Have to agree with this (although perhaps not the description of "salivating fanboys"). I think we all hoped that Lamela had turned a corner last season and that he would continue to improve. However for me his overall performances have only gone from and average of 4/10 to a 5/10 and that is still not good enough.

If it were my decision, I would be looking to unload. Such a pity that we didn't look to spend our £30 million on Mane instead of Sissoko although I'm sure we couldn't have competed with Liverpool on wages.

'Sonny Season 2' is def putting Lamela into sharper relief.

Of course, Lamela was also about 8" from scoring a great winner yesterday from outside the box; on such fractions careers can turn ..

So we would have been top outright and not just temporary. Dont know if I feel better or worse. Very frustrating.

So we finished the weekend down in 5th after Chelsea tanked Utd.

All the other 4 teams above us have scored 19-20 goals to our 13.

And we are the only unbeaten team in the league. It's appalling.

It's frustrating. We spent something like £75 million in the summer and we still don't have anyone but Kane who we can rely on to score a goal.

Well, in terms of scorers we spent £17 million on a one season player, and punted again on a French kid with potential - both from less competitive leagues. As I mentioned before, van Nistelrooy cost more 16 years ago than we paid for Janssen.

Levy was already the luckiest Chairman in the league with Harry,

Fwiw, I look at the new 61,000 stadium being built, the best training facility in th UK, the best squad in my lifetime, CL football - in a 30,000 stadium now, and only occasionally get frustrated. It feels more like a football miracle most of the time.

Well Kane wasn't exactly firing them in either before his injury.

I'm beginning to wonder if our problem is more about how the team is set-up to play, in that the type of goal opportunities we create are more easily saved. We are just not creating solid gold chances.

Also, I keep on reading that we need to be more clinical in front of goal but we have to probably accept that the majority of our players are never going to be.

Well to paraphrase on old management saying, if you can't change the players, change the players.

The problem we have imo is that despite all the nice touches we have the quick pressing & the reasonably impressive defence, we seem to end up playing in the final third with lots of the other teams players to get through. Maybe this it's a consequence of our pressing game. We move up quickly to regain the ball but that compresses the opposition back towards their goal. It's like watching England play against the "small" teams that just leave no space to play through in the last third. It makes us look predictable and pedestrian. The ball knocks around in what should be dangerous areas but there's no way through the pack.
Leicester last season on the other hand did the opposite, they let the opposition have 60-70% of the pitch, stretch themselves leaving gaps then pressed, won the and moved it very quickly in to the space for the creative players to work in.

Sissoko accepts violent conduct charge and a 3 game ban

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37749695

Even though it looked deliberate, he's claiming it wasn't but at least him, and the manager, have acknowledged it and accepted it.

It starts immediately as well, so he'll miss the EFL game and the games against Leicester and Ars*nal. I imagine he'd only likely have started the game tomorrow so he probably won't be a huge loss.

RE Tuesday Cup: KWP, Edwards and Harrison not in the under 21 squad tonight (nor, more obv. CCV and Winks) ...

Saturday showed me that, along with a glaring lack of creativity, we still don't have the required mentality to go and actually win something. you can quote all the positive stats that you want, and cite all the mitigating circumstances in the world, but the simple fact is that we had a chance to go top - even just briefly - and we lacked the character to do it. just as we did plenty of times last season when there was an opportunity to try and put some pressure on Leicester. we love to go on about unbeaten runs, goals conceded, and convenient form tables, we're great when under the radar....but whenever there's an opportunity to actually go and make a statement, we can't quite do so. in the grand scheme of things, going top for a few hours in October is ultimately meaningless, but it's still noticeable that that's our pattern


agree 100%. I keep hearing that we need Kane back in order for us to be sharper in front of goal, but the truth is that we don't create ANYTHING for our strikers. Kane will come back and score, but not because he's any more clinical a finisher than Janssen, he's just a lot better at creating opportunities for himself. no matter how rosy things look, we'll continue to fall short for as long as this lack of creativity isn't addressed.

Hugo on the 30-man shortlist for the 2016 Ballon d'Or.

Agree with all of this. Some people love to reel out the tried and tested platitudes when its convenient, but ignore the problems which are obvious to many. Would we rather be top of the league having lost games or lying in 5th place but "unbeaten". Exactly !

Its not as if our unbeaten run is breeding us confidence and giving us a steely mentality. Our form has been mostly poor and littered with scraped wins by the odd goal. You would think beating Man City would give us confidence and we would be on top of the world. But no, instead we have actually looked worse and in the 3 following games we have failed to win and managed to muster just one last minute goal in all them 3 games.

We have no backbone and we buckle under pressure every time. As you say, we blew our chances to go top last season - who knows how Leicester would have reacted if we had. We will never know. We could'nt even handle the pressure of finishing second and above Arsenal. We capitulated against Newcastle in one of the most horrific performances I have ever seen in my lifetime.

There are a lot of problems with us at the moment. Only a fool would not see the bigger picture facing us for the season as a whole.

Hoping we can go through tonight but it'll be tough. But then I suppose if we're going to go out to anybody, I suppose I wouldn't actually mind it being Liverpool.

Though I never wish us to lose, it might be a blessing in disguise to exit the EFL Cup competition early, just so efforts can be focused on the others. We will see what team Poch puts out.

Though I never wish us to lose, it might be a blessing in disguise to exit the EFL Cup competition early, just so efforts can be focused on the others. We will see what team Poch puts out.

I see Kane's return date is 6th Nov which is the Arses game.

I think it's almost guaranteed we'll see the "B" team (Poch has already confirmed that Vorm will start), although saying that, with the squad we have it's hardly going to be a sub-standard team if you think about it.

I could see something like this, which isn't a bad bloody side

N'Koudou could certainly potentially offer more than Eriksen at the moment at the very least.

I hope to God we put out the Ladies team, or at least the 'Dortmund tactics'.

In playing in the CL at the same time as trying to qualify for it we have the biggest job in football on our hands already. And we already have enough key injuries and suspensions.

Complete madness to stretch this squad further for a two-bob pot. Leave it to Liverpool with zero European games this year.

Ha! Love it!

Bench:
Spanish keeper
Walker-Peters
Harrison
Edwards
random first teamer/s

Again, not a bad side if that's what it is. Certainly good enough to give Liverpool a game.

Looking forward to tonight, I think the squad players will be keen to make an impact. Really want to see N'Koudou have a full game and Janssen too.

Can't see Poch being as drastic as that but certainly an opportunity to include a number of the second string. I'd quite like to see Onomah as the middle of the three in an 'Alli' AM type role and put Carroll out left, because he does play wide. Agree, ideal game to give N'Koudou a chance to show us what he can do. Would be quite ironic if Janssen scored a couple!

Incidently Wimmer and CCV would be reversed in that line-up being left and right footed respectively

If it helps anyone, I saw him on Twitter comment he's happy to be know as 'NK' ..