David Kelly

I had my hopes on Jimmy Nail doing Big River and Ain't no Doubt. Maybe Ant and Dec will do Let's Get Ready To Rumble?

Decent apart from that god awful accent and the fact that they showed themselves up when talking about the 'Saudi money'. They clearly couldn't care one bit about where the money came from, they were just pissed off that we (and Forest) had money to spend like they had been able to for years because of Littlewoods. I

Wasn't last night in effect the same match (ie the one before the cup final) where Pope got sent off trying to do the same thing against Liverpool and ball dying in front of him and him handling it? I certainly had flashbacks of that watching it last night. Pope is without any doubt better at sweeping than Dubs.

In general I agree, but in that instance we'd fucked about with it so much, if we'd Allison in goal he'd still have had the fuck pressed out of him.

Bruno's post match interview has inspired me so I'm going to say PSG break the legs of Salah, VVD and Gravenberch tonight and we win when Pope saves the final penalty in the shootout from Trent.

To be fair to Pope, that freekick was an absolute abortion well before it got to him. And when it did he was immediately being pressured. He didn't do great with it but you have to look at the players in front of him making ridiculous decisions and poor passes first.

Apparently it's from a knock he took against Spurs which they didn't think was anything at the time. What I do know is that my mates son was in hospital the other week after doing his acl and the nurse there told them that Botman was in getting a scan that day and had been coming in every other day for them. They all thought it was just precautionary at the time.

If the latest rumours are true, it might be at Centre Forward.

I don't think we've ever conceded a goal because of Popes bad kicking and I don't see any concerns from the defence in using him (if anything I think they should show more concern instead of giving him unnecessary balls to deal with when they know he's not comfortable) but I would say Dubravka allows us to retain the ball better and move out from the back more successfully (although I think Pope actually started off two of the goals on Sunday with his distribution with the ball in his hands). Ultimately though I agree, Dubravka has been good enough and didn't need to be dropped. I would have agreed with bringing Pope back in if it was the 22/23 Pope, but the 24/25 Pope isn't playing to that standard. Confidence is perhaps more important for keepers than any other position and I don't think Pope has a great deal of it at the moment.

Oh and Dubravka knows what it takes to win a league cup final so that's another tick for him.

I think it's incredibly harsh to attach any sort of blame to Pope for the first goal last night, it went through two players legs, deflecting off the second. I think he may well have saved it a couple of seasons ago before his injury when he was on top form, but it certainly wasn't a mistake and I don't think I'm backing Dubravka to save it. Before his injury he was undoubtedly the better keeper which is why I think Howe still has him as number one and why I think he will be playing the rest of the season. That said, his form this season has been markedly worse than it was before his injury and Dubravka has stepped up from last season when he couldn't seem to save anything. I still don't think he's been outstanding, he kept clean sheets largely in games when the defence in front of him was superb or we blitzed teams and they got nowhere near scoring. But Dubravka is clearly playing better at this moment and I don't see how it benefits us to have Pope in ahead of him. Apart from anything else, the crowd reaction is doing him no favours.

Genuinely saddened by this. Just watched two of his lesser known gems, Night Moves and Twilight (not the vampire bollocks) and I don't think I've seen a film with him in where he wasn't outstanding. RIP.

Won't this just result in Joelinton being suspended for the final?

I have no problem with it but I suppose there will be supporters who have tried and been unable to get tickets for games that are pissed off that they have no chance real to getting to the final.

How many season ticket holders do we have now? You have to be one down to pot 5 but apparently only the first 3 pots are all guaranteed tickets. I suspect there will be a lot of people unhappy with the way they have split this, but I guess that would be the case regardless of how they split it.