OutByEaster?

He's getting better and better. I thought he was excellent this afternoon.

I thought he did some clever things, picked up a free kick here and there, did a couple of sensible things that helped us keep possession. Fitness needs improving, but if it does, there's nothing wrong with his mind. I'm still not quite sure how he fits into our system, but I have a feeling January might help with that.

He is.

I thought he was good today. He and Jack offer us something different, the ability to move defences around. He needs a goal to get his confidence up, but I don't see a problem with him at all.

I thought today was his best game for us. In the first half particularly he was excellent.

Great goal, Grealish, Jedinak and Amavi excellent, Hutton was good, the game was flat and we lacked a bot of something through the middle. Adomah disappointed today, but he's a trier and he'll be back. Wet, largely miserable with a magic finish. We're becoming a team that finds a way to win.

When's the draw for the next round of the youth cup?

It's corporate coup. The banks deciding that removing the middle man altogether would be more efficient.

I've woken up with the feeling this might be Ayew's day.

So far Trump has delighted the US corporate structure by pushing for protectionism for them and a free market for everyone else (a sort of reverse socialism), appointing someone to remove any environmental restrictions on their making profit, appointing someone to remove any pesky social wage based obstacles to them making profit, suggesting they'll be able to bring their money home and he'll turn a blind eye on taxation, ramped up the tensions between the US and China (allowing for the continuation of Obama's policy on truly enormous military spending) and given a special and preferential deal to the only US corporation he's had to deal with - if he can find a way to give the CIA more power to monitor and control global affairs then he's pretty much set. The idea that he won't be President for long is becoming more far fetched by the day. The only group he seems to be upsetting is people and people don't matter.

Erdogan's negotiating position is largely down to who is looking to pipe gas across his country at any given time isn't it? How does our defeat in the proxy war to try to remove Assad leave him in that regard?

I'm guessing the club took the appropriate action based on the resulting sentencing - anything to the contrary would most likely have come up in the court case.

I believe in Mr Trumps commitment to clean water and I look forward to buying it from Nestle.

In fairness so have we.

Is Grealish that slight?

There's a bit of paper talk about him potentially going in January today.

For me: ------------------Gollini--------------------- Hutton-----Baker-------Chester----Amavi -----------------Jedinak-------------------- ------Bacuna------------Westwood------- Adomah---------------------------Grealish -----------------Kodjia--------------------- Subs: Bunn, Elphick, Gardner, Ayew, Cissokho, Agbonlahor, Tshibola I'd like to have been able to put Gestede on that bench in fairness. I worry for McCormack - I think he'll struggle to make the bench in our current system.

That seems quite a sensible quote.

That's interesting and I think in principal I agree with you - for me our best eleven is the 4-3-3 not the 4-2-3-1 - the "away" formation if you like. I'm not sure whether I'd pick Grealish or Ayew in that one.

There goes the free home cup game with this season's season ticket.

I think at the moment, if Kodjia and Adomah are definites (and I hope they are) then you're looking at one of Grealish or Ayew in away games with three proper midfielders behind them and in home games a choice of two of Ayew, Grealish and McCormack with two proper midfielders behind them. At the moment I think Bruce has it right, Grealish starting all the home ones and coming on in the away ones.

It'll be interesting - I have a feeling that when McCormack is fit, McCormack may struggle to make the bench. I'm happy with Ayew and his season, despite his being flat for the last couple of games.

I apologise a little to Iceland on the name rights thing. I'm a pissy sod today. However, I'm happy we've got a thread started for when I'm next annoyed.

Well, that's difficult to argue against and perhaps the initial statement was a bit harsh. Personally I don't think they're good enough and I think if they played elsewhere they'd be the type of players we barely knew existed, but you're right, they'd get into Championship teams. I think we need more for two reasons - because of quality, but also and perhaps more importantly, because in a three man midfield all of the midfielders we have (with the exception of Bacuna) want to play at the base of the three - the position with least running - we have four holding midfielders and Bacuna - and I think we could do with four midfielders in the squad that aren't holding midfielders. At the moment, we're trying to get Westwood to do more than he's comfortable with, we've tried to get Gardner doing more, but it's not working - there's no support for the front players and no creativity and there's not enough energy when we haven't got the ball.

My favourite current Nestle fact is that they bottle 68,000 gallons of Californian water a day - that's 68,000 gallons of water in an area with incredible problems with drought. When asked they say this: http://www.nestle.com/ask-nestle/environment/answers/our-operations-in-california That opening sentence should really say "Because people need to pay to drink water" in line with how I believe they think. Essentially their answer is - 'we're not wasting water, we're helping make it available' - they skip the bit with massive profits and the destruction of the state. Oh and incidentally, how much do Nestle pay California for the rights to all that water? A pretty penny you'd think - something to adequately compensate the millions of people that live there for the loss of one of their most fundamental needs - well.... $524 a year. I haven't missed an "m" or a "k" off that - they pay five hundred and twenty four dollars a year for the rights to the 36 million gallons they took out last year.