switters

definitely miss Vlaar and Delph. pathetic to give away two goals without Utd having to put any real pressure. confidence just disappeared at soon as first goal went in and midfield has gone missing ever since. Luna desperately needs help, everything coming down that side.

2 shots on target in first five mins. promising!

nice to see Gardner back in the squad. midfield looks poor without Delph - need Westwood & El Ahmadi to impose themselves more than usual. hopefully Albrighton can provide some crosses for Benteke.. if we can contain Rooney & Januzaj there's not much else to be scared of in Man Utd team, not even got much on bench without Van Persie, Kagawa, Hernandez, Nani..

makes sense to bring him back. we've got 8 games between 30 Nov and 1 Jan. Tonev not been impressive so far. In fact, very few attacking players in much form at the minute. and there's always likelihood of injuries & need to rotate when you have a lot of fixtures in succession so I'd be surprised if Albrighton doesn't get at least some gametime.

fine in defence, offered absolutely nothing going forward. disappointed that Lambert didn't change it - Tonev not great, but would've at least been willing to drive forward a bit. baffled he didn't get brought on in 2nd half when it was so painfully obvious we were creating nothing. Lambert says in interviews we always set out to win, but it sure didn't look like it today. horrendous match to watch, neither side had any quality in attack.

Didn't Clark come down with illness a couple of weeks ago too? illnesses happen. shame Delph couldn't time his to coincide with the suspension he's gonna get after (I think) his next yellow

must have a few injuries. lineup looks to be severely lacking creativity. gonna need Benteke to come up with something by himself.

Once promising Aston Villa player touted to be a future star ends up becoming a nothing player after being found out a season into his career who languishes in the Championship or worse for the rest of it. See also... Graham Fenton Rob Edwards Peter Whittingham The Moore brothers Barry Bannan Nathan Delfouneso etc etc He has been found out. Cant cross, no pace and cant beat a man now that everyone known he is completely ineffective on his left peg. Nowhere near a Premier League player. bit harsh on Whittingham, who has worked his way back to Premier League now. certainly not been a 'nothing player' for Cardiff.

guess we could try something like: Lowton-Vlaar-Clark/Baker-Luna Bacuna-KEA-Delph-Gabby Weimann/Kozak-Benteke not a huge difference (it'd be like a 433 sometimes), but would be interesting to see if Bacuna & Lowton could forge a partnership on the right. And whether one of Weimann or Kozak would be more effective if played closer alongside Benteke. it might be at the cost of limiting Gabby by playing him in more constrained role

Today was frustrating. but I do think we have to consider that so far at home we've had Spurs twice, Man City, Liverpool. I'm not sure we have the players to outplay these teams, so counter-attack might be best option we have. The other game was Newcastle and that was a disappointing performance, but I think we really need to wait and see what we do when we play more of the bottom half teams at home. those are the games we have to win and those are the games where we'll have more of the ball and must take initiative

not a terrible performance, but not too inspiring either. hard work but little quality on the ball. do think we need to try something tactically different at home to create more chances, I'm just not sure what the solution is with the players we have!

yeah worked hard. had nothing to play off most of the game. did a good job of timewasting and winning free kicks late on as well. helped stop City building any momentum in added time.

Don't know how we managed that - amazing result! The only section of the game we really played well was after going 3-2 up, limited them to relatively few chances & were smart with time-wasting and holding out the game. A mugging really, but who cares. I gave MOTM to El Ahmadi.

we just had no outlet & nobody keeping the ball, so they just kept coming back and goal was inevitable. defence did well to hold out as long as they did, but that's a horrible time to concede & it feels very much like the Spurs match. go to 4 at back either put on Helenius to link midfield and forwards, or Tonev/Albrighton to get some width.

did enough tonight that he should at least feature in Lambert's thinking and with the injuries we have, perhaps get some gametime in the next few weeks.

Who have been our best players during Lambert's reign? I'd say Guzan, Lowton, Delph, Westwood, Benteke, Weimann, Agbonlahor. Out of them, only Lowton was on the pitch tonight and he's dipped in form this season. Yes, some of the defending is worrying & our home form has been bad for a long time - but you really can't read much from tonight other than the fact we can't cut it against a vastly more expensive & experienced team when all our best players are missing.

conceded 4 in the one before..

he definitely needs a loan spell 'cause I doubt he's even going to be getting on the bench here unless we have several injuries. Derby sounds a good option. Perhaps should be looking to loan Bowery & Gardner too (as long as we have recall options in case of injuries).

Helenius also said that, or rather he was disappointed that he wouldn't get to work with Benteke when he handed in his transfer request, indicating it was a reason for him to join. I wouldn't read too much into it He's one of the hottest talents in Europe at the minute, I'd assume a lot of young, up and coming players would jump at the chance to join his team and just get to work with him in training, especially the strikers. plus if Kozak has the workrate, there's a chance he's competing with Weimann for a spot and could be in team with Benteke without it being 442. same goes for Helenius. after all Lamert used Bowery in that position at times last season.

I think that is only if they've been released since the last transfer window (i.e. if we released Hutton tomorrow, he couldn't register for someone else til Jan) but if someone was released before the end of the window, they'd be free to sign for anyone & play straight away.

there's a loan window for lower league clubs (Championship downwards) which opens in a week's time & runs til November. I'd expect Hutton to be loaned out somewhere, as he was last season & Given may well be one of first ports of call if any decent sized club hits a GK injury crisis. maybe others like Albrighton, Bowery, Johnson could get loaned too. you can sign free agents at any time.

wonder if there'll be times where we try and totally bully physically smaller teams and play a front three of Helenius-Benteke-Kozak I don't see that Kozak will just be Benteke backup - need pressure on Gabby & Weimann too, and he and Helenius should provide that.

Welcome. let's hope Lambert's got another transfer coup.

maybe that's why Blackburn fell through..

I assume he'll be in as competition for all of the front 3, along with Helenius. certainly don't think it would be a bad thing to have five proper forwards on our books (all capped internationals for good European countries) considering we're starting with three most games and there will inevitably be injuries/suspensions/times when players need resting.