David Kelly

Harry Dean Stanton RIP. Paris Texas is one of my favourite films.

It's hilarious that they are pinning their hopes on Watmore coming back from injury and scoring goals. His one in twelve record in the premier league totally backs this up.

Shawcross is a major doubt apparently. That would be handy.

That's the one. How's he not offside there btw? He's about five yards past the last man when the ball is played.

Did you see his chance when clean through last night? Classic Sissoko.

He's clearly a talented footballer but he's definitely one who goes through large parts of games doing absolutely nothing. I'm not sure we could accommodate him. Certainly not with Perez doing something very similar

There was no replays during the game but that's probably more to do with them not having the technical facilities to do it mid game. I can't imagine there's much problem with rights, I'm sure the likes of MUTV and Chelsea TV show games and replays of reserve games.

They were showing it live on the official site. Not sure if they're planning on doing this regularly or not.

The hoodoo they apparently have at the SOL might be putting hippo heed off. I'm not sure how it constitutes a hoodoo when they're just blatantly shit mind.

I agree with pretty much all of this. My greatest frustration with him is that we've seen ability yet most of the time we get no product from him at all. And a lot of the time I feel he's a passenger. We could afford this in the Championship but it's going to cause us a lot more problems this season. Like you say, we just need better. I can't for the life of me understand why it wasn't our first target in the summer. I don't recall even getting linked with many.

SPR is basically a remake of Kelly's Heroes once you get past the landing scene. It's perfect popcorn and beers fodder. Saw IT last night. Not really sure what to make of it. I think I preferred the Tim Curry and John boy Walton one. Although it's a long time since I watched that and this one focuses on just the kids part of the story. It sort of comes accross as Goonies but with more actual horror which should be really good but I think all but one of the scares were exactly where I expected them to be so I didn't find it as tense as it should be. Still it's pretty decent.

I stand corrected.

I do take the point about the change in what the wingers need to do and how that would impact on their defensive work. I'm not sure it would be to our detriment but I do concede that it would change how the team would have to work.

I said earlier in the thread that the worry would be that the striker go isolated but I honestly don't think either Perez or Diame have ever offered much in the way of support there anyway. And I'd say we won the championship despite our lack of a number 10 rather than because of anything positive they did in the role.

Would it be much of a change in formation? For the last year it's been little better than playing with ten men so I can't see how adding an additional midfielder will change things much. Certainly not for the worse.

Did we ever settle that?

A lot of people thought the same of Vianna. He does look very promising though and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't think he's an exciting prospect.

I read a couple of them say the result against Norwich was a complete fluke. They'd be bottom two had it not been for that. I always thought it would take a lot to turn them around. They have been losing for a decade with only wins against us and last gasp escapes from relegation to keep them going. It took a manager of Rafa's calibre to turn us around after two and half seasons of losing and we still took a couple of games where it looked like nothing was improving before we got going. They have some shite but they also have players that should be comfortably good enough to have them in the top half of that league if they stay fit and interested (in the cases of Cattermole and Kone), but the whole mentality of club needs changing. Everything is wrong with them (owner, players, fans) and it's going to take a lot to lift them out of the mess they're in.

I thin the second half was a bit different. They pressed us a lot more and deserved to get back into the game (although the penalty was one of the weakest I've ever seen). Sounds like Shelvey was the same in both halves. Fernandez (who I think must have come on for Aarons) and Roberts looked comfortably the best players although Barlaser and Smith had some decent moments. The defence looked shaky though.

I agree he should be seen as a positive, as should Lejeune, Joselu and Manquillo so far. I just think people set players up for a fall on the back of a couple of good performances. I'm not knocking the lad at all, but for me a more cautious optimism is the way go. Especially as I read from a Dortmund fan that he started well there but faded as the season went on. Obviously he wasn't being played too much so I'm sure that would have been a big factor in that.

Watched the second half of the U23 game against Norwich last night. That Fernandez looks a canny prospect. He needs to learn when to release the ball a bit quicker but he looks like he can beat his man at will. Woodman should have stopped their first goal though.

Colback is fifth choice behind Diame at best. It actually looks like Saivet is ahead of him at the moment.

In the same way as I think people got too excited about Lejeune after some good performances in the friendlies and half an hour against Spurs, I think they're getting too excited about Merino after two good games. We've seen it all before where a player starts well and then fades really badly. But I'm not going to knock either player's performances because of that. Merino has been one of our best players in the last two games and looks very promising for the future. Hopefully he can continue that, but lets not kid ourselves that he's done anything other than play well against two poor midfields at this stage. It's not fair on the lad.

Hilarious threat on RTG at the minute where the opening post says they under estimated the championship and everyone else is replying saying they all thought they'd struggle. This all seems very different from the predictions I was seeing from most of them pre season.

I thought he was wank against West Ham for the most part and everyone else around me in the ground seemed to be saying the same thing. The fact that he managed one good ball to Mitro didn't hide the fact that he fucked up a lot more. His movement is very good but his delivery is awful.