poitier

He is the same height as Pavel Nedved, Radamel Falcao and Gennaro Gattuso.

16 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

He is really bloody good at two things. 1) Running 2) Positioning 

He really has this Kante/Makelele/Gana'esque ability to cover ground and do it simple. 

And our midfield looks so balanced with him. Superb footballer. 

Apart from that I have been very impressed with his passing, he has played some lovely diagonals and spread the play well with sideways passes out to the full backs.

He was good going forward but quite loose defensively. I'm sure him and Guilbert will contribute to some high scoring games this season.

Think we will win this, wouldn't settle for a point.

Jack played well in parts, but Guendouzi was better.

He didn't seem to provide any sort of out-ball when we were under pressure. Well done for the assist, but overall another lightweight and ineffective performance.

17 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

I agree he shouldn't have done what he did but he did it because otherwise he would have been giving away a cheap-looking corner. His error was not heading it where he did, it was heading it where he did because he thought the player had enough nous to read it. His error was not realising it was Taylor he was asking to be intelligent! 

Sorry, but it is 100% Mings fault. Give away the corner.

32 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

This certainly is true. The one time he got any sort of quality in the box he scored. No shock to have a striker not scoring much when the quality into the box has been as poor as it has been.

I don't think that is true though. Balls come into the box and he isn't showing any desire to attack them. I think the cross for our first today was aimed for Wes but he didn't make much effort to connect with it, and then a few minutes later a good ball from Trez across the box and he is back on his heels.

Pepe looks dangerous, think we need a second.

Compared to what Taylor was like 12 months ago when he seemed to have given up any pretense of being a capable player, he has been like a new signing. Of course I would want better, but my concern now isn't so much that Taylor is poor but that Targett might not be much better.

He was very poor tonight. I was particularly worried by a passage of play late on in the game, he had the ball on the left of the box in a promising position, we had a couple of players in the box, but you could see that he had no belief in himself whatsoever and he failed to do anything with the ball.

35 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

What I don't get is that Smith made a real effort to have him further up the pitch and getting into the box more last season. This season he's back to collecting the ball deep and playing in his own half too much. Needs to be further forward.

To be honest, he looks better running with the ball from deep and ghosting past a couple of midfielders, cos when he gets to the edge of the box he is lacking real creativity and the genuine quality that is needed to unlock defences.

9 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

We need to stop playing him as a #8. It worked in the Championship, but the PL is a different beast. He showed what he can do when he's higher up the pitch. Give him the Maddison role and let him roam. He comes too deep all the time.

Surely he shouldn't need to come so deep if Luiz is performing his role properly. 

I thought bringing Davis on worked well, we finally had some presence in their half and could retain some possession. Good tactical switch from Smith, we were unlucky to concede in the way we did.

Robbed of a point we didn't deserve.

Got beaten far too easily on a number of occasions.

Davis was brilliant tonight, we played some nice flowing moves off his hold up play.

Fantastic tonight, you could see in just the first ten minutes that he was up for the physical challenge. Lovely finish too, didn't try and blast it.

5 hours ago, Keyblade said:

The Debate on Sky spent half an hour hyping up Mason Mount and James Maddison. I mean, I don't mind Jack going under the radar but you have to wonder how much this plays on his mind at some point if he keeps getting passed over for the England squad.

Most people, certainly on here, thought that Maddison was nowhere near as good as Jack when he made his £25m move, but he made a real impact in the PL last season. He has set quite a decent bar for Jack to match up to, that is the challenge for him if he has England aspirations.

Mount looks a good player too and is in the same boat as Jack regarding this being their chance to make a mark, he has gotten the headlines so far but over the course of the season I would hope Jack will have pulled well ahead of him.

It's all in his own hands.

Sasa Curcic. He was so good at Bolton but not for us.

I'm surprised he isn't in the team given his performances in pre-season. I know some people rate Elmo, but he isn't particularly good at anything, I would much rather Guilbert get a chance. He looks to have some real potential.

He did some good things today without being consistently good, but he just doesn't look like getting onto the end of a cross.

I knew his hair products would cost us dear, no way he was going to keep that header down with rock hard hair.

He seems to be able to cause problems fairly consistently, we were worse once he went off.