David Kelly

The difference being we don't have Shearer banging on about Mbeumo to us like they do with Merson with Isak.

He seems to be a strangely poor penalty taker when there is no pressure on but superb when it counts. From memory he has missed two for us, one was in a friendly and the other we were something like 3-0 up at the time.

Obviously we seen Burn do something similar last season. I know it's easy to get carried away when it's players for your team do anything positive and I'm sure the mackems will have their own take on it, but there definitely seems to be some really good personalities in our club now. Not forgetting the genocide of course.

Getting wound up by perceived wrongs is one of the things that makes you a mackem. It's like fucking seagulls, defending nonces, casual racism, shitting in your seat at the ground and marrying your sister/mother. It's in their DNA.

To be fair most of Sunderland is like it's still 1992. Well the better parts at least!

Davis can certainly finish going by last weekends game.

I'm all for picking players on form, especially going into tournaments. But I just think that form needs to be longer than a month. As I said though, it shows how limited our options are in that position. If we had fit and quality leftbacks I'm sure he'd have been held back longer.

It says a lot about both the lack of genuine options at leftback and culture of over hyping players when they have a few good games. For the first month or more of the season he couldn't nail down the spot ahead of Kelly as he was anything but consistent. He's been one of our best players over the last month or so, including MOM performances against sky six teams, but should that really be enough for a call up to the national team? Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the way he's progressing now, I just feel that more than a handful of good games should be required to play for your country.

Hard to believe I know.

I don't think Howe see's it that way or we would have been after one by now. I don't think we've ever been seriously linked to a player of that type while Howe's been here.

When Longstaff first came into the team he looked like he was a midfielder to sit in front of the back four, but once he returned from the injury he had, and particularly under Howe, his game has changed. I don't think any of our midfielders look like the type to sit but I also think players like Bruno and Tonali are intelligent enough to be able to adapt to do that role if that was what was asked of them. I don't think Howe asks this though. We've seen games where we have massive gaps between the defence and midfield and we've been easily played through and we've struggled. But those occasions have been far less then the times when our set up has worked well for us so I don't think Howe see's a need to change overall. I do think he sees a need to adapt against the better teams though which is what we've seen this last week. I just think he needs to be a bit more flexible more often.

Totally agree with this. So far Howe has stuck to his system and it hasn't suited Tonali at all or Barnes other than for coming off the bench (which isn't necessarily a bad thing for us but I suspect will piss him off sooner or later). I am a bit more hopeful that going back to Joelinton and Willock on the left, will allow Tonali to work but we'll have to see where that goes.

I always thought Tonali had been brought in to provide the extra quality to allow us to break teams down when we're having more of the ball. So far it hasn't really worked mainly because it seems that Bruno is playing in the space that he seems to be looking to get into. I'm not sure how we change that but that certainly has to be what Howe is working on. If we get those two playing as a pair it would allow so many different options with the other three (and even Miley). I'm not sure how we do it at the moment though because what you would think would be the obvious way round it hasn't been happening.

I've found it very odd that so many of our supporters were expecting Tonali to come straight back into the team and replace Longstaff and that the midfield three of Bruno, Joelinton and Tonali was suddenly going to be superb. It wasn't last season before Tonali's ban and it's been exactly the same this. I'm not saying it will never work, but so far Howe hasn't worked out how. If nothing else Longstaff clearly offers us more balance at the moment. He's not as competent on the ball as the other players we can play in the midfield three but he does the dirty work to allow the others to play. He's been superb this week and he's definitely an asset.

I've seen him have a good game now.

Has Tonali played a good game for us yet? I've seen flashes of his ability but I'm yet to see a good game. I thought against Brighton when we were dominating he would shine but he was hardly involved at all. We need more from him to justify his place in the team let alone playing a full game.

I thought Osula looked promising. His movement was pretty good (something I also noticed at Fulham), we just didn't have anyone who seemed willing or able to pick him out. The one (less than) half chance he had, he made a good fist of and he looks pacy and quite strong for his age.

Going to this one so I'm hoping for the same as last time I went. Ant & Dec conducting the singing out the back of the stand. Oh and a 4-1 away win.

Be a shit load of rumours* until about 4pm when the closed for business tweet comes from whatshisname from Sky. *All of these rumours will be pushed by sites looking for clicks.

Yeah I totally get all of that and it could change in 24 hours, although that seems unlikely. But at this moment its extremely disappointing and you can't imagine Howe and the players are looking at it any differently. I've no desire to see us panic and go for players who don't improve the first team btw and I don't think a lot of the other players mentioned for centreback do improve the team. Not sure the same can be said for the right wing mind.

More disappointing though given where the club is supposed to be at now? I was extremely disappointed when we signed Hendrick mind. Even taking Ashley into consideration.

I've been positive throughout this summer but at this point, It's hard to conclude that this window is anything other than a clusterfuck now. We've lost two of our most promising young players while replacing nothing more than players we allowed to go for free. If we have our first choice starting 11 we still have a very good team and a bench that can actually make a difference, but we all know in this game, if you stand still you actually go backwards. And I'm not even sure we've stood still at this point. Whatever the reason behind this, it's not a good look and it sends us into the season on a down note straight away. It's difficult to believe we will be in the mix for top four as things stands and without that, we had better get used to the idea that we are going to lose our top players because Bruno, Isak and Gordon are good enough to be expecting to challenge for trophies and if the project stops looking like it's heading anywhere. So disappointing.

It's rare that I do agree with Souness but he's right on this one. Actually Bereton could have had 3 yellow cards in the incident. One for pushing Fab, one for putting his head in and one for simulation. Schar could arguably had two as well mind for pushing him and then putting his head in too.

Shirley Chelsea can't sign any more central defenders?

It was getting close to lunch time and I do love a kinder.