainty of trying to get someone else in.

Thanks! That's just the job! Since it's only two colours, colour replace with a high tolerance should get rid of any grey very quickly. I'll have a go and then re-up it.

Her eyes are all over the parish watching that vid. She's clearly a psychopath. Yeah, she comes over as very intense. I don't mix in business circles, but that is some impressively fluent businesspeak. She barely pauses for breath or descends into the empty guff people on the news come out with.

Just a favour, but does anyone know if you can buy a poster with the "Howay the Lads" banner in half white and half black like the stairs in the tunnel at SJP? I can print at A3+ at home, so if anyone has a digital copy of the image with a decent resolution, I could print it out. I'd quite like it above my stairs. I don't live in the UK so most folks won't know what it is to take the mick. Like this, only much higher resolution.

I reckon if Rafa walked with the squad in its present state, the club value would drop by tens of millions. We'd instantly be into a relegation battle. It makes sense for Ashley to get out now while the Rafa halo is there.

Man City were given a stadium built for an athletics competition, but have developed further and given a lot back to their local community. Let's see what West Ham do. My guess is sweet FA.

The exact example I was thinking of.

Ashley's Sky interview was basically a "come and get it" appeal. The publicly declared "you can have it on installments" made his multimillion pound business sound like new shag pile from Carpet Warehouse. So he either wants to sell or is on some massive piss take for his own amusement. Given the people he surrounds himself with and the comments about business deals in pubs and vomiting into fireplaces, it is extremely unlikely that he is deep enough for the latter. PCP making an offer means there are no skeletons in the closet to scare anyone off. Ashley said himself he doesn't need the cash up front, so there is leeway for a deal to be made. With the squad's paucity increasingly on show, Ashley might be wise to sell up before more damage is done.

There will be a lot of reasons as mentioned above. Diversification out of oil in an non-ME country will another. The PL has a high guaranteed income stream so long as you can remain in the league. With tech like AI and the Internet, other businesses face potentially massive disruptions. Property seems to be in a bubble, so maybe its not the time to buy in there. Assuming the PCP deal goes through, it would be interesting to know what they know about Man City and if lessons there have been learnt. City kept Hughes on for a season and a half and let him piss away something like 100m, which must be the equivalent of 300m now. City's pockets were bottomless, so ultimately it didn't matter, but with other clubs, poor investments on the pitch have resulted in the owner pulling the plug. What can be seen to be a good owner turns into a bad one. Having Rafa to spend the budget that is provided could be key in how all of this goes.