David Kelly

Aye could be a great chance for him. Bit of a shame that he's another left hander in terms of him opening with Cook but it could work well if he does well and then they can use him at 3. I think Root is fine at 3 but it would be better for everyone if we could work it so he was back at 4. Interesting that they're bringing in Dawson too. I was a bit surprised that they didn't have him in to begin with. He seemed to be the one next in the queue for spinners after Rashid then all of a sudden he was behind Ansari and Batty and possibly Leach. His wicket taking average isn't quite as good as Ansari but his batting average is quite a bit better. Given the amount of balls bowled by Batty and Ansari so far it seems to be more sensible to focus more on someone who can bat than bowl. Actually given that, I'd have been tempted to bring in Billings who at least has a bit of experience on Indian pitches if only in T20's. That would still leave us with five bowlers even if Broad wasn't brought back or Woakes was struggling with his finger. Root could cover the amount of spin bowling Batty and Ansari have done also. And Jennings can bowl as well if you want an over or two to rest the bowlers.

Or my best depending on your point of view!

Well of course there is.

I'm expecting grief from Gemmill for that already so I'll say no more about it.

I'm not sure why we go myself. Actually it's always busy and there's usually a canny atmosphere to be fair. It's without doubt a shithole though.

The last few episodes of Westworld have really moved up a notch for me. I think the latest one gives a really strong suggestion of who the man in black really is.

All of those are excellent. Radiohead, Bowie, Whitney, Anderson Paak & De La Soul (even though I've only had it a couple of weeks) are my favourites of the year. I also really like Andrew Bird, The Monkees, Isiah Rashad, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon & Underworld

Not having a go but how many games have you seen that you're basing that on? We've only had a couple of live sky matches and the highlights of the championship are worse than useless. Certainly not enough to really judge anyone.I have it in my head that you don't get the chance to go to all the games but correct me if I'm wrong. I don't actually think he's been as magic as the song goes mind you. But I would say his performances have been pretty consistent throughout the season. Saturday was the first time I've thought he was poor though. But as I said earlier I don't think it's really fair to pick anyone out as they were collectively poor.

I wouldn't say that he's been bollocks out wide like. He was pretty shit on Saturday though.

A lot of his defence of Pardew seems not to be based on any sort of facts at all. He says he'll be doing this and that in training but he has no idea. He's just guessing. The stats do actually suggest that they don't have many problems getting goals this season mind. Even if you took this weekends goals off there's still only 6 or 7 teams that have scored more than them. To me that just suggests the same problems that we thought he had here. He just relies on his attacking players doing their thing and he's actually shit at setting up and motivating a team. It comes as no surprise to me that he can't set up a team to do well at set pieces. With us it was just we were shit at attacking them rather than defending.

I'm not sure that would work but I wouldn't be against giving it a shot because for me the two we've tried there have been the poorest part of our season so far.

Probably the ideal time for this after Saturdays loss. I think we'll be bang up for it and we'll win 2-1.

I thought Gamez looked canny. Got outpaced once early on but after that was never flustered. Much like the cup game he played in I would describe his performance as composed. I certainly wouldn't single out Mitrovic for any criticism either. Yes he didn't have a good game and didn't win a lot in the air but he had very little service. Atsu was poor and Ritchie got worse and worse throughout the game. Shelvey kept on probing but didn't manage to find a quality ball and Hayden had comfortably his worst game for us. Perez was yet again the biggest disappointment for me though. I think I've only seen him play well once all season. I know it's been harped on about playing Gayle and Mitrovic together and I do understand the arguments against it, but I just feel that Perez and Diame are doing so badly in the number 10 role (obviously this is tempered by the fact we're still top of the league and just lost our first game since September) we would get much more out of playing the other two even if we were asking one of them to do something that isn't really their game. The only player who I actually thought had a pretty good game on Saturday was Yedlin.

Aye it's one of the best films I've been to see in ages.

Loving. Thought it was a bit dull which is a shame because I've really enjoyed all of the directors other films (particularly Mud and Midnight Special).

Missed a massive chance to get back into the series here after winning the toss.

Aye most of our wickets have been given away rather than taken.

Been a pretty horrible day for us. Tbh it's been a pretty horrible test all together apart from the those three overs or so after tea yesterday.

Aye well below par I'm afraid.

Another poor wicket. Shame because Butler was looking good.

Only really Hammeed was got out. Roots was a shocking misjudgment. Relying on our lower middle order again.

Who's to say that if we had went down we might not have been ripe for an Arab or Russian takeover that could have propelled us into the European elite by now. It's possible but it's more likely that we'd never have seen the modernisation of the club and in particular the stadium to where it is now. We'd have quite possibly called time on the experiment of Kevin Keegan and we'd have never seen us beat Barca, or Juve or even played in European competition. One thing I know for certain is we'd have gone into the third tear of English football for the first time in our history. Personally I don't think you can overplay the significance of that goal and result against Portsmouth given the time it happened. If we'd went down ten years earlier like the tramps it might not have been such a big thing to anything other than our pride. But right then on the verge of the Premier League I think it would have been a massive shift in our history.

Well I would have probably had another user name for a kick off!

Birthday of possibly the single most important player for us in the last 25 years today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04rO_viP-yY

Aye much like the old Lennons, it always struck me as strange that I never heard any Beatles in there. It is a shit hole like but a canny laugh after the match.