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More than 81 minutes, probably. To be clear, I think it makes sense to be underwhelmed by the signing or not be particularly optimistic that he'll be any good based on his career to date. I don't however think it's unreasonable to say we might want to see him play at least one full match worth of minutes in our team before we have a good idea of how he useful he might be for our team. Players with good records have come here and done poorly just as players with comparatively poor records have come here and done quite well.

Has anyone actually said they think he's decent? There is a difference between thinking he's a good player and thinking that when you look at who the alternatives are, the team is probably better off overall with him in it, which is what people are actually saying.

Difficult really because ideally you'd want to see him starting a few games to make an informed judgement but he's not really doing anything in the limited minutes he is playing to warrant getting those starts. Neither of the other strikers look particularly likely to score and yet even compared to them he's not looking very impressive.

There is no real evidence for that though. He's in all the training videos working with the rest of the team as usual and he's not mentioned whenever Cifuentes give updates on fitness and availability. If he is injured then a) it's not bad enough to impact his ability to train and b) he's so far away from the team that the manager doesn't even think it's worth mentioning

Better - still not entirely convinced, but an improvement and going into the break with a win rather than off the back of five winless could be big. For all that people hate Daka, and I accept he has some pretty serious flaws, I'm not sure anyone can really dispute that we look a better attacking unit with him up front than Ayew. James looks like a fantastic acquisition, Ramsey I thought was pretty lively when he came on, unfortunately the less said about Carranza the better so far.

Ward-Prowse is doggo and I'm guessing on quite a bit more money than we can afford. Good at set-pieces but not much else and it's not like he'd be taking any either with dead ball wizard JA9 on the scene

Completely different I think - set a few hundred years later with a new protagonist and setting so you ought to be fine jumping straight in. Tsushima I think is free with PS+ Extra and it's not that long by modern open-world standards so if you did want to play that first you could do so relatively cheaply.

Well yeah, there's a chance he develops into a good player and - maybe more importantly - a valuable asset for a club who seem perennially in need of money. With his contract up at the end of next season I'm guessing we'd probably like to convince him that signing a new one is a good idea, and I'm not sure leaving him out of the squad every week is going to prove an effective way of doing that. If Faes, Vestergaard and Okoli were obviously much better than him and it was a question of whether we want to prioritise guaranteed results with them or developing Nelson then fair enough, but they just aren't.

It's fine him saying the performance was arrogant/complacent but some of these players have been stinking the gaff out for years before Cifuentes arrived and are continuing to do so, yet don't seem in too much danger of not playing - no shit they're complacent. Similarly, all well and good telling them at the break how important it was for us to keep attacking and trying to score more goals in the second half but then to make the changes he did is really not great. Disappointing it ended the way it did because first half I thought was actually a bit of an improvement, still not great by any means but you could see the difference made by having players at the top end of the pitch who want to do things other than drop into our defensive third and win free kicks.

Really pleased with him. Strong, aggressive, industrious and provides a threat from midfield in a way that the alternatives simply don't.

There's no reason for him to ever play for us again. People will say you can't afford to have players on whatever (no doubt totally insane) wages we're paying him just sitting around doing nothing but I'd much rather that than the alternative because he is an absolutely ****ing wretched footballer.

How ****ing thick have you got to be to commit the exact same, totally unavoidable error that you've just seen cost us a goal about ten minutes earlier?

Was the assist down to him do you reckon?

Pashun Daka

Thought Thomas and Choudhury have looked very ropey and the wingers aren't quite at it yet but that aside, been alright. What a shock that we look better when the forwards are trying to be positive, not dwelling on the ball unnecessarily and getting into the box. Lovely stuff for the goal - moving the ball quickly, perfect first-time pass from Daka (guessing some people missed that bit) and then James doing what we've been crying out for our midfielders to do and making a run into the area. He's already making a huge difference.

Well, it's different. If it's crap at least it'll be crap in a new way rather than another week of Ayew slowing everything down and Mavididi skinning himself. Ricardo on the bench is disappointing but we know by now a) we can't realistically expect him to start every game and b) what an impact he can make off the bench. There's been no mention anywhere of an injury for Nelson and you can see him with the rest of the squad in the training videos where he looks, to my layman's eye at least, healthy enough. Seems a safe bet he's just way down the pecking order which is a shame.

Yeah I think they will probably be decent if functional. Be interesting to see if we get another spin of the now-traditional West Ham cycle whereby they make an appointment to steady the ship, bin them for someone more glamorous and then in turn bin them for someone to steady the ship again. Diouf looks very impressive at left back and I wonder if they'll be reuniting Nuno with Chris Wood in January to attack his crosses.

Alternatively, Nuno brings off a player who's not long returned from a serious hamstring injury and hasn't played 90 minutes since January

Yeah but you can be as crap as you want in as many league games as you want, it's the first 45 minutes of Carabao Cup first round games that really tell you who's up to the standard

I don't disagree that's probably the way to go IF we get promoted but in the meantime it relies on the opposition having a good amount of the ball and committing players forward against you in a way that I don't think many, if any, teams in this division will do. To play on the counter there needs to be something for you to counter against and if we try to sit deep, play on the break and invite teams like Wrexham, Derby and Oxford onto us, they're probably just not going to bother. Doesn't mean we shouldn't be quicker and more direct with the possession we do have, of course, and we might be able to do that more easily if our "striker" ever enters the opposition half.

Shame how there is a seemingly endless supply of clean slates for the "established" (i.e. we've established over a long time they're not very good) defenders no matter how many clangers they drop but Nelson will be beaten over the head with a bad half in the league cup until he leaves, which he presumably will before too long if he has designs on actually playing football.

I can't pretend to be objective about him because I just really dislike watching him play. I'll grant you abhorrent is an exaggeration but I think outstanding is as well.

Like others, I am broadly wanting to get behind him but I feel it's already becoming quite difficult to do so unreservedly. His completely inexplicable boner for Ayew, our inability to reliably create decent chances and now academy prospects getting pushed to one side to accommodate failures like Kristiansen and Bob (yes I saw the goal, please don't start). The league position I think belies how good we've actually been and there's certainly plenty of room for improvement.

Grim stuff, another game where we looked unthreatening pretty much throughout. At least in the first half we were fairly tidy between the two boxes but then the sub at the break changed that. Ayew is ****ing abhorrent and worryingly Carranza didn't look much of an improvement. Monga needs to either cut the diving or get a lot better at it because it's already getting a bit embarrassing.

Two bookings for diving now for Monga this season isn't it? Someone needs a word