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I don't think he's that much of a maverick renegade, to be fair. He's not as straight-laced as a Mclaren or a Hodgson but I don't think he's too far removed to be out of the picture due to personality.

So is anyone who is of a certain age, sex and nationality - technically.

At the risk of being pointed and screamed at like this: Perhaps talk of him being the next England manager is massively premature. He's got a lot to prove still.

Gabby, Ayew and Sinclair all create chances in exactly the same way though - that's the problem, you need an attack that can create lots of different types of chances so that you keep your opponents guessing. If you've got those three in front of you as a defender, you know that you need to go deep and that you don't really have to worry about anything else they can bring to the table. We lacked the dimension of an incisive passer or someone who can comfortably beat a man with skill for a long time, which is one of the reasons we scored so few goals under Lambert.

Almost as though young players improve with experience...

I think he's got a long way to go before he'll get an England call up.

I'd say that he can realistically cover 2 positions in the way we set up these days - LB and CM. Neither of which are desperately short of cover, plus he isn't particularly good or anything anyway. I'd be fine with just getting him off the wage bill.

Reus is a lot more athletic and faster than Grealish - I don't really see the comparison myself.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that our creative attackers were all unavailable but that won't be the case for the majority of the season, I hope. I think the Palace game will be our biggest challenge so far, actually. Also, I was a bit harsh yesterday - so sorry about that.

Shit, didn't realise that. Hopefully they won't qualify - less chance than Ghana, Senegal and Mali, I'd say.

Balls. With him, Gana and Ayew - the ACON could really screw us over.

It's a fair excuse when both teams are playing at their best but that doesn't happen all the time. For example, Man U were definitely there for the taking the other day but we weren't up to speed either, which isn't a surprise given the new guys/injuries situation. Had we been on song, we definitely could have won that game.

Really want to see him in a team with Traore and Gestede - the past two games we've cried out for a bit of flair/creativity.

You can't see it because you clearly don't understand how important positional sense is in football. Hence why you don't rate Kozak, hence why you can't see anything wrong with Richards at CB.

Creativity is a bit more complicated than 'a through ball' - sort of cheapens your argument.

1) Doesn't matter if it's a new team or not. It's common sense that a front three of players with one dimension between them, is probably not going to work. It didn't work at all against Bournemouth, there were no encouraging signs from our attack, so why bother with it against Man U? 2) We were talking about the Bournemouth game. 3) Nobody is saying that Kozak does those things but he's not just a poacher either. He has good positional sense, he is a nuisance in the box and can finish. Most importantly, he offers something different from Sinclair, Ayew and Gabby - so the defence have to think about more than just one thing.

....................................................Guzan........................................................ Richards.................Okore...........................Clark...........................Amavi ..................................................Sanchez...................................................... ...............................Westwood.........................Gueye................................... Traore.................................................................................................Gil ...............................................Gestede....................................................... If all were fit, I think that's what I'd go with.

Nope - that's not true and not fair on the vast majority of footballers. You can't hold up people like Adebayor, Balotelli or N'Zogbia and say that they're representative of footballers as a whole because they simply aren't.

I'm not going to blame any of the front three - the tactics were wrong putting them all in, they're just all far too similar to be in the same team.

He looked a lot sharper and more adventurous against Man U - really enjoyed his performance. Hope he keeps it up because we can only benefit if he does.

In order to fund the purchase of Lescott, no less. #buildingforthefuture

Huh? Continuity in the team, understanding with his team mates, match fitness. Will just generally improve as he gets the support of the fans. It's a weakness in his game, but doesn't mean he can't improve it. He's 27 - it's not going to happen. To have the right positional sense you need that particular skill set - he doesn't it have it and as you said yourself, he never has. Real CBs start working on that from their early teenage years, RBs who suddenly decide that they want to play CB at the age of 27 are somewhat lagging behind. He needs to go play at RB for us. He can do a good job there and if he goes there now, before we play a team that has strikers who are on form -we can save him and ourselves the embarrassment of getting absolutely shellacked.

Yep, I really want a reactionery manager. One who, when something doesn't work quite well in the first game of the season, with a fresh bunch of players completely rips it up and chucks it in the bin. That is the way forward. 1) You need managers who can react quickly to rectify their mistakes, otherwise you get left with stubborn gits who continually fail. 2) It didn't work at all, not even a case of 'didn't work quite well', it was rubbish - we didn't look like scoring until Gestede came on. 3) How is changing one player but keeping the same formation 'completely ripping it up and chucking it in the bin'?

Its his second game with players that he has purchased. That combined with a couple of players absent through injury or not starting due to fitness issues, plus potentially more signings to come soon means that the line up in a months time, from an attacking perspective, might look completely different. I hope it does because those three up front, haven't worked well together so far and I don't think will ever do.

Our biggest problem is a lack of creativity and has been for a long time. Thankfully, Traore has been brought in to help with this but even so - we have 3 players with very little experience of the league between them, two of them teenagers, to create the goals. I'm not even counting N'Zogbia here as he just needs to leave immediately. We really need them to perform and there's a lot of pressure on their shoulders as a result.