El Segundo

Some of these comments are baffling. We didn't get the best out of him? We couldn't find a way to fit him into our system? Signing him was a mistake? A goal every 136 minutes this season from mostly bit parts and cameos is one of the best records in the PL. Only 5 or 6 players have done better and they are mostly regular starters. I don't see getting £15m for him as good business if we can't replace the goals per game he provides. He could have provided those goals for us for another two years, that would have given us more than enough value for money on what he cost us.

I don't agree, but even if he only managed 70 minutes every game he'd get you a goal every two games or less.

I think this is a massive risk by Emery. Selling our top scorer without an obvious replacement in place is risky enough, but bear in mind that although he's got 18 appearances, a lot have been as sub or he's been subbed off, and he's still scored a goal every 136 minutes this season. That's a goal every game and a half - who's going to replace that kind of scoring ratio? Most team's wouldn't sell a one-in-two PL striker, let alone a one-in-1.5 because they can be as rare as rocking horse shit.

I was living abroad back then and while somewhat underwhelmed by the Heskey signing (though not as much as Harewood before him) I had no idea we were in for Cavani til now. I was going to say that the article failed to recognise that O'Neill was actually a dinosaur with a strange aversion to signing players from abroad and a penchant for British and Irish journeymen instead. This incident typifies him his blinkered approach and is why he was never able to get us above 6th and why Lerner's investment was largely wasted. We have a proper manager now and sensible owners.

Nah - it's referring to representatives of the club so it's "are". A club cannot make a bid or an announcement itself, only people representing it can. Plus "the team is" tends to be standard American usage, whereas "the team are" is standard British usage.

I noticed Ludwig was getting forward a lot down the left but Cash wouldn't get forward, and kept turning back to play the safe ball. I think I read somewhere that Emery likes his LB to get forward but not the RB so maybe it's instructions - seems somewhat bizarre however, but then we did have Bailey supposedly providing the width on the right. But I've never been convinced by Cash anyway, he always seems to struggles against good wingers or wide midfielders like Harvey Barnes, he loses a lot of heading duels at the back post, and when he did get forward he rarely has the confidence to take a man on, and his crossing and shooting has generally been poor. I think we need better.

At firs I though Olsen's pass played him into trouble but if you look at the second photo, if he'd been awake and had any awareness, he'd have know that there were two players to his left he could have played a first time pass to instead of stumbling over the ball. I now reckon this one's on Dendoncker alone, he was asleep on the job.

I said during the Wolves game he's easy to defend against because most time defenders just show him onto his right foot and can mostly safely predict he will try to cut back inside to use his left. I also noticed his only decent ball in against Wolves, and his only two decent crosses yesterday were of his right foot when he went down the line. So he can use it, he either doesn''t trust it or has orders to cut inside all the time. The frequent air shots betray a man who is lacking composure and confidence.

Speak for yourself. The comment may be tiresome, puerile, juvenile, unnecessary, and arguably xenophobic, but racist? Where is anyone's race mentioned?

Very annoyed because with a good manager, a decent squad (or so I thought), plus Chelsea out, and one of either Arsenal or City going out , and Stoke up next, we should have had a good run at this competition this year. Made the mistake of relying on second string players who were both not up to it and not up for it, and not taking the opposition seriously enough. If Emery wanted them to prove their worth to him, then they pretty much failed except maybe Sanson. That said the first choice players weren't any better. We seemed to think we had the job done at 85 mins and got casual. Olsen was poor on both goals - played Dendoncker into trouble for the first and then let in at his near post for the second. We need a better backup keeper. Bailey has lost it completely and is the master of the mistimed air-shot. Dendoncker was poor on their first goal but was played into trouble by Olsen and normally the first offence, outside the box, is given. I guess rules change cos it's Villa. Cash, Coutinho, Buendia were all dreadful and ineffective. Ings and Watkins got very little service. The rest were no better than ok, no-one really stood out as having a good game. Collectively to blame for the second goal, didn't get themselves organised in time and no-one went out to deal with the short corner. Amateurish. I think emery deserves a portion of the blame - should have started with a stronger team, aimed to be 2 or 3 up at half time and then brought on the fringe players. Perhaps he didn't realise just how shit some of our backups are and how shit the attitude would be.

Allowing the Salah goal is a complete misapplication of the "defender deliberately played it" rule. As others have said that's not intended for when a defender only tries to play the ball because of the presence of the offside player. As soon as the ball is played in Salah should be called offside, and whatever happens after should be irrelevant. He's clearly gained an advantage from being offside. Mike Dean probably knows this but hey, it's Liverpool, so it doesn't apply.

Andy Madley - the arsehole who disallowed West Ham's equaliser at Chelsea for a non-existent foul on Mendy - is the ref. At least he's consistent.

And another barge in the back not given and somehow Liverpool get the foul instead. Incredible.

The ref and VAR in this game are blatantly favouring Liverpool. Two clear barge sin the back of Wolves players not given, then that offside decision. Suppose no surprise when Mike Dean is involved.

I'd have taken a draw at half time as we were outplayed first half - they pressed well, outnumbered us in midfield and when we did get the ball we were so slow to get forward that they had every player back behind the ball by the time we got into their half. But fair play to Emery he changed shape and tactics to try to exploit their back three, pinging the ball out wide, playing the ball forward quicker, and then also over the top to exploit their higher line. However in the end it felt almost like a defeat after Bailey's dreadful miss (even Ronnie Rosenthal hit the ball in the general direction of the goal) - two points chucked away thanks to his lack of composure and apparent complete inability to use his right foot. Not sure why he was still on the pitch as he'd been pretty awful like last home game. So predictable, any defender knows just show him onto his right foot and he'll try to cut back onto his left. Easy to defend against. Would rather Watkins had gone wide and Bailey came off. He can cry all he wants but he'd be better off getting out on the training ground learning to use his weaker foot a bit better. And Digne is not only not an improvement on Targett he often looks much worse.

It was a fairly dull first half because we just nullified Spurs and were content to do so for that period. That was good tactics, to frustrate them. They lacked the creativity to break down a deeper sitting defence - If we'd played the highline like we did against Liverpool, Kane and Son would have murdered us like they have before. It's a shame we didn't do the same against Liverpool as they were very beatable. Emery very impressive so far, looks like he knows what he's doing and has got buy-in from the players. Watkins' miss early doors was awful and typical Ollie, but he redeemed himself with his overall performance. If he could just find a bit of composure in front of goal more often he'd be a top striker.

For Watkins to not even hit the target from there is appalling

So what? Aren't they entitled to protest something that means a lot to them, like other teams have been trying to do? Anyway not really the place to discuss it. If interested in a different perspective have a look at the Balkans thread in off-topic.

Don't the players (and fans) have a right to an opinion? Kosovo is Serbian as far they are concerned, it was taken off them under an unlawful declaration of independence and I reckon they have a right to be pissed off about it.

Yes the Germans can no longer defend and Neuer has gone from being one of the best in the world to being very average.

The more I watch Grealiish these days the more I see the Jack Grelaish of about 6 or 7 years ago. We'd just got relegated, he'd just established himself in the team, and he was already regarded as our star player. But I was among quite a few who put him in the "plenty of fart, not much shit" category. He'd do something flash, maybe beat one man, but then lay it off sideways or backwards, or draw a fouls, but almost always the safe option. It was as if he didn't have the confidence to take on the further dribble, or the shot or the cross. He seems to have reverted to playing like that now, well within himself, for both City and England. Possibly under instruction. Frustrating to see him get in positions where he might try to curl one in from 20 yards or take his man on in the box and just lay it off instead. For us, gradually, eventually, he overcame that and became the virtuoso we now remember, making loads of chances and scaring defenders to death. If he can rediscover that he'll be well worth £100m.

I agree with the OP. I would say that we've needed for a long time to be a bit more streetwise. For example Man City are very adept at the tactical fouling to end breakaways, and players like Xhaka are very good at causing bust ups to waste a bit of time.. But I think today and recently against Leeds has been OTT. Especially Martinez. It will come back to bite him one day. I guess we'll be fined too for getting 7 yellows. That said I've never seen us get 8 minutes added when teams have done it to us.

We pretty much shit-housed our way to victory with time-wasting and tactical fouling (7 yellow cards?) and I have slightly mixed feelings about it. Obviously great to get the three points and we've probably long needed to be more cunning and clever instead of our usual naivety but that was a bit much for me. Martinez is going to get two yellows one of these days for his fannying around. I'd rather we could see out a game by keeping the ball and talking it to the corners than just keep giving it back to them and sit deep. But we were solid, we stopped a very good in-form side from playing for much of the game and created a few good chances ourselves. The officials, the linesmen as well as the ref, got so many easy decisions wrong today it was quite something even by the usual PL low-bar officiating standards. The Kamara booking was a joke - yes he went in high but won the ball, the other player went in just as high but was late, so who has committed a foul there? These seem to be given all the time these days where the guy who doesn't get the ball gets caught by a follow through and falls to the floor screaming gets given the foul. It's pathetic. I think Digne was lucky to get away with the penalty shout though even though we've had worse ones turned down. Credit to McGinn, not great on the ball, but he worked harder than anyone to frustrate them last 20 minutes. Anyhoo, 5 points off bottom three, only four points off top 6 and three away from a European place, which is a lot better than I expected just a couple of weeks ago.

Some nice moves when we go forward but once again the final ball or touch or decision lets us down. Mings has been shaky, Digne's put in couple of great tackles, Ings has done well. I think teams target our right side because Catty Mash is not a great defender.

IF the ball had got to McGinn he would probably have tried to head it