Jay007

The only manager that I would have a fair amount of confidence in if he was appointed would be Conte. It goes a bit against the grain for me because his teams aren't really the most exciting to watch, but he certainly knows how to get a team well-organised with a plan and has delivered success at the top level for 3 different teams now. I don't think he'd be here for too long I think the two managers we'd consider first would be Conte and Zidane, and I have a feeling that Zidane really wouldn't work out. He walked in to manage a Real team who already had world class players, and I don't t

I understand that, given everything else that goes on in football we're probably far down the rabbit hole anyway, but seeing the spectacle that was the Newcastle game today, with the excitement of the fans, celebrities crawling out of the woodwork, Sky talking about their new era etc, really does show that football as an industry and football fans are willing to ignore anything if they can find a reason they consider good enough. It was bad enough when people buying clubs were only guilty of arguably immoral/legally dubious business dealings. The sport and fans welcoming people guilty of

. Very true, though I was referring more to his performances on the pitch when he does get a chance (albeit that's not very often) rather than whether the manager rates him or not. Considering how little he's played and comments from our previous managers, I tend to think he was probably signed by someone else rather than being Ole's pick tbh.

I think the only way that playing with one holding midfielder might work is if VDB is one of the other midfielders, but even then the jury's out on him just now. I think he might work harder than the other CM/CAMs and he's efficient in possession. None of our DMs all-round game are good enough to play the role on their own without help. Fred's got the energy and is good at harrying, but he's nowhere near good enough on the ball. Matic is good on the ball, but doesn't have the legs and would be constantly overrun and I'm not sure that McTominay has the defensive discipline to do it - he'

For all of their qualities, Liverpool are incredibly lucky in the big games. Something always seems to go in their favour - a big decision, opposition playing well but not taking their chances, mistakes etc. City should have been out of sight by half time and perhaps would have been if they had a '9', and then the ref completely bottles sending Milner off in the second half. City more than deserved a point, and probably should have won.

Much better performance from him today when he came on. He badly scuffed his shot when he had a decent opportunity towards the end, but overall he looked much sharper and much more dangerous than he has in previous games. Hopefully this is him getting up to speed now.

Probably one of our better performances this season, which is admittedly a low bar, with some positives and negatives. On the positive side, some of the football we played was good. Our players were much closer together and so linking up much better and we moved the ball better. We also had a few decent chances and could have scored another goal or two. But the pace of the passing too slow at times, and as is more often than not, we had no real cutting edge against a packed, well organised defence despite dominating possession. We also really lack composure in defence, particularl

Early days in the season, but if we don't beat Villarreal then pressure should start building at least. On paper our run of games coming up looks like a nightmare, but if things continue the way they've gone in his time in charge so far then it may work in our favour as we often perform better against the better teams. We'll have to hope so, anyway.

It's both. For all that I think Ole does have a clear plan of what he wants to do and what he wants the team to look and play like, he and his coaching staff don't have what it it takes to actually implement it, and that obviously won't change. At the same time, a lot of the problems we see are exactly the same problems we've seen under pretty much every manager after Fergie (except for Moyes perhaps as he wasn't in the job long enough and we didn't sign many players under him). In short, the performances and attitude of so many players and the wages/PR/hype they get from the club a

I think I read the other day that he came back to pre-season training earlier than everyone else, and it seems to be paying off just now. Considering how long he's been out of form for he's got a long way to go before we can have full faith in him again, but he's certainly been in really good form this season and has saved us at least 5 points so far.

Win was well deserved, albeit it didn't look like it was going to come. Aside from a few spells throughout the game, West Ham weren't in it much and only took the lead through a fluke goal. We dominated possession, created some decent chances and should definitely have had at least one penalty. As the second half wore on, the performance became flat and we didn't look like we were going to get the breakthrough, but it was a good pass into Lingard and a fantastic finish. And yet ironically, it was Matic who made the difference by playing a good ball into Lingard to set up the winn

I don't think what we've seen from him should surprise anyone. At his age he's clearly not going to be the player he was the first time around, and he's not going to be doing that much in terms of general play. But he'll come alive near the goal, and he can easily score 20-30 goals. He's a luxury player and at times it'll probably feel like we're a man down with him in the team. We just have to rely on the 10 others on the pitch to do enough between them to make his moments worthwhile.

He's like a rabbit caught in the headlights at the moment and it looks like he's really lacking in confidence. He's very hesitant in his play and when he makes a mistake it looks like his head drops. Early days and time is obviously on his side but he needs a goal, or a big performance at least, to boost his confidence and give him more self-belief. He's also going to take time to settle in a new league whatever happens.

Comfortable before the red card, but after that the approach was wrong. I actually think, if anything, we should have been more compact and cautious in our attacking play after the red card than we were. When you've got 10 men against 11, you have to try to slow the game down as much as possible. Hold onto the ball, be patient, build any attacks slowly and kill the game that way. Instead we were trying to get forward too quickly. Passes which were too long, trying to link up with fancy flicks, and players driving forward when they were just going to be isolated against several play

Were you able to see how bad the challenge was? I only saw it live the first time, and I didn't think there was much wrong with it. Neville said later that it was a similar challenge to one that was made later but that he just landed on Elliott. It does feel like he gave the red card based on how bad the injury was rather than the actual challenge.