David Kelly

I'm not sure that Botman ever had a great deal of pace, in fact I think it was mentioned that this was a reason he hadn't moved from Lille before to a champions league club. I think his positioning was always his main strength and it's understandable that hasn't been quite as good playing on the right side so far. Still thought overall he was very good mind.

Beardsley freekick against West Brom April 85.

Wasn't that the point of the post?

Whilst I'm not convinced Pope deserves to go straight back in the team as his form hasn't been good this season, Dubravka has had the bonus of hardly having a save of note to make since he came in. Arguably he's contributed to the defence not allowing opponents to have good chances and he's undoubtedly better with his feet, but it still remains to be seen whether he can actually make any decent saves anymore. Pope has always seemed to have the ability to make important saves at big moments in games.

I'm sure I read somewhere that they gave anyone attending an away point too.

Of course they do, it's in their DNA as much as humping sisters in the mackems.

Aye his ball for Gordon and I think he set up that useless cunt Murphy when he hit the post. With a proper player on the right we would possibly get more from him dropping a little deeper and playing those balls through.

Having Tonali as the deepest of the three midfielders and Bruno further forward worked well. Tonali had probably his best game imo and Bruno had a hand in all three goals. He's our player who is most likely to find little passes in and around the box to release Isak or Gordon. The slight problem with playing like that is Bruno's lack of pace. When we lose possession and he has to get back he looks like he's running in cement. This should hopefully be less of an issue against weaker teams who don't have Salah to punish our poor passes. But ultimately if we want to create more we probably need to accept that trade off, at least until we have someone who's not dog shit on the right.

In terms of quality on the pitch he still owes a fortune though.

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!

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.

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.

Shirley Chelsea can't sign any more central defenders?