barry'sboots

He's never gonna do this. Neither is Ash or Albrighton. SI won't do it a great deal and Stan is not great at it. That's why we need an NRC type in there!

Pleat spot on. Difficult first game for Ireland and we would have been better off with NRC in there alongside Stan for this game! Why can't K-Mac see this. Its not rocket science.

Pleat just pointed out the bleeding obvious - we need a change in CM!! and with 4-4-2 we are too open. K-Mac looks like MON II. Martin Jol please.

FFS Is MON back. 3 goals down and we look to Heskey??

Carrol is showing Carew how to play the no. 9 role!

Its madness that NRC wasn't in the starting line up. We look wide open when they come forward and Petrov and SI is not a CM pairing. There is no balance there at all. 5 footballers and no grafters! We should have started with the same team as last week with NRC replacing Jimmy and SI on the bench. He could have got 30 minutes if we were doing well. This is K-Mac showing his naivety IMO. Away from home in the Premier League you have to earn the right to win. This is especially the case against newly promoted teams playing their first game at home - history shows these games are a real banana skin and we should have known this!

Does the West Ham v Bolton result put our performance/result into a slightly different perspective??

Ireland's understudy!?

What a bunch of c*nts. If that had happened at VP Platini and that old fart at FIFA would be making a huge deal of it.

Wouldn't be gung ho if we just replaced Milly with NRC from the Wet Spam game? Ireland on the bench to get 30 minutes at the end maybe swapping for Albie with Young pushing out wide - he has hardly had any time with his new team mates. I want to reward players for doing well and believe that they should keep the shirt until they stop or tire.

Totally disagree, NRC broke up play well and got forward on the right occasions. Being on a yellow card for so long I was worried but he kept disciplined and didn't do any rash challenges. Spot on. I thought NRC had an excellent game, particularly given that he was alongside two kids in CM. He will obviously not do an Albie but his contribution and energy is invaluable. Looking forward to seeing him start on Sunday.

AVFC-PoB, I would go with that side but put Albrighton in for Ireland and play a front 4 of: Albi --- Ash --- Dj ------- Gab ------ Give Ireland the last thirty. I just think he needs a bit of time to get up to speed with his new team mates.

Delph and Ireland in front of a good DCM ..... fantastic!!

Why so surprised. MON had at least another week before he would have seriously started considering any transfer activity.

I believe that the Austrians have a border policy of not allowing Ginners in to the country on the off chance that they impregnate a resident and they have a Ginner outburst.

Not sure I agree with you on this rj. We have Stan and NRC as I see it and would probably want to play both of them with SI of the striker. If one is injured, particularly NRC, we are left with a pretty soft centre?? I am assuming/hoping Sidders is off in this.

Wouldn't argue with that, although I would maybe prefer NZogbia to Donovan and would consider Bannan more as back up to Ireland.

Straight forward cruciate? No such thing mate. You have two cruciate ligaments in the knee, the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) and the anterior crucuate ligament (ACL), Delph has done his ACL. The ACL injury is by far the worst one as it is right in the inside of the knee meaning more intrusive surgery and thus can lead to more complications, infections and such like. The operation is a reconstruction operation which involves taking a graft of tendon from the kneecap to replace the damaged ligament. It is a nasty, nasty injury and as I said earlier in the thread it took Arteta 11 months to make a come back. It used to be a career ending injury until the last 10 to 15 years, its a bad one. These days players do make it back from it but some are never quite the same others are we just have to hope Delph is, his age will help with that. Cheers mate. Horrible horrible injury then. I've had my ACL rebuilt and, whilst it does take a good while to recover, the surgery is fairly routine now and, with the right physio, which Delph will obviously be getting, it is now a reasonably well trodden path and he should be back as strong as ever. I don't want to play it down but I don't think it is as bad now as some are making out.

I just don't see him as a replacement for Milner, I think he is best in a 3 man CM with two behind. Could be NRC and Petrov but we are a bit thin on the ground if anybody is injured/needs resting/suspended with Delph out until X-mas and I am still hoping Sidders moves on. Would love to see Flamini coming in.

For anybody that is a regular viewer of the reserves, I wondered whether we are likely to see any more blooded this season? I see Gardner is 18 now. Is he good enough to get in and around the first team squad this season, recovery permitting? Same question of Parish, Collins and Forrester?

http://tinyurl.com/28jvqjh I rate NZogbia but I think we are more in need of a central midfielder at the minute, especially after Albrighton's great performance at the weekend. If we could have a CM'er and N'Zogbia (and offload Heskey, Sidwell, Davies and Beye) then that would be great.

Its a big loss out of our CM though at the same time as losing Jimmy. I don't see Ireland replacing them, I see him more as competing with Ash/Carew for the place of Gabby. I think we need to bring in a fourth CM'er, alongside Stan, NRC and the injured Delph. I am still hoping that we will be able to offload Sidwell .... and Heskey for that matter.

Agree with much of this. I am looking forward to seeing Ireland play off Gabby with a strong pairing in behind. I do think we need to spend some of the money on a replacement for Milner, especially with Delph injured until Christmas, as I think we need four holding or box to box CM'ers to get through a season and I would still hope that we can off load Sidwell before then. Petrov, NRC and Delph plus, ideally, Flamini would be great and give us a mix of type of player as well.

Have you seen Delph's tackles - ouch! Yes, but I don't see him as a DCM. I can see the following: ------------------------- Flamini ------------------------- ----------------------------------- Downing/Delph ------ -------------- Ireland ------------------------------------ Albrighton ------------------------------------------- Ash

That midfield would be fairly weak defensively!