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His strengths are very rarely of any real benefit to us (which admittedly isn't entirely his fault) and his weaknesses essentially hamstring our entire attack. If we persist with him as our striker I think it's going to be a real slog of a season.

Contractually he has to remain outside the opposition penalty area at all times unfortunately

Feels an odd choice of game to turn on him over given it's probably the first time this season you could say with confidence we were the better team for most of it. I think there are things to be concerned about but we've got 40 games left to play.

I thought we were OK, overall our best performance of the season (not a high bar) and no surprise it came with Ricardo and Winks (and probably also Faes) in the team, as well as Skipp out of it. Guessing Ricardo coming off was a fitness thing which is understandable but unfortunate because that change basically killed the game. James looked decent despite wasting one of our better chances and Carranza was pretty lively off the bench. Mavididi and Ayew were very poor, Choudhury looked like he was playing football for the first time in his life and four more years of Thomas is a grim prospect. Coventry were absolutely shit and it does feel like we let them escape with a point I imagine they'll be pretty pleased with. We don't create enough chances to get away with being so wasteful with the ones we do make.

I'm not sure we can go direct or press from the front, largely because he seems to have decided our first-choice striker should be someone who spends most of the game dropping deep into our own half and can't really run

Nah ball needs to be in play unfortunately

This is all getting a bit "he's 28 until he becomes 29" for me so I think I'll leave it there mate, I'm quite surprised anyone would say a deal going from 2025 to 2029 is not a four year deal but you call it whatever you like I reckon

Right but his new contract presumably starts now, not in 2026 when his old one would have ended. We can call it a three year extension if you'd prefer but unless I'm missing something very obvious it's a four year contract, isn't it?

Oh definitely, probably higher than that if anything - more in hope than expectation

If it means we can get some money for him rather than seeing him leave for nothing, cool. If it's with a view to him continuing to play regularly for us long-term, not very cool.

Tell you what, I've had just about enough of "Fletch"

Very nicely taken that

Yeah Mahrez's debut for us was against Boro, not sure why you'd count a game for the youth. Even if you wanted to do that, it looks like his first game for our U21s was against West Brom and he scored

I think it's also fine to just change your mind about things - if you said last season or in June or at the start of the season or whenever that Winks shouldn't play for us again, you don't have to think that forever. Reconsidering your opinion as situations and your own feelings change doesn't make you fickle, it makes you a normal human being. We would all be better off if people were more willing to do this.

Fatawu against Southampton in 23/24 surely?

Burnley lost to them about two weeks ago

I think it should be an offence but I don't think giving the other team an 80% chance of scoring a goal is a proportionate punishment for that offence

Go on Brentford, be great if they stay up

I wouldn't expect him to save the header but I would expect him to come out and claim the ball - comes a very long way and ends up about ten yards from goal

Him and Winks were both taking the piss towards the end of the game, just dancing around and through their players like they weren't there. I'm hoping we might actually look half decent if we get our good footballers into the team

I'm a bit late to the party but Three Bean Salad is exceptional. What Did You Do Yesterday? is very good as well though like all things guest-based it can vary depending on who they've got on.

Sorry mate but I think you may have been brainwashed

I think there may be a simpler explanation for why people would rather see Monga play than Reid

I'm not really that worried about him making mistakes. Players make mistakes, particularly ones without that much first-team experience. If he ends up dropping clangers week after week then obviously that's different but we're not there yet. His distribution however I think has the potential to be a big problem. I know some of our more...let's say old-fashioned supporters get very cross at the suggestion it's helpful for your goalkeeper to be able to kick the ball vaguely in the direction they want it to go, but it is.

Yeah that's enough now. Injuries aside I don't want to see him start another game for us and even then it's hard to believe there aren't players in our academy who can provide at least as much as he does. James contributed more in about 15 minutes than Skipp has in over a year.