wilko154

Poor night for him, but at 21 years old he will have them. Still a fantastic player and I'm sure he will be back on form Saturday. Personally would have given Kodjia or Hogan 25 minutes last night when it became evident it wasn't Abraham's night. We are creating so many chances for the striker at the moment, I wonder if Kodjia or Hogan would thrive playing up front in this team.

I remember last season being gutted after a loss and thinking our season was over, not going to crack the top 6. Two weeks and two wins later we were back in it again, This league changes so quickly, and the end of this month is going to be our big chance to get a string of wins on the board and drag ourselves up the table. Last nights draw is gutting, but a draw away to one of the best sides in the league is certainly not a bad result in the scheme of things. A couple of dodgy results for clubs today and Saturday along with us beating Stoke and it will all seem a lot better again, trust me. Keep the faith!

It's a shame we didn't have Adomah on the bench as he would have been the perfect replacement for Bolasie last night, or Elmo and switch with El Ghazi but unfortunately he was already on for Taylor. Kodjia doesn't track back as much as we need wingers to (although he's got better), he also seemed intent on cutting inside and going for glory when we needed to retain possesion for the last few minutes. Personally would have had him on earlier but for Abraham who had a bad day at the office.

Yeh but have you ever had a back 4 made up entirely of right backs?

I'm guilty of this, I say it whenever I can't think of a decent reply and then instantly wonder why I've said it. It's a bad habit

Managed to secure a ticket to this game! Absolutely buzzing for it. Think we will do them!

Looks as though he's scored the winner again tonight, this time put Portsmouth 2-1 up after 83 minutes

All of this talk of signing Abraham in January or the Summer is absolute nonsense and needs to stop. a) we can't afford him in January b) Chelsea won't want to sell him, and if they do he will be upwards of £30 million c) the most valid point... we are sitting in 8th in the Championship, lets just concentrate on getting promotion this season. There were people saying sign Snodgrass, sign Terry, sign Grabban last season and look what happened. In terms of him seeing out the season at Villa, I think we will be safe. Chelsea will likely go out and sign a world class striker in January to complete their squad, it will be the difference on where they finish this season. In terms of Abraham I think that next season they will look to loan him to a Premier League team to prove himself ready to either play first team football for Chelsea, or to cash in for a lot of money. We have only managed to get him this season due to him not performing for Swansea in the Premier League last season, although that was more down to the Swansea team than his own performances I believe.

Or is Man City's style more like ours...

I wouldn't change a thing for this one: Nyland Elmo Tuanzebe Chester Taylor Hourihane El Ghazi McGinn Grealish Bolasie Abraham Bench: Bunn, Hutton, Jedinak, Whelan, Adomah, Kodjia, Hogan

You have to remember that in the summer we were in a dire situation with FFP, it is likely we still are. There was no way we could have obtained all of the players we needed without using the loan market, it has massively benefitted us. I agree that Chelsea use it in a crazy way, but there are no laws against it and so for the time being they are utilising the loan market in a clever way. Each season they are loaning players out and adding value to them should they decide they no longer require them. Nathan Ake is the perfect example of this. I understand that our own youth players are not being pushed into the first team, but unfortunately we had no players of the quality of Abraham, Bolasie, El Ghazi or Tuanzebe and so are best option was to loan. The same goes the other way, we have sent players out this season who may have struggled to get into the first team so they can get experience to bring them on next season (Smith may feel differently about some of these in January), Clarke, Suliman, Green, Lyden are all players that needed regular first team football rather than U23 football. Come January I believe we should also be sending out O'Hare, Davis, Hepburn-Murphy and Doyle-Hayes.

8 points behind Leeds, if we beat them we go 5 points behind them with with 25 games and 75 points left to play for. The league table doesn't even matter yet at this stage, last Christmas Bristol City were second yet finished 11th.

Thanks, had a great few days. Went to both Hoffbrauhaus and Augustiner beer halls, the food in Hoffbrauhaus was fantastic!

He's signing on Monday, will be available for WBA. Jedinak was on the bench but wasn't fully fit.

You could tell he was growing frustrated when he came on with the lack of long balls forward for him to compete with the 6 foot centre backs.

To think he's not even fully fit yet. He is much too good for this league and will terrorise defences this season. I said it on Wednesday, full backs are frightened of him and the unpredictability of what he does, the same happened again today. He will be massive for us this season.

Our best right back, the defence looked a lot more solid with him there.

I'm going to disagree with you We are in a much better position than Fulham were last season, mainly because the league is so poor this year. Last season after 20 games Fulham were on 26 points (we are currently on 27 points with 2 more games to play) Wolves at the top had 44 points (they won their game in hand to take it to 47) and Cardiff 43. Currently Norwich are top with 37 points and Leeds second with 36 points, both have one game to play to match the below table. Fulham had a 17 point gap to second after 20 game. After 18 games we currently have a 10 point gap with a game in hand... If we can win our next two games (Forest and Boro) it will take us 3 points away from where we were at this stage last season. After the way we started this season it would be pretty incredible and momentum would really have swung in our favour going into December. Championship Table at: 04 December 2017 Pl HW HD HL HF HA AW AD AL AF AA GD POINTS 1 Wolves 19 8 1 1 24 10 6 1 2 16 7 +23 44 2 Cardiff 20 7 3 0 19 5 6 1 3 11 9 +16 43 3 Bristol C 20 5 3 2 15 10 5 4 1 17 11 +11 37 4 Sheff Utd 20 7 1 2 19 10 5 0 5 14 14 +9 37 5 Aston Villa 20 6 3 1 15 8 4 3 3 14 10 +11 36 6 Derby 20 6 1 3 16 8 4 4 2 14 13 +9 35 7 Ipswich 20 6 1 3 20 12 4 1 5 15 18 +5 32 8 Leeds 20 4 3 3 15 9 5 0 5 15 16 +5 30 9 Middlesbro 20 5 2 3 11 9 3 3 4 14 11 +5 29 10 Preston 20 4 4 2 11 8 3 4 3 12 13 +2 29 11 Brentford 20 3 6 1 18 14 3 3 4 13 13 +4 27 12 Sheff Wed 20 4 5 1 17 12 2 4 4 8 11 +2 27 13 Nottm Forest 20 6 0 4 14 11 3 0 7 14 22 -5 27 14 READING 20 3 3 4 11 11 4 2 4 15 13 +2 26 15 Fulham 20 2 6 2 10 11 4 2 4 16 16 -1 26 16 Norwich 20 2 5 3 8 10 4 1 5 10 16 -8 24 17 Millwall 20 5 2 3 17 11 0 5 5 5 10 +1 22 18 QPR 20 5 3 2 15 11 0 4 6 7 18 -7 22 19 Barnsley 20 3 2 5 11 13 2 3 5 13 18 -7 20 20 Hull 20 3 2 5 25 19 1 5 4 9 18 -3 19 21 Bolton 20 3 2 5 13 18 0 5 5 6 19 -18 16 22 Birmingham 19 4 2 3 6 8 0 2 8 4 20 -18 16 23 Sunderland 20 0 4 6 11 19 2 4 4 15 19 -12 14 24 Burton 20 2 1 7 9 23 1 4 5 3 15 -26 14

Would like to see this tonight... the bench is now looking slightly sparse. Nyland Hutton Tuanzebe Chester Taylor Hourihane Bolasie McGinn Grealish Kodjia Abraham Bench: Bunn, Elmo, Whelan, Doyle-Hayes, O'Hare, El Ghazi Hogan This is assuming that Jedinak, Bree & Adomah are all not fit.

This is exactly the reason the red button games should be taken away, it directly affects attendances and therefore the atmosphere at games.

Off to Munich on Thursday for two nights, Christmas Markets and Beer Halls is the plan. Anyone been before and reccomend anything whilst there? Also... landing at 5pm on Saturday at Birmingham Airport. Does anyone know the nearest pub that I can get to after picking up the car to watch the game on Sky? Ideally a half decent place with food to keep her happy

Looked a lot better playing the deeper role in the second half. His problem seem's to come when playing with Whelan, he drops deep to pick up the ball as he has a better range of passing. However when he does this Whelan is next to or behind him and so not a passing option. Through the middle he only has Grealish ahead of him, McGinn is not there to have the two options. Bjarnasson or McGinn coming back will see Hourihane back to his best. His set pieces yesterday were brilliant as usual.

Nyland was a lot better yesterday, second half he commanded the box well and came off his line for crosses to take the pressure off. By no means should we be writing him off just yet. The defence were the problem yesterday, giving the ball away at times. Chester didn't look 100% fit though so this should improve Wednesday/Saturday. Bit unfair to blame him for the first goal, it was a point blank shot after some poor defending.