Andrew

3 points despite mostly playing poorly, good performances from Elliot, Colo (desperately in need of more of these) and Mbemba. Out of the relegation zone for the first time this season.

Theres a lot of money knocking about at the moment though, 20 million isn't what it was. Couple of French teams could manage it, a fair few spanish, plenty of italian clubs looking to push themselves on, Inter/Milan maybe? None of the PL teams will bother, they've seen him enough to know hes got fuck all consistency and he wouldn't improve them.

He wants to leave. We should let him go in January, hes nowhere near as good as he thinks he is and hes got a shit attitude. Let him go to whoever offers the most for him, it sure as shit won't be one of these champions league clubs he thinks he should be at and even were it one of those clubs he'd be on the bench in no time and moving on a year or two later exactly like Cabaye did...except he isn't as good as Cabaye

I don't think we can say that about Sissoko tbh, he's aplyed wide right for us more often than any other position and thats where he plays for france too. We won't see him in the middle this season in the lead up to the euros. Wijnaldum I agree on but he's another different type to the ones we need, hes not the enforcer or the playmaker, hes the box to box.

Barely saw Gini during the first half, I think that was largely due to them constantly coming at us down our right side though, whenever we briefly won the ball back it was humped up to Mitro or worked through Janmaat and Sissoko, nothing going down our left. The one time in the half he drifted infield and got a touch or two he set up a goal, I'd rather that contribution than Sissokos constant wasting of possession. tbf to them both though they weren't alone in being poor yesterday, it wasn't a good performance from pretty much the entire team. Elliot was as good as he could have been, Colo was decent too, he made a lot of very important blocks and interceptions, Mbemba was fine but I think struggled in that his only outlet was colo for the entire game. Janmaat was unusually ineffective going forward but grew into the game defensively, Dummet was quiet from what I saw but they seemed to be mostly coming down our right. Tiote was absolutely awful, he constantly let his man run off him, a good number of those saves by Elliot and blocks by Colo were due to that. Anita struggled, usually saw him in a fullback position to pick the ball up then only pass it to a centre back. Perez scored but didn't look himself, honestly I don't care that much about the play acting, but he could do without getting himself a reputation for it. Mitro had a tough time against Distin which surprised me since he seemed to have the beating of stokes defence last time out. As a whole the thing that surprised me most from the team was that no one seemed to have a good first touch, conditions were tricky but they should still be able to deal with that, not doing so meant we had no control over the ball by the time Bournemouth pressed and we ended up with none of the ball as a result. Centre midfield has to be a priority in January, 2 needed there imo, someone with a physical presence that knows how to use it properly and someone who has a real range of passing who can control a games tempo.

Should've been de Jong for tiote

Oh good, Cisse is coming on to calm the midfield and retain possession...

Tiotes got to go off. He's leaving his man to run off every time. Colos made a lot of important blocks and interceptions today.

Wijnaldum getting involved for the first time and we score

christ you were 5 when I signed up for this board

Have you been watching our last few games?

Aye that's what I remember too. I suppose add ons could've counted? Of which we'll have paid none since he had one season with us under worst manager as a person and our worst manager as a manager

Aye that's what I remember too. I suppose add ons could've counted? Of which we'll have paid none since he had one season with us under worst manager as a person and our worst manager as a manager

Had a look, wikipedia says 8, transfermarkt says 7. I'm wrong.

If you only watched the first half you missed the saves for Sissokos rocket from in the box and Lascelles header, both excellent saves. Think Mbemba had one as well? Can't remember

We paid 12 million for him didn't we?

Bungie don't make Halo anymore

I...see Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond are the ranks apparently I'm above average! yay!

Absolutely no idea how the competitive ranking system works or what it means for matchmaking but I've been given a platinum rank after playing a while last night. This being the second top rank I imagine I'm now due some bummings by people who actually deserve that rank and I'll never win again.

I'm not sure it got that far, the list of sunderland fans/people who hate us in the second post was pretty on point

Seems you're right Journos seem convinced we're going into the market though

Possibly, though he was our third choice, we're down 3 keepers and can't even put one on the bench which might allow the emergency loan to happen

Is he? at his age you don't need to be registered, seems unlikely we'd use 4 slots on keepers

Dear god he's 43! Let's hope the Man U link comes in first!

More of an autumn transfer but the Guardian are saying in a couple of articles that we're into the emergency loan market for Victor Valdes this morning as Elliot is now a doubt for the Bournemouth match which would mean Woodman in goal. I don't expect it to happen mind you but if we got him in for the season I'd be absolutely delighted, a top class, experienced keeper who is probably better than our actual number 1.