tom_avfc

We have now yes. Quite why Brook and Stokes started going so hard so early is beyond me. How many dot balls have there been from huge swings and misses? Need a gem of an innings from someone now.

Needs someone to play a sensible innings. We’ve pretty much needed a run a ball from the start and wickets like that Brook one are ridiculous with that being the equation. Its a difficult pitch to bat on but a run a ball with the batting lineup that we have shouldn’t be difficult. Just play proper cricket shots and put away any bad balls. The last thing needed here is Moeen and Livingstone to chuck away wickets searching for big hits.

They’re sat in the top 4 and have an unlimited amount of money to spend. Add into the mix that Spurs, Man U and Chelsea look anything but convincing and they’ve got every chance of making it. They were always going to get there in the end but I didn’t think it would be this quickly. Howe has done a great job there.

He'd also just had treatment before that happened. He seemed to be showing signs of fatigue yesterday which is unlike him usually. This World Cup break may come at the right time for Watkins to recharge a bit for the remainder of the season.

I think that says more about the system used to come up with these rankings than the quality of the teams in England's group.

I’m pretty sure that’s not an option that you can do. FA rules seem to say that you have the option to take kick off or pick an end and that the team that decided which goal to attack in the first half takes the kick-off to start the second half If Ronaldo won the toss then this would suggest that he chose to take kick off and then we switched ends.

They took kick off which means we’ll have picked ends. If you win the toss you can either choose which end to attack first and then the opposition takes kick off or you can choose to take kick off and the opposition picks an end. So in any game of football the team not kicking off first will have picked the end to attack first. I wasn’t particularly surprised that we switched ends given how successful it was early doors against Brentford.

Given that we won the toss and chose to switch ends today I’d imagine we’ll keep doing it while it’s working.

It’s a bit early in the season to be looking at what other teams are doing. Every season it takes around the 36-40 points mark to stay up. There’s still 25 games or 75 points to play for. There are teams sat in the top half who could easily go on losing runs and end up in the relegation battle. Leicester were bottom of the league not too long ago and will have ambitions of a top half finish given their recent run of form.

That's some price to say the least! I would have been interested in picking one of these up but I don't see who's buying at that price.

Because it’s an easy throwaway comment to make. Anywhere is a tough place to play when you aren’t winning games of football. If that’s the level of insight we get from Keown then it’s more of an indictment on the level of punditry we have than our fans. Was Villa Park a tough place to play when we went on long winning runs under Smith and Bruce? A ground being happy when their team is generally winning and less so when their team is losing more often than not shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody.

Fake news. We scored a wonderfully crafted goal against Nottingham Forest. Young’s goal was all down to our hard work on the training ground. A few more moments of magic and we’d be close to the top 4.

Could easily have been two yellows for Mitrovic and one for Luiz. Both stupid with the chest bumping and a yellow for each would have been reasonable. An additional yellow for simulation wouldn’t have been ridiculous either given the way Mitrovic hit the deck. We’d lost that game already but losing Luiz for a few games is far from ideal particularly with a decision like that.

It’s always been a foul. This new direction that refs have been given to “let the game go” is ridiculous. Just give the obvious fouls and it avoids all this fuss.

I assume that actively blocking a keeper throwing the ball out is a foul in the same way that it is when a keeper kicks the ball out from his hands. I don’t really have an issue with that being a foul either. I don’t think the game would be better if we encouraged strikers to constantly try to block the keeper from releasing the ball all game.

What did he do? Patted Bailey on the chest as he left the field? Didn’t look delighted to be coming off? I don’t get why his every move is over analysed so much to be honest.

He started that game. They are a much better team without him.

In what world does grabbing someone by their hair and using it to throw them to the ground not constitute violent conduct? It’s as obvious a red card as you’re likely to see. When referees are getting things like this wrong with the use of cameras then they’re clearly not good enough.

Not sure how that hasn’t been given as offside. VAR is as inconsistent as ever there.

Is this possible? We’d be just as boring but at least the players might actually look like they know what they’re supposed to be doing!

Smith took us from the bottom half of the Championship to midtable in the premier league. That may have been his ceiling but he proved to be as good a manager as we’ve had in a long time.

It wasn’t me originally but I think Kamara and Luiz is our best midfield two. Whether you play Mcginn, Ramsey or Buendia in front of them I’d be looking to have that midfield two of Kamara and Luiz every week with the current squad available. We could probably do with another midfielder to compete with them (or just start actually using Sanson a bit) but we can’t just chuck a load of attacking midfielders on the pitch as Gerrard did today.

To be honest I’d take being called small time and getting a better manager in now than us losing another 5 and Gerrard then going. I guess the question to ask is whether we show any signs of improvement under Gerrard and whether there’s anything to suggest he’ll get it right here. I’d argue the answer to both of those appears to be no. He’ll get more time but if we perform similarly against Everton on Saturday then I’d be asking serious questions. We’re throwing money at a guy who at this moment in time (and for most of his time at the club in reality) is unable to put a team out in anything that remotely resembles a system. If he wants more players I’m not sure what he’s after to make these tactics work. Under Smith we looked like a team with a plan and almost every signing made was done with this plan in mind. Under Gerrard we spend a load of money on fancy players and then he seemingly puts all of their names in a hat and picks 11 out and hopes for the best.

Yeah no access here either. Bit of a joke charging for games and then not giving access to subscribers.

So you’ve just made something up?