NeilS

To be honest whoever we draw will be a tough draw, we have struggled against all opposition from various levels home and away over the last few years.

The change in style was necessary as we were very one dimensional. As mentioned above this is not going to see an overnight improvement as these things take time to come to fruition. The style will evolve over time with the addition of players who fit into the system and current players confidence in the style growing, our players currently are all high energy and have been used to playing long ball counter attacking football which is ok as a plan b but not a plan a. A lot of people on here have been talking about buying in a creative midfielder, which to be honest in our previous system he would probably have been a waste. If the rest of the team can't keep the ball, then a creative midfielder would not get enough of the ball to do anything with. In my opinion the players most at threat of losing their places in the first team with this new system should be Gabby and Andi. Neither of those two have offered anywhere near enough of a goal threat, or much in the way of assists. Also both have a tendancy to lose the ball with bad control. We have clearly not scored enough and if we continue with this formation then those would be the two I would be looking to replace.

A big relief that we got the three points last night. As mentioned above we need to build on that and pick up a run of victories now. If that happens then I will start to feel a bit more positive about our situation. If we can get a few victories under our belt, then maybe with growing confidence we will start to see a better standard of football and in turn more goals. As Richard says, we will not be truely out of the scrap for a long time yet though. We have seen previously that we can go on terrible runs of form, and a few injuries will set us right back again.

It was a great finish, using the defender as a shield to place the ball in the corner and giving the goalkeeper no chance. Hopefully the first of quite a few goals for him this season.

I think that I saw Phelan at Norwich in a coaching role on our local news channel earlier this week. I was in the gym at the time, and relying on subtitles though so it may not be a reliable account of what was said. I would guess that Lambert wouldn't want to appoint Meulensteen, for the reason that he is a likely candidate to take over from him. See Jol and Meulensteen at Fulham.

Only 1 person to blame here, and that is Darren Bent. The guy is finished as a top level player, I would be very surprised if he gets a decent club come in for him in the summer. His chance to prove Lambert wrong was last season at Fulham, and he messed that chance up.

Yeah he knows how to say the right things, which I guess he is hoping will dampen some of the anger towards him. It is nice that he says nice things about the club, but right now I would like a few victories strung together so we can start climbing the table again. Can he get the team he has built to do it? I remain to be convinced.

I can see us going down this season as well. The lack of goals is going to be our downfall.

I agree with that. I am happy for the lad that he has a couple of goals to his name, and hopefully he can build on this and offer the complete all round game to matches in the Championship. If it were down to me I would be tempted to leave him at Brighton on loan for the whole season, make sure he has a proper run of games to build his confidence levels rather than coming back here to sit on the bench or play for the U21's. Then I would review his position in the team during the summer.

I suspected this would be the case back in the summer. I thought that as he was on a fairly big contract previously, and with our need to trim the wage bill that the two parties would struggle to come to an agreement. Players saying they owe the club is just soundbites to appease the fans, I have long given up believing anything that comes out of the mouths of Footballers. To be honest though, you cannot blame him for wanting to get out of here at the moment we are hardly a club that looks like winning anything in the near future, and I suspect that Delph is one of the few players in our squad with a burning desire to win in his genes.

I could see Lambert being up for the chop. When you consider the tail end of last season, and run of results this season bar a couple of decent results at the start we have been dire for so long. Why he was signed to a new deal so quickly into this season remains a mystery and as pointed out by quite a few people it would have been prudent to wait until Christmas and New Year before getting all signed and sealed. Every game that passes now without halting this slide will pile pressure on Lerner to pull the trigger. I am not confident Lambert knows how to turn this slide around, I certainly don't fancy our chances in the next two games and by the time we face Burnley it will be too long without victory that surely any owner of a club would get rid.

Yeah I enjoyed Gomorra as well. I wouldn't say it was quite as good a BB in my opinion as it has only been 1 season to date, however I did find myself feeling the need to see the next episode after one had finished which is the same feeling i had with BB. I think that I read somewhere a season 2 is in the offing, but we probably won't see it until 2016.

I'm guessing you're trying to say that EVEN the budget doesn't justify the awful football, poor results and consistent losses to lower league teams with much worse financial restraints. That means we could argue all day (and maybe we will) about whether it does explain it fully or not, or how fully it explains it if it doesn't explain it fully fully, etc. But I get the strong impression that a lot of fans aren't bothering to look even a millimetre beyond the manager for the explanation, no matter how much they might claim they do. I don't know about that, I am pretty sure a lot of fans on here are just as keen to see the back of Lerner as well. You certainly don't see as much support for him on the message boards as you did 3-4 years ago. I would say that Lerner is just as much to blame as Lambert for the poor football, primarily because he employed and continues to employ the man. He has also lurched from one bad appointment to the next without thinking of continuity of styles. After MON's british based team, he went for the more foreign approach with Houllier before switching back to the British based anti football of McLeish and now Lambert. In my opinion he missed the boat when he ripped up what Houllier had started, that should have been the time to bring in another European based manager to build on what had been started. So Lambert has had a mish-mash of a squad put together which he has had to deal with. After two years though and with coaching you would expect a team to have developed beyond our Plan A involving soak it up and counter attack, you would hope to see some ability and cohesion in the team. I am not seeing that reflected other than in very small patches in games.

'It will happen'? What's next? 'The law of averages' or some other rubbish? Of course, it may happen and I hope it does but he 'knows we are going to be all right in that department' and 'it will happen'. I hope there's something more to his management than that. If I have counted correctly, then we have scored 11 goals in 19 games including Leyton Orient cup game since we beat Chelsea at VP last season. I struggle to see where the next goal is coming from bar Benteke. That is something we have seen since CB was injured last season, and nothing has been done to rectify that, we are still relying on CB to save our skins again which is unfair on someone coming back from such a serious long term injury. Terrible management, from someone who is clearly out of his depth that this wasn't rectified during the summer.

Enough is enough, he needs to go now. He should have gone after our end to last season. I have never seen such a toothless team play for us. It would be interesting to see exactly how many goals we have scored since we beat Chelseas at VP last season. Just looked and I think it is eleven goals in about 19 League and Cup games since we beat Chelsea 1-0. That is disgraceful!

After two whole seasons we should be really seeing some kind of coherant footballing style regardless of any constraints he has had to work on. Sadly it looks like he isn't up to the job of managing in the Premier League, and it looks like another very bad decision by Lerner to award Lambert a new contract when he did instead of waiting until Christmas time. I think we have had it as a Premier League team this season if Lambert stays in charge. There is no confidence in the players, no playing style instilled, and virtually no goal threat in the team at all. The run of tough fixtures has masked this a little and given him the excuse of being up against tough teams, when in reality we are equally lacking in creativity against the so called lesser teams.

I agree with that Rodders, relegation would cost us way more than any transfer fee we would receive for Vlaar. With our squad seemingly rotating use of the physio room we need all of the players we can get and Vlaar is one of our better ones.

I agree a point minimum would be good from Everton, just to halt the run of defeats. A win would be a fantastic result, and would mean we surpass my expectations from 5 games we were all talking about. All fixtures in the PL are tough, but the last 4/5 have been etrxa tough.

I agree KSV, £80k per week is probably what he should be on at this stage of his career especially with him just breaking into the England squad. With Delph as well, I feel that he won't be someone who gets a big pay packet and then stagnates, I get the feeling that he has that hunger and desire to just keep improving. Sadly, I don't think we are a club that dishes out those kind of contracts anymore, I would guess we are probably looking at no more than £60k per week being offered. I hope I am wrong though, as I have always rated Delph and was hopeful he would still come good even when he was struggling after his injuries.

I am not surprised to be honest, the cards are stacked favourably towards certain clubs now, the rest don't stand much of a chance of challenging over a long period. If any team rises up, then the squad gets picked apart fairly quickly by the usual clubs. Who would want to buy into sports team that has little chance of winning, and no chance of investing in it and giving it a chance to win?

Edit, ignore.

I am hoping it is because we have had a tough run of fixtures, but we still seem as toothless as we did at the end of last season when Benteke was out. The only difference this season is we are tighter in defence and have managed to grab a few early victories.

I had fears that he would struggle after the World Cup. He is a big lad, and always likely to get strains due to his size and speed. The lack of rest over the summer has unfortunately put extra strain on his body. Lots of players struggle the season after a big tournament in the summer. Fingers crossed he isn't out too much longer though as although Baker did well at Liverpool, I am still not sure he will fair so well against Chelsea and Man City.

I suppose so. Probably good to get him out from his comfortable surroundings with everyone he knows and challenge him in new situations to help him grow confidence. Hopefully he will get a few chances off the bench at the least though, as playing time in competitive matches is what he needs most at the moment.

They must think that he will get some game time, otherwise why loan him?