El Segundo

I think 9 times out of 10 a foul is given there, even if a bit soft.

His goal last night showed great touch, pace and composure to (finally) lift one over the keeper. Unfortunately, like his assist for Ramsey on Sunday, these moments are very much the exception rather than the rule. At least for this season and last. Too often he is let down by his poor touch, and even when he gets that right, he's let down by his lack of composure. His ball control is generally atrocious for a top level player.

First half was indistinguishable to watching us under Gerrard, trying to play it out of defence. Minimal risk, stopping and turning back when in promising positions to press forward. Thankfully United were shite as well.. Second half, we started to play some proper football, but our defence incorrectly decided defending was surplus to requirements. Olsen is clearly not a reliable backup keeper. Made some decent saves initially but then just fell apart. Chambers - his first mediocre performance. I wouldn't write him off based on that, he's been pretty good up to now. Mings - Can be like a rock for us at times but tonight was another of his unfortunately all too frequent "calamity magnet" performances Watkins - great touch, running and composure for the goal, then normal service was resumed on the carbon copy second one on one, where the delicate touch of a runaway axe murderer returned. That chance should have seen us score, but ultimately led to United going down the other end and scoring instead. McGinn - ineffective, really out of sorts and should have been subbed at half time. Or earlier. Emery - bit disappointed we didn't see Archer and Sanson. Guess he had to find out the hard way that Olsen is cack. Ref - generally didn't seem to favour United too much compared to the usual Old Trafford visits, however Maguire committed two identical fouls on Watkins and got a yellow for the first and not the second. Consistency my arse. McTominay probably deserved a couple of yellows too. Pissed off to go out so meekly when United were beatable.

Davis has a much better first touch and control. He was slated for not scoring enough, and getting injured too often. But when fit but he's excellent at holding the ball up and linking with other players up front. I'd take that over a non-scoring Watkins with the technique of one-legged giraffe any day of the week.

Losing there is no great surprise, we rarely do well there, but I didn’t think we’d get a walloping after last week’s much improved performance. I suppose our away form has been abysmal all season though. They are also now a very good side playing with a lot of confidence and we won’t be the last team to get a thumping there. Difficult to pick a man of the match as they were mostly all so poor, but least bad was probably Mings, and Emi before he went off. Easier to pick standout losers. Watkins and Cash are nowhere near good enough footballers for the PLs top half, and need to be upgraded asap (mind you I would have said similar about Almiron until this season). Young, for all his experience and recent good form, was run ragged today and made a stupid challenge for the penalty which started the rot. Dougie started well but then seemed to give the ball away constantly. Ings, Bailey and Dendoncker disappeared some time during half time. Buendia got knocked off the ball way too easily every time. Konsa was ok, nothing more – but should he have been marking Wilson for the headed goal?, Olsen had little chance with any of the goals. I think at home we’ll do ok, but Emery has some work to do to get some away performances out of this fragile lot.

Shades of Kevin McDonald's first two games way back.

When Digne comes back I hope Young replaces Cash - he's poor going forward, can;t cross and rubbish at defending.

Did our front four even come out after half time?

Great to see we've come out all guns blazing for the second half.

Courtney Sweetman-Kirk apparently who plays for Sheffield United. Bloke is Ian Crick or similar. It's on whatever channel Andy Gray and Richard ape-man ape-brain Keys are on. Not so much bias it's more just absolute shite. Like when Bailey played the ball about two feet off the ground, Trippier had gone diving in with his head, barely got touched, ref give a free kick. She says it's always going to be a free-kick when your foot is that high. Two feet off the ground? Idiot.

If you are watching same as me there is a woman co-commentating who would be a perfect weapon for those who say there is no place for women in the men's game. Talking utter shite about what is and isn't a free kick especially. And the bloke, whoever he is, is just as bad.

I've been impressed with Young the last few games but that was **** moronic what he did there. You have no right or need to have your arm up like that when going for a block.

Decent first half and unlucky to go in behind at half time. We were playing at a much higher tempo and with more intensity than normal and it was actually not bad to watch for once. Probably because Chelsea are not the kind of team to employ a low block with two banks of four defending the goal, so we had more space in which to play. However when you persistently miss your chances and regularly gift goals with unforced errors that's relegation form. Second half was a mostly a reversion to type, and the subs killed any momentum we had maintained. As for Martinez, I never really bought into the "top class keeper" hype. He doesn't drop many blatant clangers like he did today but there have been numerous times I've thought he could and should have done better.

It seems odd that you think it's unlikely that Gerrard is capable of "overcoming this bad period" (it's almost a year don't forget) yet you still think we should keep him. And you think this is a rational position to take. You worry about life after Gerrard but what about life under Gerrard ? How much worse can it get than dire football and poor results? As for developing only one player - We just sold Chukwuemeka for £20m, Ramsey's a first team regular, and Archer probably should be if the Manager had any balls or brains. The structure and plan was in place and working ok until Purslow decided to make hiring his best mate his priority instead. Once he's gone, and perhaps Purslow too, we can get back to that plan. No-one is saying we should sack manager after manager for the sake of it - just that we should sack this one because he is failing. How long the next guy gets will also be based on how he does. That's the way it works at every club.

Nope it's standard practice for Chelsea, Spurs. City, Liverpool, PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern and other successful clubs who are a long way from "rudderless". When a manager doesn't meet the expectations or remit of the club and fans, those clubs do not stick with them for fear of damaging the club or putting off other managers. When the managers do meet the expectations and carry out the remit they tend to stay. It's that simple and it's blindingly obvious. The Lerner and Xia years saw a succession of poor manager choices, true - but would we have been better off sticking with McLeish after a year of failure, or Lambert or Bruce after a couple of years of failure? No because we eventually got Smith who got us promoted and then to 11th place. How was that unsustainable? The fans wanted them out, it didn't put Smith or Gerrard off joining - because they know that's how football fans are, and that's how football is. As Gerrard has said himself in the video above. Accepting short term pain for the possibility of a longer term gain is not illogical. I don't want us to lose any game, however if it meant we got rid of Gerrard I would take one or two defeats, because I think the long term upside would be much greater than if we win and keep him. What is illogical is looking at an 11 month track record of failure and inability to learn from mistakes and still believing it is all magically going to change and that it isn't doing serious damage to the club. It's way more of a fantasy to believe Gerrard will suddenly learns how to manage and coach, than to believe a carefully selected new guy coming in would do better. This is no irrational mob, angry yes, but it is perfectly rational to want rid of someone who has been failing our club for 11 months. There is (or was) a well reasoned plan - continuous progress towards European places, development of the Academy, Identifying and buying promising players, build up demand and increase capacity to increase revenue, and so on. There are managers currently available that would represent a "well reasoned appointment" who, based on their track records, would be way more likely to deliver on that plan than this competent version of Gerrard that you and very few others seem to think is just about to materialise.

You've been saying exactly that. Yes the club (Purslow) screwed up appointing him and have wasted a lot of time and investment in him and his "project" but you are suggesting we continue down that path and compound those failures when an 11 month trend indicates things will either stay the same or decline further rather than change for the better. If the club is failing above and beyond Gerrard then that is a separate issue that needs addressing and will be neither directly helped nor hindered by Gerrard being sacked. Gerrard is alienating the fanbase, our matches have stopped selling out, pretty much everyone including our own fans consider us boring and lacking in quality, good players have been sidelined and will probably leave for less than they are worth, and we are as low in the table as when he joined and we look like prime relegation fodder. Just how much more damage has to be done before you think it's enormous? What else is there to break? We don't have to be "confident the next appointment will be successful". We just need to be confident there is a chance he will be successful as opposed to what seems to be the guaranteed continued failure of Gerrard given the last 11 months. The club made a mistake this time, but they were the same people who appointed Smith who got us promoted and then to 11th place. So they have proven they can succeed as well as fail, when the choice of manager is not influenced by personal friendship. The Board have not yet had the opportunity to learn from this mistake, and they won't until they replace Gerrard. Gerrard has had 11 months of mistakes to learn from and hasn't. The Board might learn, they might not - what you are advocating is that they shouldn't even try and that is nonsensical. There is no contradictory logic or double standards in those facts. Who says it's my fantasy? It's what all clubs do, hire a manager, when it isn't working, try someone else, if that isn't working try someone else again. Some get it wrong time after time, others, who are doing their jobs properly, eventually find someone who can move them forward. It's not unsustainable it's standard practice.

So you're saying it's a failure for the club to sack him for being a failure, so they shouldn't sack him, even though he's failed. And you think we shouldn't sack a manager who is damaging the club enormously while failing because it would damage the club. And because the club failed to make the right appointment we should not have any hope they will do any better with the next one, so instead we should just keep the incumbent failure and let him keep failing in the hope that eventually he stops failing, with no evidence to suggest that will ever happen. Just a wild stab in the dark but I'm guessing you've never studied logic.

The table is extremely tight even after just 9 games - one win separates 16th and 7th places. There's a mixture of promoted teams having half decent starts, the usual strugglers and stragglers who will be down there come crunch time (Brentford, Southampton, Leeds, Forest, probably us) and a few teams that have been very good recently but had poor, inconsistent starts - Liverpool, Wolves, West Ham and Leicester. With most of them, with perhaps the exception of Forest and Southampton, you can see positive signs in the way they play. Even Leicester are scoring goals and will probably be ok if can sort out their defence. Wolves could have a top level manager soon. For us to have ended up in 9th last night would have given Gerrard some breathing space and Purslow an excuse not to sack him, but it would have been a massive misconception after a dreadful start to the season full of awful performances. It may be a blessing that it didn't happen.

The ruthlessness that saw Smith go after his poor run of five defeats was almost certainly driven by Purslow, who clearly wanted his bessie mate in. He won't apply the same to Gerrard unless he feels his own position is under threat if he doesn't do something (and it should be). American sports owners are generally pretty ruthless and you would think more so in Football where you have the jeopardy of relegation and the financial shitstorm that entails. I would hope and think NSWE are talking to alternatives for Gerrard and possible Purslow as well. If they aren't, we could be well and truly buggered by the time the penny drops.

We've been trying to tell you...

Nice summary but I think you were a lot closer with the crayons for brains analogy last time.

That was liquid football - only because diarrhea is liquid

Bur he can and should take the blame for not taking Watkins off and giving Archer a chance.

Some clubs get it wrong time after time, but most eventually find a manager who can improve them. Do you think Watford would be any better off if they hadn't sacked any of the managers that were failing them? I doubt it.

What a ridiculous statement. That's pretty much what every successful club has done and will continue to do. City sacked Mancini to get Pep in, and sacked Pellegrini before that and sacked Hughes before that. Liverpool sacked Hodgson to get Klopp in. West Ham sacked Pelegrini to get Moyes in, Arsenal sacked Emery to get Arteta. All improved with the new guys. If it hadn't, they would have sacked them until they found someone who could improve them.