HanoiVillan

BBC Two. For some reason MON is there, in the commentary box. He seems to have just wandered in. He's dribbling about Roy Keane (camera-shy apparently) and Mark 'Chappers' Chapman asked him a question about Lerner which made him look a bit uncomfortable.

MON now talking about Lerner. Bizarre.

MON?!?!?!

To be honest, their deep-lying midfielders are a bit of a catastrophe. Toure is talented but only bothers to turn out occasionally, Fernandinho is consistent but hardly inspired for someone of his price tag, and Delph and Fernando are just not good enough for them. They also need to bring in two new central defenders and a striker. Attacking midfielders, goalkeeper and Aguero are all fine.

I think Sakho is very talented personally, but he does seem to have errors in him. They look even more catastrophic when he isn't playing. Why are they still paying actual money to Kolo Toure?

You have to laugh at the idea of 'a race through Birmingham', a city whose main central district can be traversed on foot in 15-20 minutes, maybe 25 minutes if you ambled.

His mistakes also cost us a lot of points as well. But I'm being a bit churlish. He really is massively better since the turn of the year.

Certainly doesn't seem likely that Pep will want him.

Amen to that.

Somebody's got infidelity on their mind . . .

I doubt Garde will be messing with a defence that has kept three clean sheets in its last five league games. Richards is fine at full-back, but needs to overlap Bacuna more. Even if he doesn't receive the ball, it helps neutralise one defender. Instead, he always seems to turn and retreat.

Does the fact that Steve McLaren did something mean that it's automatically not an achievement? Winning the league with Twente was pretty impressive, no matter what else you think of him.

See above for conversation about 'footballers backing themselves'. See also 'Grealish, Jack' for further details.

No, sorry, that wasn't what I meant. It was interesting, in the sense that I now know never to read anything by Moxley again.

I'll be interested to see how Imbula goes. It might be hard to tell, because Stoke look like being the first of the mid-table teams who are on the beach. They might well get a lot better when Shawcross comes back, which is only a week or so away.

Albrighton and Huth will never be called up. Kante is French but of Malian ancestry, and the Malian FA have approached him twice to represent the country. The first time he refused, saying he wasn't ready for international football, I don't know what has happened the second time. Apparently in the past he had promised to represent Mali, but maybe he'll decide to go for the bigger prize and harder challenge in France.

I read the sentence, 'Today, readers, we can save him some expensive time', and naturally assumed that what would follow would be a list of practical suggestions. Having read it several times since then, I can't make out a single suggestion other than SACK THEM ALL!!! Frankly I wish I'd saved my own expensive time.

Yes, I'm sure Khazri will do brilliantly. He had a very high whoscored rating, which corresponds very well with scores in this game. 'Chances created' is a big difference maker in scores, even if they aren't converted into goals (this is why Eriksen is so brilliant) and Khazri is very much a creator. I only left him on the bench because I wasn't sure if Fat Sam was starting him yet - now it looks like he is, I think he'll be in my team most weeks (although they do have some tough fixtures at the moment). EDIT: On Imbula, my general impressions are twofold, a] that Stoke are shit right now anyway, and b] I don't think midfielders score as high if they play in the double-pivot.

I'm pretty sure you did. I've been playing for three years and there weren't any over Christmas in that time, and I don't really see how there could be. The thing about double gameweeks is that it involves some, but not all, teams playing an extra match. Famously, the Christmas period is impossible to fit any extra matches into, with clubs playing every two or three days.

I can pretty much guarantee that this won't happen.

If final league positions were actually determined purely by revenue, we could stop the troublesome process of actually playing football, and just declare Man Utd the champions for all eternity.

I think it's basically impossible to deny that he's been one of the reasons we've struggled this season at this point. He gives 100%, but we do look just so much more solid without him.

This is a good point. His candour in interviews is welcome - I appreciate him not trying to spin us lines all the time. He could easily have pretended the first half was fine yesterday, or brushed over it and moved to the second half, but he didn't, he admitted it was poor and below his expectations in a way that leads you to believe that he'll actually work on what went wrong, albeit with the limited tools at his disposal.

Gabby may have had a rough few years, but even now he's 3x better than Sinclair will ever be.

Nobody is disputing that it's fair to criticise Bunn, and I don't think many people are in much doubt about his limitations as a keeper, the dispute is that you suggested replacing a keeper who - for better or worse - has kept 3 clean sheets in his last 5 PL games and saved one penalty with a guy who's been absolutely dismal all season.