OutByEaster?

HIs pedigree fits their desire to move the club in a new direction apparently. Which is good, I haven't enjoyed the direction they've been moving in of late.

------------------Gollini-------------------- Hutton---Chester-----Baker------Amavi ------------------Jedinak------------------ ----------Gardner--------Westwood------ ------------------Grealish----------------- -----------Ayew-----------Kodjia--------- subs Sarkic, Elphick, Cissokho, Bacuna, Tshibola, McCormack, Adomah A bit more solidity - we don't cross the ball anyway so we're not losing width.

I agree - but sadly I don't think they'll struggle for game time between now and January. For me, Westwood as a squad player and Tshibola as youngster are the only midfielders I'd be keeping - we need three starters. Our front line has more than enough talent and I think we'll see one or two leave - if it's one I don't think we need a replacement. For last night, I think we tried to cover up a weakness by making a strength stronger - in the end, the weakness just gets worse and the strength is completely lost - it doesn't help when within that the forwards don't actually play well.

I've seen a few people say that they thought the approach was overly cautious - for me it's the opposite - maybe I'm confusing selection over approach, but playing four forward minded players away from home is part of the reason we're unbalanced and therefore part of the reason we don't create chances. I'd like to have seen Gardner start ahead of Gabby last night - with Grealish left, Ayew right and Kodjia up top - that's more than enough forwards and enough midfielders to make sure they occasionally see the ball in the right areas. Now that's not to say the forwards were hard done by - they didn't perform - but the manager got the balance wrong in my opinion by being too bold.

Isn't that to some extent 'mission accomplished'? If you consider our aims in the region to: a.) remain on stable terms with those nations that we have an established and profitable relationship with; the established oligarchical societies of the various emirates. b.) prevent any situation where control of natural resources in other parts of the region fall into the hands of the people that live there - Iraq being the best example, where a corridor of protected oil and gas operations guarded by a mass of US military bases ensures control of the natural resource while the rest of the country looks like something out of a Mad Max film. Other than setting fire to Iran, I think the region is pretty much just as we'd like it. (We being the very rich corporations and banks that run our society) a chaotic Syria, even one run by a man supported by the big Iran shaped fly in the ointment is to some extent just what we want isn't it?

Do you think there's any chance we could persuade Cleverley or Delph to come back?

No midfield = no control. Too many forwards, not enough balance, disjointed, hapless, with no shape; we need three midfielders. We can't fix it until January, there are five midfielders in the squad - Jedinak, Westwood, Gardner, Tshibola and Bacuna - if we want to go up, we need to replace at least three of them and we could probably do with adding to the numbers too.

A shot!!!

Good news everybody! It's almost over.

Because having more attackers without a midfield just means more people standing doing nothing or trying to help out in the wrong direction. I think to score more goals, we have to play less strikers.

All of our forwards have been terrible this evening, Gabby was dreadful, Kodjia has been garbage, Grealish was invisible, Ayew's been rubbish, McCormack and Gestede seem unlikely to change that - I think it's partially because they've been trying to prove they can do the midfield part of the game.

You can argue we've got the best set of forwards in the division, yet we don't score goals. It's absolutely obvious that we're desperate in midfield - so please, keep your GK links, your RB links, your centre forward links - go out and buy three central midfielders please.

Away from home we should be starting with three solid midfielders. It's no use having four attacking players if they can't connect with each other and they don't keep the ball.

Or maybe McCormack down the left? Kodjia is up top anyway - it's either Ayew or McCormack on the left with the other one behind Kodjia where Grealish was.

Adomah and McCormark for Grealish and Agbonlahor Ayew goes left side.

We're disjointed and we look uncomfortable in possession - as you'd expect for a team with our midfield. Organisation and a bit of talent will win you some, but not with consistency - we need more quality in the middle of the park.

We bore them and then we beat them with a moment of genius. That's the plan right?

The radio commentary isn't the most helpful. The best I've got so far is that our workrate isn't bad. Comments here suggest that's not indicative of how we're playing.

So, Gabby up top, Grealish behind him, Ayew right and Kodjia left?

Gents, I'm running a fairly new mac and am having trouble with Flash player. I've set the plug in settings for flash to "On" in Safari for the websites I'm using, but despite this, I get about 4 or 5 seconds of streamed content before the stream cuts out. I think it's something to do with the website not picking up Flash as the player, but I'm not sure how to fix it. I've uninstalled and reinstalled flash and still the same problem. Can anyone advise, as it's stopping me picking up on some of my favourite content and there was something I was hoping to watch tonight. Thank you.

I just don't see McCormack as being physically able to lead the line. I think the comment on Gestede is absolutely correct - we'd need to be about crossing the ball to make it work and Kodjia wide is very much a forward rather than a crossing machine. I think for the line leading position I'd have McCormack behind Gabby and Ayew - and I wouldn't really want either of them in there - I think he'd be good behind a striker or upfront as one of two, but in the 4-2-3-1 I think he can only play in the position where Grealish sits in HanoiVillan's post.

I think we can still be offensive in that formation - three players without much in the way of defensive duties and with the ability all three have to create something out of nothing should give us the offensive power we'll need. That said, I think the manager agrees with you and I'm enjoying watching it. I don't unfortunately think that McCormack can play the number nine role at the head of our front line - I think Kodjia can but Bruce likes him to the left and I think Gestede can, but he's not mobile enough for the way we want to play. I think that's why we're linked to strikers. For McCormack, I think he's perfect for the number 10 role behind the striker, but then so is Grealish and so is Ayew. For me, McCormack is the spare wheel at the moment, but an excellent option from the bench and a hell of a show of strength in depth at this level.

I had a feeling it was. I guess you could make a claim that if we'd taken no action there wouldn't have been an onset of ISIS who were ultimately born from the mess we left Iraq in. If Saddam had toed the party line back in 1991, I wonder how different the world would have been? We're still paying the price for the feeling that came out of the deaths of the one and a half million people that died as a result of the sanctions we imposed after that war. Of course, none of that matters right now - and unfortunately, I think right now what we will need to do is wait until Syria settles back down under Assad, continue to build (delicate) bridges with Iran and hope the whole mess settles down a bit - which means sitting on our hands while some people die today in the hope that it prevents more dying later while keeping that oil and money flowing our way. The problem with the middle east is that there aren't any good guys.

Militarily I think you're right - if we'd supported ISIS a bit more, Assad might have fallen. Morally, I'm not so sure that would have been the right thing to do.

I like him in the same place, but as the head of a four. I think especially away from home we need three in the middle behind him - personally I'd play him behind Ayew and Kodjia, with Westwood, Jedinak and one from Gardner/Tshibola/Bacuna behind him. I don't think that's what we'll see tonight.