HKP90

Expectation culture sickens me.

Time to take some risks.

Respectfully disagree with pretty much everything in this post.

I think some of this may be a confidence issue after Leicester. We’re missing the eccentricity of Mings, but maybe we’re also missing a bit of leadership. Time for Jack to step up and drive them on.

Our recent run of games have been against Man City, Liverpool, Wolves, Newcastle, Man U, Chelsea and Leicester. That's a tough schedule. The only fixtures of those where realistically we should be expecting to take points would be newcastle (which we won) and wolves (which was admittedly disappointing after the cup win). We got spanked by Leicester who everyone are now saying are the only realistic challengers to Liverpool (who we ran very close). We drew with Man U and could have won it. Man city are Man city. Point is, we've been competitive in most games against top sides. It's not realistic to be expecting us to beat those teams. Anything we get is a bonus. Four points from the above games is not catastrophic, particularly given how we've generally been playing. What we get from the next few games- Sheffield, Southampton, Norwich, Watford and Burnley will be much, much more revealing, and I expect us to be comfortably above the relegation zone after those games. If we're not, then we might need to start thinking about where we need to strengthen in Jan. Context is everything, people. If we're gonna judge our progress by how we do against title contender, well guess what, we're gonna fall short.

COME ON VILLA!!

Hahaha Mate, that guy is a cartoon, yeah. I want those Man U fans gone. Don't wait till Spurs, yeah, mate. Gone. They are out of their depth, yeah.

Hahaha Go JT

From Robbie ‘bellend’ Savage. Linko Good to see that when he retired from stealing a living as a footballer, he managed to steal a living as a pundit.

Think we’d have won it without the El Ghazi injury

Decent point, feels disappointing tho’.

Come on boys!!!

I hate United. I hate their ginormous sense of smug entitlement. Lets finally get that smug grin off their prawn encrusted gobs. Going to buy Jack in Jan? Do one. I could take it from other genuinely quality sides, but United still think they just won the league.

Career stats don't suggest it's his strength though, and a few on here were complaining he didn't shoot more. Maybe it's coachable?

Agreed. But one issue- if he’s an inside forward he needs to get on the scoresheet much more often, particularly if Wes is reverting to his deep role. If not we’ll be way too reliant on our midfield scoring goals.

And those little cuttlefish things. I’ll get my coat.

Just watched the highlights again, Jack really is phenomenal. It’s no wonder we struggle without him. He’s at the heart of everything, and it seems like he’s maybe even got a yard of extra pace this season.

Bugger. Lets hope he falls out with Son before Jan.

Henry, Shearer or Klinnsman for me.

Who’s likely to be out of favour at Spuds now Jose is there? Anyone know much about their squad?

He’d have a clause in his contract that all four of our stands would have to be named the Zlatan Ibrahimovic Stand. And he’d have to be addressed in all of his interviews as Sir King Zlatan the redeemer.

Yeah, Leicester are smashing it at the moment. Sheffield will be a tough game. Hopefully someone will give them a battering between now and when we play them. They are a confidence side.

Man City will offer him our entire teams wages at the end of the season and still somehow not fall foul of ffp.

You’re right, it’s criticism. Not in any way constructive, but it’s not based on personal characteristics. Similarly the use of ‘snowflake’ to describe a person concerned about human rights is a lazy, loaded argument. For me, his performance was reasonable, given that he was dropping deep to enable others to go forward, call it a false nine or whatever, but I think we need much more aggressive wide players who can finish like strikers to make this work going forward. I don’t think DS knows exactly how to deploy Wes most effectively yet, but from a coaching perspective I think we’ll need to decide on a system soon and get it drilled.

Lets stay up first, then build for a long term Prem campaign. Regardless of the result today, there is nothing I’ve seen that suggests to me that we are not capable of staying up with the players we already have. Sure a freshen up in Jan would be welcome.