Howay

I wouldn't mind giving Elliot a game to let him carry on his recovery. Sels is a waste of time tbh, very similar age to Darlow and not as good.

Aye he was okay for us in the Championship, I thought he was a Championship level player but he has been okay for them in a shocking side. It could be one of them things where he just happens to look better than the shite around him rather than him actually being that good himself.

That Patrick Van Aanholt is decent as well mind, wouldn't be opposed to us throwing in a bid as they head down. Unless of course Lazaar is being prepped as our Premier League left back.

To be fair when they go down they go into full on miserable cunts mode, "yous still fucking going on about that? it was two days ago ffs, typical mags bringing up the past" I remember a few days after we beat them 4-1 at their hovel I brought up the result to a mackem and he literally said "you still fucking banging on about that" there hadn't even been a game since .

It wouldn't surprise me, bampy as fuck that fan base. He puts up with the mackems mind so surely he'd get over it.

It is a liberty mind, I don't think I've ever had that sort of situation before. I've had stingy people come in but can't remember it being that bad. 55m isn't bad at all like and it sounds like your team is fairly well stocked. I'm in a transition season after my title win, and with a bunch of injuries/upheaval my team is sitting 4th in January, nowt separating 2nd through 6th really though. Spurs sold Kane to Man Utd for 90m and bought Pulisic for 35m, despite him being shite the buggers have won every fucking game besides 1 loss so they're miles ahead. I've just had to sell Coutinho for 75m to PSG, Sakho to Barca for 20m, and Lallana for 4m due to the first two moaning their tits off and Lallana being the wrong side of 30 + barely playing. I'm not bothered about Sakho going, he had been class for me first 2 seasons but for some reason anytime he came in this season my defence was shambolic and fairly solid any time I left him out. Coutinho is a bit of a gutter though, it was at the point where I couldn't keep him as he was asking for mental wages to stay and was sulking, I also try and be somewhat realistic in accepting mental bids for people even though the computer are fairly unrealistic with their demands from human players (as evidenced by me having 45m bids for Pulisic turned down and 71m demanded before they accepted 35m from Spurs...). I bought Leon Bailey early on and he has slotted into Coutinho's position on the left wing fairly well but he's nowhere near the threat Coutinho was.

Was just about to post this after reading your theory. Really hoping it is the last time we see him play. I agree with the Fish's post about Mitro, no problem with Gayle starting as he has been doing a cracking job but Mitro has done enough with the time he has had to deserve decent playing time especially in games when a chance of pace might be good. Murphy did nowt but has basically never played and is extremely limited anyway so I can't complain about him but it means Mitro should at least be on the bench. Maybe HF is right and he's acting the arse in training or Rafa is trying to spark a reaction from him but it's canny hard for the lad to do anything if he's never getting on the pitch. Either way I'm not particularly worried about it I just like Mitro and think he has potential to be a canny Premier League forward (8 goals in his first season points to that) so worry there is a clash between him and Rafa and we're going to lose him.

Valencia is away out on loan, the rest are either shite or aren't being anywhere near as effective. I get your point that there's zero competition at the mackems and he would at least have some competition at West Ham but I don't think that will bother him as long as he gets games and gets a good wage, he may even prefer getting the odd game off rather than playing every single game at this age. Does he have problems with the dildo twins or something? I try not to pay much attention to West Ham as they're a total bunch of cunts. Even if he does I can't see it being enough of a problem to stop him jumping at the chance to retire back in London with a PL side. Regardless I don't see Sunderland selling him for all the reasons ewerk mentioned.

He'd be their main man up top I reckon, their top scorer is Antonio and top scoring striker is Carroll with 2 goals (if you count Lazini as an attacking mid/winger rather than striker, he has 3) so it's not like their current crop of forwards are doing much.

I can't see the mackems selling him, he's their only hope of staying up tbh. People are saying the 10m range and we're being quoted 15m for Scott Hogan so even if they were able to spend the full fee on a replacement (doubtful) it'd be nigh on impossible for them to replace his goal threat for that sort of money, ignoring the fee their history of buying strikers outside of Defoe is pretty fucking shite. West Ham would absolutely pay his wages mind, they're desperate as fuck (as evidenced by the fact they're apparently bidding for Defoe) and have a history of paying high wages for people. He'd jump at the chance imo, even if they come in at a little below his current wage, he'd get the chance to retire playing in London and spend a few more years playing PL football there.

Being linked to Scott Hogan now, the Brentford manager says he wants over 15m for him. Again as with the Callum Wilson link I'm not that arsed with the link, Rafa clearly likes 1 up top so I'm not too convinced that he'd go out and spend 15m getting a less prolific forward as backup when we have other needs (unless peoples assumptions about Mitro leaving are true). I'm still hoping for central midfielders, wingers, or an attacking midfielder, to increase the creativity in the side and give us options for when teams look to stifle (so basically every game now).

I don't know if he was mentioned earlier but it seems Axel Witsel is the latest to move to China, moving when his Zenit contract expires at the end of the season. £15.3m a year apparently, definitely don't blame him as he moved to Russia for a big pay day so he's just doing a more extreme version, going to be a hell of a lot wealthier than his far more talented Belgian teammates.

:lol: They've completely done you there!

It'll take a few years to get to a position where you can probably buy him but if anyone needs a CB Niklas Sule from Hoffenheim is unbelievable on this, he rarely makes any errors and has made my defence solid. Obviously he's not a hidden gem or owt I'm just highlighting him as he's one of those players you can splurge on that live up to the price tag. Ante Coric has finally broken into my team season 3 and he's quality, I think he was around 13m when I got him so if he's not moved to a top side by the time you get Newcastle promoted he's a good target for the AMC role if you need it.

I mentioned earlier that we generally win when we score first but lose when we concede first, if that's the post you're thinking of. I was making the point that getting plenty of goals isn't the problem for them it's getting the initial goal as when we get that teams open up and we (usually) go on to win by 2 or more, however if we concede teams sit deep or even deeper than they were and we can struggle. The problem we're facing is teams aren't playing us how they're playing each other (understandable mind) they're sitting deep and playing on the counter, even the higher sides are doing this, that's why I'd like to see us bring in some more creative players in this window to give us different options when we're hitting a wall in games.

Think we'll beat these 3-0, I don't think Zola is a good enough manager to figure out a way to set his side up to frustrate one with the best striker in the league. I'm not that arsed about winning this anyway as the better sides take the FA cup seriously so it's not one I see us having any chance winning currently.

The sticking point for us is that first goal, teams are setting up to spoil against us. When we score first we generally go on to win, usually by a couple of goals as the other team is forced to open up a bit more to chase the game. We've generally lost every game we didn't get the first goal and won every game in which we did (aside from the Notts Forest aberration and our only draw), our main issue imo is creating chances against teams looking to spoil and it's no shock at all that we've seen poor results and games in the matches Shelvey has missed over the xmas period. If we had scored first half against Blackburn we'd have went on to win by a healthy margin like we did against Forest, as naturally when our opponents open up a little we create more regular good scoring chances. That's why I think we'll go up as like Dickie says we're the best side in the league, the issue is trying to make sure we have more outlets and more options for creating good scoring chances against sides looking to stifle. We got a lot of shots today but we didn't really create many proper goal scoring chances and the keeper done a good job against the 3 he really faced. If teams played us like they played Reading and Brighton the table would look very different as games like today and Sheff Wed would have been comfortable wins. It's the problem Guardiola was moaning about in regards to Man City, you plan for a team to play a certain way and then they throw that right out the window put 10 men behind the ball and look to counter, of course it's Rafa and the teams responsibility to figure out how to break teams down and without Shelvey's creativity they've become fairly predictable, I don't blame sides for playing this way against us.

Still bitter as fuck that Colback left them mind.

Ritchie and Gouff tied on 4 in the league so it's not much better. Impressive that Mitro has 3 in the league considering his total lack of involvement (3 goals and 2 assists in 455 minutes).

I agree, I know the lad has doubters but he managed 8 in the Premier League at 21 year old in his first season abroad so surely he could be a threat in a lesser division which arguably suits a big man more. As I say I like Gayle and he deserves to start but I don't see any harm in playing Mitrovic at times or bringing him on when we're hitting a brick wall (like at half time today or half time against Wednesday).

Another positive is we're in a good place in the table with very easily identifiable areas to improve, if we can bring in a few players that can create chances or finish moves themselves we'll be comfortably promoted.

I think it's a fairly deceiving stat though, most of those shots were just hit and hopes from outside the box. We really only created 4 or so proper chances. I do think we need more scorers mind, someone (I think it was Trooper) mentioned the other day that Gouffran is our 2nd highest scorer with 4 after Gayle, it's not great really.

Aye, as SEW and others have mentioned in the past the disinterest in playing Mitro is odd. I understand that Gayle is doing well and I'm not saying Rafa should drop Gayle in favour of Mitro but he offers something different in a game we're hitting a brick wall in. Instead all we see is Perez come on against a defence that has successfully been defending against Gayle who is a fairly similar sort of threat to Perez and then Perez doesn't do anything. Lazaar has appeared once, if he's so shite that he genuinely looks far worse than Dummett then why the fuck did we buy him? It surely can't be that hard to improve on a player like Dummett. As you say surely he offers something different but we simply set up the same way every week with basically 3-4 positions that will rotate (usually 2 out of Gouff, Ritchie, Atsu, one out of Anita, Yedlin, and one out of Perez, Diame) the rest start every game.

Aye he had a run at the start of the season as teams were a little more open against us (I think they saw weakness after the opening two losses) but recently teams have just been happy to sit deep and if we don't catch them early we soon run out of ideas. The over reliance on Shelvey is really worrying especially as he can go missing himself. Teams are comfortable just sitting deep against us which completely nullifies what Gayle wants to do and the worrying thing is Rafa isn't doing anything to change that up or try and get people into different areas, he's even saying how we were doing all the right things against Blackburn. I'm not pissing my pants about promotion but seven losses in just over half a season isn't good at all especially when many are under fairly consistent circumstances, Forest even tried the same thing Wednesday and Blackburn have done we just caught them early. We need a winger and a creative attacking midfielder as Diame and Gouffran don't offer enough on any consistent basis.