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They also offered him a long, fat contract and as a 28 year old with an extensive injury record he would've been mad not to take it.

It's at 14 minutes in this video

The bottom 3 are so poor that Brighton are basically safe. Hopefully that is reason enough for them to go all out in their FA Cup tie and push Leicester right to extra time.

Earlier in the season Bamford seemed to be missing chance after chance but as Leeds have slowly started creating less for him, his conversion rate has gone up. There seems to be no shortage of in form English strikers this season but I'd take both Bamford and Watkins to the Euros for what they offer in addition to the goals. Obviously Kane starts if fit but those two have been ahead of all the other contenders for overall forward play this season imho.

Such an interesting turnaround from when he first signed with regard to his fitness levels. From what I remember he was blowing out his arse after about 15 minutes in his first few appearances, now he seems like our fittest player. It's a credit to him and his mental toughness and work ethic.

Exactly. I thought this was so blatantly obvious to everyone. On the rare occasion that an actual current successful manager appears as a pundit, their insight and analysis on any tactical matters is lightyears ahead of anything Redknapp jr, Souness, Shearer and Wright could hope to provide. They are not completely without merit, Souness has good insight on keeping a winning mentality, Shearer and Wright give good explanations of converting chances and one on one battles with centre backs. This is wholly different from being a useful resource for anything tactic related. I agree that John Terry does know his stuff, if he didn't he would go into punditry instead and reel off empty clichés during the half time interval.

Who has and hasn't lost touch depends on a case by case basis. You're trying to compare the most successful manager of all time with several of the least successful managers of all time. The only thing Souness has in common with Fergie is the temper and the accent. Shearer et al don't even have that much.

You can't be serious. Sky literally use the ineptitude of several of their employed pundits as a marketing gimmick.

5 of these are just talking heads though, their employment is absolutely not performance related whatsoever. The other is the polar opposite, he is a student of and moves on with the game.

Number 22! Coincidentally also their current league position out of 24 teams

As @Laughable Chimp mentioned on page 1, over the first half of this season we are 20th for average time of first substitution (or 1st depending on how you look at it I guess). That is either good, bad or neither, I have no idea which. Maybe the table will give us a clue. No. Club Av. Min 1 Sheffield Utd 57.38 2 Liverpool 58.07 3 Leeds 59.00 4 Brighton 60.25 5 Man City 60.32 6 Spurs 60.47 7 Man Utd 61.07 8 Burnley 61.19 9 Arsenal 61.25 10 WBA 61.28 11 Leicester City 63.16 12 Newcastle 63.25 13 West Ham 65.10 14 Wolves 65.57 15 Chelsea 66.07 16 Southampton 66.38 17 Fulham 67.53 18 Everton 68.53 19 Crystal Palace 70.32 20 Aston Villa 73.25 Looking at the rankings of other teams, there seems to be almost no correlation between ranking in this table and league position. But maybe there is a correlation between this table and points taken from winning positions. Surely those clever teams who make early subs convert more leads into wins! Nope. Seems like reality is more complicated than more or earlier subs equals more gooderer goals and points for us. In theory, you would think that bringing 3 players on with fresh legs would make you a better team. But that would only definitely be the case in a vacuum with 14 clone players of identical ability and fitness levels. In a real life scenario, there is not only variance in ability and fitness between all players, but in familiarity with the system and tactics, confidence levels, mental toughness, familiarity with teammates and a host of other things. I have no real problem with someone saying they had the impression based on the general flow of the game that making a specific substitution may have given us an advantage. That's an opinion and if it can be explained and backed up then that's fine. The problem is with the absolute certainty I've seen in some posts that making any substitution earlier would guarantee us more points. Even IF you had all of the biometric fatigue data of all of the players and were privy to all tactical meetings and decisions of our coaches you still couldn't be sure what effect, if any, making a sub would have imo.

Horror week so far as I suspected. 49 points with just Bamford and Struijk left to play. My overall rank has more than doubled over the past two GWs.

Brought Rudiger in this week and benched Targett. You can only laugh really.

But when it comes to the length of individual blades of grass...

Soon they're going to be so dead and buried that we're actually going to be able to cheer them on against the teams around us safe in the knowledge they're doomed either way

Unfortunately for Trez it will be a lot harder for him to learn to take those killer first touches, ghost round defenders and calmly finish chances than it will for Traore to work on his cardio.

Imagine being a professional coach and watching him play and deciding he was best suited to play wing back. Other than Barkley he's probably the player least suited to play wing back in our entire squad, including Martinez.

Such a complete goalkeeper. I don't think the novelty of watching him catch stuff 99% of keepers would punch will ever wear off.

I saw one in the Reddit comments section of his signing confirmation say he was the worst player he'd ever seen. They dominated so much in the 00s and attracted so many glory hunters that their fanbase is basically a French version of the United fanbase. So spoilt and dramatic, even make some of ours look levelheaded.

Statistically 3rd best shot stopper in the league by my reckoning, he was 1st before last night. Add to that he's good with his feet and the best in the league at catching. Absolute baller who unfortunately made a few mistakes in one game. Has won us far more points than the one he arguably cost us yesterday.

Above average GW total for the season but still a relatively awful week for me compared to the people I'm competing with in mini leagues. Some leads eroded to nothing, some gone completely. 68 points all told and only my second red arrow in the last 16 weeks. Next week not looking too clever either.

With hindsight he seems to have got the midfield shape wrong in this one. He seemed to be aware of it though based on the post match comments. Interested to see how he reacts

Bamford has himself in his own team still and he's active on fpl. Pretty sure he's fine

I'm concerned by the lack of Adama. Was he not eligible? I assume he doesn't count as a "midfielder", just as a running back in a football kit.

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