HanoiVillan

That's my expectation next season, for me this season and last were always going to be about surviving, sadly. Well, you were a lot more pessimistic than Lambert himself then. After beating Liverpool in 2012, he said he'd have us in Europe in 3 years. We're 1 and a half years into that, and we're barely out of the relegation zone. There's a lot of retrospective claiming around these parts that this season was 'always going to be about surviving', but I don't believe Lambert himself thought that, and I don't recall it being a theme widely expounded upon before this season started.

Dale Stephens?

We won't win. Big John made a good point a while back. He pointed out that the pattern under Lambert is to lose repeatedly until genuine crisis is setting in, and then somehow fish a win from somewhere. Then repeat. We've done it loads this season - the wins against Cardiff, Sunderland and Norwich were all at moments of real crisis. Don't think we've reached that point yet, ergo 3-0 Palace, Bannan to score a screamer from outside the area.

Again, that is not an argument for keeping Lambert. No, you're right, not really. It was more intended as a reality check for those who seem to think the club hierarchy are going to accidentally stumble over the next Alex Ferguson when their last three appointments were Houllier, McLeish and Lambert. Face it, whoever comes in next will be in exactly the same league. We're not attracting big talent with the constraints we're operating under. That's not to say he can't be sacked - even if nothing changes, it would at least freshen up the conversation round here!

Isn't it a bit hopeful thinking that Faulkner's going to turn up some tactical mastermind with the ability to get this parade of rubbish into the top half of the table? It's not like our recent track record fills you with confidence.

To be fair, that exact argument was the main one advanced in Soccernomics - that over a long enough run, wages are a far better predictor of league placings than anything else, including the history of the manager concerned.

Yes, I think next season is our year. There's no way the bottom half of the table will be so uniformly dismal next season. We, meanwhile, have gone backwards. I would put a large sum of money on us not reaching 41 points. One more year of going backwards will be enough to put us out of our misery once and for all.

Disagree. Several of them were excellent, including the one for Weimann's free header which he crossed with his left foot. The corner assist was also superb.

He's hopeless, a real risk in every game he plays. Honestly think Luna is marginally better, I'd rather keep him for next season. At least he's shown promise at some points. Bennett needs to re-learn his technique from scratch, ideally at some other club.

Excellent point. We've been particularly profligate in that department lately.

Certainly at this point, finishing 15th would be a triumph and anything above 18th a relief. Remarkable to be saying that when we were 10th 3 games ago. Hard to see where we're going to get too many points though.

He's a great squad option, a really good backup to have, but we're tragically over-reliant on him.

His main weakness is when people run at him with pace. He gets turned around so easily. It was a great clearance, but otherwise he wasn't particularly good today. I still think he'll leave at the end of the season.

He's 22. If this club weren't in a perpetual crisis, he wouldn't have had 50% of the responsibility he has had. He's shouldering a burden of responsibility that is simply beyond his ability. He should be making the majority of his appearances as an impact sub, and this should be the goal for next season. We all know that won't happen, but it should.

Positives - stadium, groundsman, training facilities, youth program, Benteke, Vlaar, Guzan, Delph, a few others who do a good job on their day. Negatives - painfully thin squad, chairman who either doesn't care or isn't able to help, the urgent need for half a dozen quality players over the summer, manager who gets it wrong more often than he gets it right, lack of investment, toxic home atmosphere, general all-around sense of decay and failure. The investment needs to come this summer. If it doesn't, we'll go down next year. The bottom of the league won't be this terrible again, and we won't have Benteke for the first 2-3 months of the season.

What game were you watching? No he wasn't, he created a number of our best chances and assisted the goal. You honestly couldn't be more wrong about that.

How many years in a row has Arsene Wenger wished for "better luck with injuries"? We can't rely on that. That's the problem.

Why not? Until today I was with you, but not anymore. We have a proper midfielder on the bench in Sylla who could harass the opposition. Lambert waits til 90 +1 minutes to bring in another attacker. Who did he take out? The only one cabable of doing something in Albrighton. Waste of space manager. Oh come on - Sylla's been shocking this season. What do you define as an "adequate" Premier League squad though? Honestly, with a couple of additions I think our squad would be adequate (not necessarily good) just so long as we didn't get **** over by injuries. Fair question, I'll do my best to answer. An adequate squad would be one that won more than 25% of its home games. It would be one that got to the end of gameweek 33 without the fans having a very real fear of relegation yet again. And above all, it would be one in which two injuries to central midfielders - I'll allow 3 counting N'Zogbia - didn't necessitate playing a left-back there instead. You made a point about Sylla, and how dreadful he's been - I agree - but that's part of what I'm saying. He's a 'squad player' who is so bad that a left back is played ahead of him in his preferred position. He can't be a part of an 'adequate squad', whatever we end up agreeing that means. Also, I have to take issue with "so long as we didn't get f***** over by injuries". They're a part of the game, we need to be able to cope with them. These injuries, and a pasting at Man City, would be fair enough, but we did just play the team at the bottom of the table with the worst away record in the league. An 'adequate squad' would be able to cope with that. There are some good players in the squad, and unfortunately they're the ones that are injured. However, they will be ones who get injured, because they play more football. Teams who finish safely in mid-table have squads that can cope with injuries. We don't, which is why I say we need at least 6 signings in the positions I identified in the summer.

We won't be relegated this season, but it'll be interesting to see what Lambert does in the summer. 3 more strikers and a couple of extra left-backs should do the trick. You joke, but we're going to end up needing players for both of those positions. Unfortunately, we're still about 7 or 8 players away from having an adequate Premier League squad, as the dismal team sheet this afternoon proved. 7 or 8? Our squad isn't too bad when everyone's fit, it's just that right now we've been decimated by injuries. Okay, trying to look at it as dispassionately as possible, I strongly feel we need a left back, a right back, a hard-tackling defensive midfielder, a number 10, a wide player on the left, and a decent quality striker. Fair enough, that's only 6.

We won't be relegated this season, but it'll be interesting to see what Lambert does in the summer. 3 more strikers and a couple of extra left-backs should do the trick. You joke, but we're going to end up needing players for both of those positions. Unfortunately, we're still about 7 or 8 players away from having an adequate Premier League squad, as the dismal team sheet this afternoon proved.

There's going to be a lot of strong reactions on here tonight, which is fair enough. The performance was weak overall. However, to be fair, we were missing all of our best players bar Vlaar and Guzan. At least 5 players who would normally start were absent. That's a big loss for any team, and we didn't deal well enough with it. The negatives first of all - Bennett was dreadful. That's no surprise. Lots of people were busy saying, 'give him a go' etc after the Chelsea game, but I never agreed with that. Even in that Chelsea game, he sort of got away with a foul on the halfway line which another ref, on another day, might have sent him off for. He was also responsible for the last minute winner at Newcastle. Today, a dreadfully misplaced backpass that should have gifted them a goal, and then his defending for their first. Honestly, watch it on MOTD. It's like a textbook example of how not to do everything. He jogs away from his man, back into the penalty area. Doesn't close him down. Doesn't tackle him. Doesn't move towards the ball. Doesn't mark another player. Doesn't, in fact, do anything except jog away from the ball while watching the Fulham player over his shoulder. Play Luna next time. Another negative was the substitutions. We were too happy to continue on until things went wrong. Tonev for Bennett should have happened at half time. And what on earth was the point of bringing Bowery on for thirty seconds at the end? Does he have some debts with the bailiff, where he desperately needs the appearance fee or something? There were a couple of positives, though, which shouldn't get lost in the fury - Albrighton was outstanding again. This lad needs to be given a new deal ASAP. I'm starting to worry we're going to lose him. He's pretty much our best player at the moment, and time and again he created great chances our forwards just didn't put away. We need him, bottom line. It was also good to see Holt score, although I'm guessing any sort of confidence boost will be destroyed by the dreadful miss 5 minutes later. Overall, another poor performance, another season where we're wondering how to avoid relegation. I still think we'll do it, but of course we're going to make sure we don't avoid it until the 37th game at least. That's what we do. UTV.

. . . cometh the Holt! Really happy to be wrong about this one!

The replay shows that Bennett was just jogging around, 5 yards away from the player, didn't attempt a tackle, closing down, marking another player or indeed anything at all. I never got on board with the whole 'he's alright after all' from the Chelsea game, 'cos he isn't.

It has been coming, and I have to admit I can't see us getting one back.

Given our injury situation, a draw would be an acceptable result here, so I'm not too worried. Baker and Bennett could yet derail us, though. There's no better game for Robinson to appear than this one. Holt's played well, but when he starts to tire Robinson should have a run around.