The Fish

It was, yes.

Be harder to sell their club to Premier League loanees if they're no longer expected to be bouncing straight back. If they do fail to get up to the Championship (which is hilarious in and of itself) it will only get harder to manage it in the future.

Barton shithouses to a 2-0 win, one soft penalty and one offside goal?

I'd fucking love for them to fail in the Play Off semi final. Not even the "glory" of a Play Off final to enjoy. All their optimism would turn to ash in their mouth.

It is Hughton, dunno what happened there. Can you ever forgive my typo?

Pretty confident Brighton will survive again. Can Houghton take Brighton beyond the perennial relegation fight? They remain decent at the back, but despite the amount they've spent, they've not got a good attack. Houghton failing to identify what the club needs, or unable to get the talent they need?

Another game where they've gone behind. I don't think they're good at the back, or good up front, I just think that level of football is entirely shit and they're getting by because everyone else is even worse.

Yeah, but just because they're ignorant of the broader context, doesn't mean should lower our standards of scrutiny.

Dunno about the overhaul, was just bringing it in line with our situation in the Championship. I agree that Ross isn't exactly impressing. They're difficult to beat, but they don't have an outstanding defence, or prolific strikeforce. That they've "rescued" so many draws from losing positions says to me that Ross hasn't got the game plan right to begin with and they're relying on effort/moments of comparative quality? 9 of their 17 draws(!) have come via Sunderland equalisers. 27 of their 80 pts have come in games where they've had to come from behind. Kudos for the comebacks, but it doesn't say to me that the manager has planned properly for the opposition? Last two seasons they've sold their top goal scorer in January, without recouping a great deal of money for them, or even replacing them satisfactorily. That's not a good idea at all. Should they go up, be it automatically or via the play offs, they're not in a great place to do much more than pray for survival.

#CuntInWaiting

Devil's advocate here; Are we being harsh by stating that anything but comfortably winning the league is a failure of a season, and given the overhaul that squad's been through, getting promoted is the be all and end all? As it was for us in the Championship?

Your argument in this instance isn't against VAR, it's against part of the hand ball law.

Is he trying to pull it back onto his trailing foot, to showboat it in?

Nobody really played well today. For all our possession and 1/2 chances we never really tested their 'keeper. Just looked a bit leggy. Could have been up to 12th with a win.

Can't think of many proper saves for their 'keeper.

No! You have to agree with me! ffs

Much prefer Man City to win it. Liverpool fans are pretty unbearable as it stands, can you imagine the shit we'll have to endure if they win? All the Man City fans I know are pretty level headed, know they've won the lottery with their owners and fully expect to fuck up at any moment. All the Liverpool fans I know have an annual belief that it's their year, insist there's an anti-Liverpool bias in the press and will hear no criticism of their team, players or city. Fuck 'em.

Everybody was saying we were playing well, I finally get a working stream and we seem to have gone to shit. Soz lads

Aye, the market is mental these days. Some decidedly average players going for three times what we paid for Cabaye. Ashley is still expecting to unearth those kinds of bargains, at those kinds of prices, but football has moved on and because he's refused to invest in the youth set up properly, we have to buy players, instead of producing our own. Either to sell to fund purchases, or play ourselves.

Put simply it's down to Education, or the lack thereof.

Probably my favourite away day. Not sad to see them gone though.

I can't think of any chubby actors getting romantic roles, I mean apart from nigh on every American sitcom, Ricky Gervais, Jack Black, Kevin James, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Will Ferrell (harsh?). Unless he means straight romantic roles, rather than romcoms? In which case, I'd say it was his total inability to act that stops him getting the job, rather than his double chin.

Milivojevic to score at any time is 5/1 Good news that Sakho is out, he's been one of their better players. Could do with Zaha picking up a knock tomorrow night against Spurs, and Wan Bissaka too.

Think diame and Hayden were played because they're more defensively minded than those two, and against a mobile creative team like Arsenal the plan was surely to bog things down a bit. That said, with the high line they were playing, it was crying out for balls over the top for Almiron or even Yedlin to chase onto. And Hayden and Diame are not reliable at that side of the game. Mental, but I think Longstaff would have been my 1st pick had he been fit for this game. He has more energy than Diame, more bothered about defending than Shelvey and he can pick a pass. Never expected anything from this game, we're shite at Arsenal and they're much much better than us. We'd needed to have been at our best and Arsenal to have an off game to get anything and we weren't and they didn't. Crystal Palace is a very different problem though.

I agree that the populace need educating. I disagree that we give them a national platform for their extreme views.