Ankles Bennett

Rafa has made the point that the championship is a really hard place to play as every ten wanted to beat us. In the EPL Atsu may get more opportunity to showcase his ability as each game won't be a cup final for the opposition.

There is a reason they are targeting football clubs rather than these huge corporations that pay very little if any UK tax. The corporations will simply up sticks and move to another country where they won't have to pay tax. Football clubs have no choice but to remain in the UK hence HMRC targeting football.

If Huddersfield beat us on saturday they will have done the double over us. Does that mean they can argue they are the best team in the Championship?

How Rafa expects us to score without a striker on the pitch is beyond me....

This is all academic. I can't see us going up to be perfectly honest. There's always a team at the top that tails away and we are showing all the hallmarks of being that team. Brighton will win today to go top. They will then easily beat us on Tuesday on current defensive form. I don't expect to see Gayle again this seasonn as he has a history of hamstring injuries so we can't rely on his goals to save us.

This is awful. They can't string two passes together. This game is Villas for the taking. Villa's midfield is bossing it.

Two defeats over the next 5 games could easily see us in a play off place, and two defeats are not beyond the realms of possibility given we are up against Brighton, Huddersfield, and Reading over the next 5 matches.

True. Because Reading players have the power to just win the match if they want to. Must be great when they all agree to win. That's a very pedantic view. You are probably too young to remember this, but many years ago the mackems got relegated because Coventry and another team, might have been West ham, who were both relegation candidates, kicked off late because of traffic problems. When the mackems game finished, they were told the score at half time and they realised that if they drew they would both be safe. If either of them won the match, then the other would be relegated. Accordingly, they both played out an entire half not putting each others goal under pressure. Thats why on the final day of each season all teams kick off at 3pm in order to avoid just that scenario happening again. Whilst the likes of Reading have no god given right to win a game that they a drawing, they can still bust a gut trying to win it, especially if we had lost and they realised they could catch us if they won all three points. Hypothetical, I know, but if it happened and we missed out on a promotion spot we would all be spitting feathers at the unfairness of it.

They are and always have been nutjobs down in the Black Country. My very first away game, too many years ago to mention, was at Wolves and we were stuffed 5-0. As we were driving away from the ground some braindead wolves fan bounced a brick off the back of our car. This was a game where they had stuffed us! God only knows what they would have done if we had beaten them.

I'm now of the opinion that all evening championship games should kick off at the same time, otherwise the chasing pack gain an advantage, particularly where we kick of at 7.45pm and the likes of Reading kick off at 8.00pm. Take Tuesday night for example. Reading were drawing 2-2 when they must have heard we had only drawn our game at Norwich. This then gave them the impetus in the last 15 minutes to chase down a winner where they may otherwise have settled for a point and avoiding defeat.

All we have to do is draw with Brighton, Huddersfield and Reading so they cant gain any points on us. A win in any of them will be a bonus. I'm sure that will be Rafas mindset so be ready for some gritty defensive displays, certainly in those games.

Cameron Jerome loves playing us. We are his lucky team. He always scores against us.

I was being polite. A concept that appears to be completely alien to you.

I agree maths is hard!! Unfortunately we are only talking about arithmetic!! Must check my adding up before posting in future so the sums police don't catch me out again! Well it did pretty fundamentally undermine your argument ? He'll not get that, man, you used words with more than two syllables. So because I made a fundamental arithmetical error by not double checking my figures, my comprehension of the basics of the English language is now questionable. I would be very interested to understand how you were able to reach such a conclusion without any evidence to support your nefarious suggestion my friend.. .

I agree maths is hard!! Unfortunately we are only talking about arithmetic!! Must check my adding up before posting in future so the sums police don't catch me out again!

If we win 8 more games then Huddersfield will have to win 14 out of 16 games to go ahead of us and that's assuming we lose the other 8 remaining games so 8 more wins should guarantee promotion.

Mitro was entitled to go for the ball as neither the defender or the keeper had possession so mitro swung a boot at it. Landing on the keepers leg was a pure accident. The ref clearly saw there was no intent and as mitro was entitled to go for a loose ball.... no foul period.

Although Yedlin headed off the line to preserve our lead it looked to me that it would have been cleared by Ritchie who was behind yedlin and shaping to clear the ball if Yedlin had missed his header? so Bents header was never going to score.

This is the man that waited until we were almost certainly relegated before deciding to sack McLaren. Given his track record of decision making, it's my view that he is the one who blocked incoming transfers in January. Let's look at what could have led Charnley to that conclusion? We were 9 points ahead of 3rd place. Had three players coming back from the Afcon one of whom was a winger Atsu and another being a midfield player in Diame. Charnley clearly arrogantly concluded that we didn't need Townsend or McCarthy as those positions were already covered by players we already had on our books not forgetting that we had Sammy covering for Atsu for a couple of weeks. Its not an unreasonable conclusion, especially if the motivation was to save transfer funds to significantly strengthen the squad when/if we are promoted. I do wonder whether we have agreed to buy those Serbian youngsters, on the advice of Carr, where we are rumoured to have offered £35m. If so that may explain why the £30m profit from the summer wasn't available to rafa.

If Rafa does jump ship I would expect massive previously unheard of repercussions against the club and its hierarchy. I would imagine the gates would drop significantly and season tickets cancelled en-mass.

Don't know why everyone blames Ashley. It's clearly the fault of Charnley. He is the one that ultimately decides whether to pay the asking price for transfers. It's plainly obvious Charnley was not prepared to pay palace any more than we got for Townsend and I think he was right. I also believe he was right not to increase the £15m offer for Mccarthy as I don't believe he is even worth the £13m Everton paid for him.

Watching the game it seemed to me that Clarks timing throughout the game was off his clearance headers were never firm headers that cleared the ball well clear of our area but half hit and were constantly picked up by qpr players on the edge of our area. His clearances on the deck were the same. It may have been due to his head injury and having said that Rafa should have taken him off and put Hanley on in his place.

No way is this team getting promoted. The defence is shocking the midfield is a one man show and the forwards can't finish. Brighton and Reading will be promoted as the top 2. At best we will be in the play offs and we all know what our record is in sudden death games.

I reckon Palace decided it was pay back time because they believed we shafted them by agreeing to let them talk to Pardew and then on top of that we shafted them again by selling Townsend to them so they decided they wanted to screw us financially as revenge for their own errors of judgement. I reckon we have dodged a bullet judging by Townsends performances this season.

They want £2m loan fee and £13m on top of that to buy. Let him stay at Palace. There's no guarantee he will be able to replicate his form of last year anyway.