Howay

I fucking hate Norwich btw, the web-toed inbred cunts. Just get on with the fucking game man.

Most keepers drop the occasional clanger, he's far better than Sels which I guess is what matters at the minute. I'd be tempted to sub Lascelles if I was Rafa, the bloke is very reliant on his confidence levels and doesn't seem to turn his game around when he's having a stinker. Must be at least considering Gayle as well as it sounds like these CB's are very shaky.

Lascelles having another fucking stinker from the sounds of it, shame as he did alright last match.

Darlow fucked up, 2-1 to Norwich. Fantastic.

Cameron fucking Jerome scored from what sounds like Lascelles slipping on his rollerskates yet again. Fuck. Brighton losing.

Sounds like Norwich have a hopeless defence. Hopefully Colback puts them to the sword today with the passing we've all said he's capable of.

Never doubted the lad!

Every manager seems to. I don't particularly rate Hayden highly but he doesn't fuck up as much as Colback, which is an improvement considering some of the chances from nothing that Colback gifts the opposition every game. I get that we need to rotate the squad but Colback had an embarrassingly poor match at the weekend and absolutely deserves dropped.

Yeah I'm much less confident now I see Colback is starting. I really don't get what managers seem to miss with him, he was fucking horrific last game. At least I don't have to watch the performance this time.

I'm giving you the Mitrovic treatment to bring out your posting potential. You can thank me later for this invaluable help.

Aye, it's an utter bollocks lazy as fuck rumour. The pressure is on Wenger, he's out of contact in the summer, who is a top manager not currently in a "top" job? Nowt in it tbh. I'm not saying he'll be here past the summer mind, I'm still worried that stuff about the whole Ashley interfering and likely going back on his word (or at least pratting about and being pedantic about what his original promises actually meant) during the January window will have fucked Benitez off enough that he'll finish the job of getting us up and then leave.

I'm fairly confident we'll pick something up from this, especially if Gayle is fit. As Rayvin said if they're high scorers at home they may fancy their chances and open up a bit to chase the win, in the games that teams have done this we've mostly won. They have a good scoring rate but they've also let in a canny amount of goals this season and we have an excellent away record. I've went for 3-0 (as I do basically every game) but it'll no doubt be a mental score like 5-3 or something as last couple of seasons our games against these have been crackers.

Agreed. I don't know much about his time at Derby but he seems to be doing really well at Swansea as they looked a complete shambles under the last two managers, especially the way they were chopping and changing. It was interesting seeing his craic after the loss to Man City, you can see his continental background as he really focused on the fact the ball was rolling when Man City took the free kick. The pundits were having none of it saying it made no difference as Man City took a while to build up, technically he was right though. We definitely missed a canny manager when they went for McClaren over him, I suppose it worked out in the end that we now have Rafa but I'm pleased to see he's doing canny.

“I look at the Sunderland team and think if you take Defoe out of that it’s a bang average Championship team, let alone a Premier League one,” from Gerrard . http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sunderland-without-jermain-defoe-mid-12593604

I noticed Tamas Kadar signed for Dynamo Kiev a couple of days ago from Lech Poznan, he must be a canny player nowadays. Shame Pardew thought he wasn't worth a new contract a few years ago, had injury problems at us but it seems he had potential.

Clement is doing a good job turning Swansea round mind. Leicester look shambolic on the other hand, it was always going to be a one off as players like Vardy got sussed out and reverted more to their level as opposed to the purple patch they were going through but I was expecting mid-table. Kante is obviously a huge miss but it's crackers how disjointed they look without him, he really kept the pressure going on their attacks and shut a lot down. I think Troy Deeney was saying it feels more comfortable getting at their back line as you always felt rushed knowing Kante would be running back. All those big new contracts are going to be a right fucker for them if they do drop down, cheeky summer bid for Mahrez if they do .

@@strawbI don't think I put my point across well. I was actually agreeing with you, I was pointing to the fact that we're top of the league with some players in the side that are complete liabilities to show how much we're overcoming rather than being sarcastic about your point. I agree with the rest of your post here in all. I said in another post that I remember us grinding out a lot of wins last time. I think the players suited the tactics better last time round so the team appeared more effective to watch but we're not much off where they were points wise anyway. As long as we go up I'm happy.

Aye. The worrying part about Colback is that today wasn't even an exceptionally bad game for him, he has had plenty games where he's as much of a liability as he was today. We all said the other game where he gave away that free kick outside the box and the opposition scored should be his last, he gave away 2-3 in similar positions today ffs. Really hope this season is the last we had to put up with him, as bad as players like Dummett and Gouffran can be they don't give away the sheer volume of ridiculously needless free kicks this plank gives away. The sheer stupidity of the first one was staggering, the bloke was isolated by about 30 yards, they had no one charging into the box, he was running right out to the corner and Yedlin had him comfortably covered, then in comes Colback clattering into him from behind and they had a real chance a minute into the game.

SAFC official New York City piss up 2017 tbh.

I agree that we should have strengthened, it would have been a whole lot more comfortable of a promotion if we had. I'm still extremely confident of us going up as I have been basically all season. If you're going to get through a 46 game season you're going to have games like today, especially when you're really relying heavily on one or two players to create anything. I'm not sure why the Derby game was brought up as we were good in the first half and if Gayle had played (and been on form) we'd have put that game to bed by half time, unfortunately we spurned a bunch of good chances and were hanging on at the end but again games like that will happen when you're missing the leagues top scorer. I really noticed how well Rafa has the defence marshaled today, the lines were clear and the players really stuck to them, I think the major thing I noticed was players were often missing 'their' tackle which is sometimes what afforded opportunities. Once Rafa gets better players (if he's fucking allowed and/or he stays long enough to get them) you can see we'll be solid defensively, as like Billy is saying we didn't give Wolves much today despite Colback doing his fucking best to give them good opportunities.

Riviere just fucking up a good move for Osasuna against Real Madrid there, if he had left it the lad on his team had a wide open side foot chance lined up but instead Riviere tried to score a back heel flick and kicked it off his own leg .

That's worth remembering tbf. We also really struggle when Shelvey isn't playing really well, we managed to win today while he was having a fairly poor game. He'll get back performing again soon and we'll have Gayle back too.

Another mention by the commentator that Mitrovic could have been sent off before for two yellow cards. And again Good win in a really poor match, we took our chance and Wolves were absolutely fucking hopeless. Despite a few shakey moments in defence I don't really think Wolves got many clean chances mind.

I hope we put the next match to bed before the end. Can't hack this hanging onto a 1-0 lead every week