Stottie

I suspect he's not really suited to British football, but in Rafa we'll have a fine judge of that. If we had a PFM, I think we'd have to sell Perez.

Regarding that team of the season, does any striker in the league come close to Gayle for goals per minute played and goals created by his own pace?

Great lad, super motivated, and an example for the rest. Definite captain material. Just think what he might have done with a decent wide player on the other side.

Ritchie and Gayle even for me. Shelvey and Clark not that far behind. Great work from all of them in spite of some of the pairings they found themselves in.

Just an obvious point, but success/failure of transfers also has to be judged on whether someone was better or contributed more than another player you had already. Going into the season, I would have expected Perez to play more at #10 than Diame (only five million remember), so in my book Diame has contributed more than he should have done. Perez has been very disappointing at this level. Likewise Murphy getting the nod over Mitro in certain games where Mitro was available. It's also silly to offset the runaway success of Gayle, Ritchie, and Clark with three players who've hardly featured to produce a number of 50%. We've played some quite dull and tactically constrained football this season, but it's been mostly effective and part of me suspects it's been a case of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), Benitez running a stripped-down system that can be fairly well executed regardless of the limitations of the players at his disposal. To thrive back in the Prem, we'll need better players whose presence will open up more tactical possibilities.

Rooney's all-round game is great, but I don't think his finishing/striker instincts are good enough for him to prolong his career as a forward. That's the greatest difference with Shearer. His movement is not up to him playing as a modern #10 either, a very demanding role.

Reading are down to +1 too. One team up near the top with pretty much zero is uncommon, but two must be very rare.

3-1 Fulham. Looks like game over.

Fulham level. Well on top in the last five minutes.

I agree we have a big problem in midfield, not least because Wor Jackie concedes a good few of the set pieces we then concede from.

Shawcross would be great. Just saying for the doubters, but look at the pairing Leicester won the league with. Solid, reliable are the attributes we should be looking for. Especially given the proportion of goals we concede from set pieces.

Birmingham are bottom of the form table for home games. They've lost six of their last eight. P8 W1 D1 L6 F5 A14 GD-9 Pts 4 Just saying, but we've just won two and draw one away in quick succession at the other teams in the top four.

I only saw the highlights but Huddersfield's defending is awful for the goals. When you score as few as they do, you can't make mistakes at the back.

At the present time, I think it would be better to wait to see how the "safe standing" issue plays out before building a very costly new stand. It may become possible (i.e., allowable) to increase the capacity of the existing stand with rail seating in the not-so-distant future. It would be better to spend on a Premiership level team that Benitez can take forward. That level of team would also be needed to fill any larger stadium anyway.

Norwich have the hardest games left of any team in the Championship. Their home and away opponents are averaging 1.6 points a game. They play four out of the top five, i.e., all of them except us. http://www.soccerstats.com/table.asp?league=england2&tid=10

Nice post Elma. Some of the results Rafa got in the PL might have been against teams with little to play for, but we certainly finished the season strongly enough to stay up comfortably had Rafa been given more games, even with the players you mention. Personally I think Gayle deserves more game time in the PL, even if not as the number one striker. His scoring record at Palace was great if you factor in the limited opportunities he was given, and he'll have improved under Rafa. If results go our way, I'd like to see Diame play alongside Shelvey for a few games this season to see how they work together. We definitely need a new #10 and someone to play on the left. I would also stick Krul straight back in if he's still around. I like Sturridge as a goalscorer, but I think he'd be out of our league, in both wages and who he could play for. He'd have to want to play under Rafa and to revitalize his career to come.

Show your love everyone! His win percentage with us is now 59%, within a decimal point of Hughton's. That includes the 10 games with the relegated side last year. I don't see how the team with the best goal difference by far in the division could be "defensive". They should direct those questions to Huddersfield.

I only saw the last twenty minutes live, and aside from our third, my favourite moment of what I saw was when one of them hit a lovely, Ritchie-the-other-day-but-shorter lofted pass out to the left wing. It was the side closest to the camera, which is maybe why I remembered the other day. Their wide man got to it and volleyed in a not-bad cross into a dangerous area, certainly the best little bit of play I saw from Huddersfield and......Clark beat his man and routinely headed it out for a corner. It was the most incisive thing they did, but even that did not create a chance. Given that Lascelles was covering, they were lucky that Shelvey got close and gave the ref a penalty decision to make. They didn't look like scoring otherwise.

I see Brighton's goalie gave the ball straight to the opposition striker for the second game running, only this time it wasn't Gouff. I've been on 9 for months, since 10 is written next to Champions, but I think we're at 9.5 now.

Mings didn't appear to be looking at him.

Another farce that could easily have been avoided with replays.

I think this could come down to who has fixtures against teams already on the beach in the last few games. I'm convinced certain teams give up and become pushovers as the end of the season approaches. As one example, that game we had under Carver against West Ham which was Allardyce's last game there. The one with the Sissoko header and the Jonas goal. West Ham didn't turn up that day at all, for a game we started with the risk of relegation hanging over us. I don't think Everton turned up against the Mackems last season either. I think it was the mackems' game in hand and they won it with a supreme ease that belied Everton's away form that season. I guess the classic example would be Sven's last game at Man City where they lost to Boro 8-1.

Juve got to the CL final a couple of years ago with three of them, Pogba, Tevez, and Evra.

I thought our defence was more solid that season. However, we conceded 35 goals in 46 games. At that rate, we'd concede 26 in 34 games, versus the 28 we've conceded this time. So no big difference when you actually crunch the numbers.

Those three are bottom of the form table from Christmas Day, which covers nine games, about a quarter of the season. None of them have a new manager either, so there is no reason to expect a change that could bring improvement. I had a look at points per game for opponents in remaining games to see if any team has harder games left than the others (its on soccerstats.com), but Burnley playing away have 0.17 points per game, so anyone who has them at home has their average massively distorted by it. Hoping for Palace myself though.