David Kelly

Bit much suggesting that Hayden just wasn't good enough for the current squad. He's not good been good enough for any squad since he's been here. Thank fuck he's gone.

I did see on Twitter one of them pointed out that they had played Stoke twice in December so people weren't gonna pay to watch them again!

If they'd actually shot higher instead of along the floor we probably wouldn't have been able to make some of the blocks we did. I remember that being mentioned on commentary last night.

I noticed our resident Citeh supporter on here said he can't stand the cunt either. Speaks volumes when he was supposed to be a well respected coach there.

Aye agree with that. I was nervous at first against Spurs but then he really grew into the game.

How about their set piece coach running down the touchline to try and keep them onside? And legohead has the nerve to complain about mad dog.

I'm not sure that Botman ever had a great deal of pace, in fact I think it was mentioned that this was a reason he hadn't moved from Lille before to a champions league club. I think his positioning was always his main strength and it's understandable that hasn't been quite as good playing on the right side so far. Still thought overall he was very good mind.

Beardsley freekick against West Brom April 85.

Wasn't that the point of the post?

Whilst I'm not convinced Pope deserves to go straight back in the team as his form hasn't been good this season, Dubravka has had the bonus of hardly having a save of note to make since he came in. Arguably he's contributed to the defence not allowing opponents to have good chances and he's undoubtedly better with his feet, but it still remains to be seen whether he can actually make any decent saves anymore. Pope has always seemed to have the ability to make important saves at big moments in games.

I'm sure I read somewhere that they gave anyone attending an away point too.

Of course they do, it's in their DNA as much as humping sisters in the mackems.

Aye his ball for Gordon and I think he set up that useless cunt Murphy when he hit the post. With a proper player on the right we would possibly get more from him dropping a little deeper and playing those balls through.

Having Tonali as the deepest of the three midfielders and Bruno further forward worked well. Tonali had probably his best game imo and Bruno had a hand in all three goals. He's our player who is most likely to find little passes in and around the box to release Isak or Gordon. The slight problem with playing like that is Bruno's lack of pace. When we lose possession and he has to get back he looks like he's running in cement. This should hopefully be less of an issue against weaker teams who don't have Salah to punish our poor passes. But ultimately if we want to create more we probably need to accept that trade off, at least until we have someone who's not dog shit on the right.

In terms of quality on the pitch he still owes a fortune though.

The difference being we don't have Shearer banging on about Mbeumo to us like they do with Merson with Isak.

He seems to be a strangely poor penalty taker when there is no pressure on but superb when it counts. From memory he has missed two for us, one was in a friendly and the other we were something like 3-0 up at the time.

Obviously we seen Burn do something similar last season. I know it's easy to get carried away when it's players for your team do anything positive and I'm sure the mackems will have their own take on it, but there definitely seems to be some really good personalities in our club now. Not forgetting the genocide of course.

Getting wound up by perceived wrongs is one of the things that makes you a mackem. It's like fucking seagulls, defending nonces, casual racism, shitting in your seat at the ground and marrying your sister/mother. It's in their DNA.

To be fair most of Sunderland is like it's still 1992. Well the better parts at least!

Hard to believe I know.

I don't think Howe see's it that way or we would have been after one by now. I don't think we've ever been seriously linked to a player of that type while Howe's been here.

When Longstaff first came into the team he looked like he was a midfielder to sit in front of the back four, but once he returned from the injury he had, and particularly under Howe, his game has changed. I don't think any of our midfielders look like the type to sit but I also think players like Bruno and Tonali are intelligent enough to be able to adapt to do that role if that was what was asked of them. I don't think Howe asks this though. We've seen games where we have massive gaps between the defence and midfield and we've been easily played through and we've struggled. But those occasions have been far less then the times when our set up has worked well for us so I don't think Howe see's a need to change overall. I do think he sees a need to adapt against the better teams though which is what we've seen this last week. I just think he needs to be a bit more flexible more often.

Totally agree with this. So far Howe has stuck to his system and it hasn't suited Tonali at all or Barnes other than for coming off the bench (which isn't necessarily a bad thing for us but I suspect will piss him off sooner or later). I am a bit more hopeful that going back to Joelinton and Willock on the left, will allow Tonali to work but we'll have to see where that goes.

I always thought Tonali had been brought in to provide the extra quality to allow us to break teams down when we're having more of the ball. So far it hasn't really worked mainly because it seems that Bruno is playing in the space that he seems to be looking to get into. I'm not sure how we change that but that certainly has to be what Howe is working on. If we get those two playing as a pair it would allow so many different options with the other three (and even Miley). I'm not sure how we do it at the moment though because what you would think would be the obvious way round it hasn't been happening.