Lillehamring

Concerned? Clean sheets are hardly the priority at the moment. I'd go no further than 'disappointed'. The concern will be if we draw a blank.

I'm not sure i'd make more than a couple of changes, and the hopefully some early subs. The last time we played the bottom of the league side and dropped KDH and Wilf, we were shit.

but at the same time they've all had poor or anonymous games.

But if leeds lose and southampton win, that gap won't change.....

I guess they see it as 32 quid over a season, which is fair enough, but it screws people like me who can only get to the odd game, and international membership is even more expensive.

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Sure, wasn't really debating that - just amazed at how big the gap could suddenly be - 8 or 9 is still huge.

1980 I don't even think he was the best FB in our team, Chilwell, TAA, Reece James, cancelo, robertson, digne, shaw, wan bisakka, castagne all better full backs than Justin that season - he might have scraped into the top 10 - although i'm sure fans of other teams would probably argue the same for numerous other players.

I must have seen him play one of his better games!

In the minds of some fans maybe. This was the 20/21 season, yes? - so after 23 games he had 2 goals and 1 assist - even if he was superb defensively (which he wasn't), he was competing against Youri (eventual winner) plus vardy with his 15 goals and 9 assists, nacho with 12 goals, maddison with 8 goals 5 assists, barnes with 9 goals 4 assists - not to mention Cags and Evans at their best - he might have got players player but no way was he better than those 7, even if he'd finished the season.

You could argue that it's only because of circumstances (doyle's injury) that he's playing at all. If he was that good on the right he'd have been pushing Faes for a start before doyle got injured, and he simply wasn't close. VK and Thomas were loaned out because they got offers - maybe JJ did as well, i don't know - but i get the feeling enzo liked what he saw of his attitude that first day and thought he'd try him to see if he could be adapted to play in the system, but it's clear that he can't play in the CM positions or any of the front five or the vesty role - so he's basically just an odd man out that's got game time through injury. I think we'll sign doyle and a back up in january or next summer and JJ will be resigned to just 3rd choice R/LCB positions.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration - he might have been one of the better ENGLISH left backs but there were plenty of better full backs than him - and he only got his call up was because Chilwell and Shaw were injured and he'd been playing that position for us.

I'd love it if that was some really obscure verb!

If you actually think about the numbers, if we beat rotherham, and leeds beat ipswich, and then we beat ipswich - we'll suddenly be 9 points ahead of them - that's a massive lead.

It's nothing like that - he's a left back playing as a left centre back - playing that role didn't stop doyle getting endlessly forward. the only thing holding JJ back is a lack of confidence and ability.

Natural position or not, he's not as good a player as doyle. I'm not sure how doyle has got this reputation for getting caught out - he wasn't great against hull and over ran the ball (after justin, dead centre, had failed to win the aerial challenge) against southampton - other than that, i can't see where these flaws are. Also, we need to bear in mind that when doyle was playing everything was far more limited and new compared to how it is now. The idea of doyle playing in the sqaud the the way it is playing now is mouth-watering, whereas justin - meh - he's just doing the bare minimum.

Both wingers he faced left him standing on numerous occasions.

Fair enough, but what about if he was playing in, effectively, a front five where there is less individual pressure to produce, as he would be with us.

There has been a pattern of teams starting strong with a press, but retreating fairly quickly, sitting deep and then going for it with 10-20 minutes left - that's what sheffield, millwall and now birmingham have done (others too, but these are the ones that most recently spring to mind) - it can work, certainly got SW a point and both millwall and brum got late goals; hull, boro and west brom were more adventurous in that they attacked heavily when they saw an opportunity throughout the game but without a high press like sunderland, leeds and plymouth did. At bottom, i don't think it matters what teams do, we're too good for most of them and the system seems to have an answer for every opposition approach. The only time it's failed is when the team have been off form up front.

This is the beauty of the system - what you're image show is that they aren't exactly pushing the 6 players forward (not, at least, in a high press) they're just holding (roughly) their 4-3-3 The striker has probably just pressed Mads, which takes him out of the game, the wide men are drawn out to cover JJ and(not so much) Faes, taking them out of the game. And so now, despite them having 6 players involved, where the ball is we have an overload of 5v2 and ricardo, kdn, ndid and daka are all completely unmarked, their two centre mids are isolated.

But then he's directly up against Faes - and i know who i'd rather have playing there out of those two! Position aside, he's not as good a defender - he got beat in the air in the middle of the field for both the southampton and sheffield goals, and lost his man for the second birmingham goal - right or left, it's not good enough. Not to mention his awful attempted clearance that was lucky not to be an own goal.

And let's not forget - all the big 6 teams having a shit season!

Good job we have a fractionally better away record then

Well that is definitely something that's open to debate. The only teams that have not been aggressive and got anything off us - and i mean anything! - are Hull, Boro and wednesday - and let's face it Hull got lucky, boro needed a worldy and sheffield got their reward by, guess what, playing more aggressive at the end. We're about half way through the season and very few teams, from what i've seen of other games, have played their natural game against us - they've come in, parked the bus, damage limitation - and it simply hasn't worked. I expect from now on we'll see more teams playing their natural game against us - Birmingham are a poor side defensively, but they know they can attack and they clearly figured this was their best policy, and it got them 2 goals - there are going to be more games where teams look at us and say 'we can't defend against that, but their defending -when tested! - isn't necessarily that great'.

Agreed. He has been a revelation but i still feel he's not good enough at shooting, and not confident enough in his passing to play those through balls - but he's still doing a lot of good things (and let's face it, shooting across the board has been patchy this season!) - but i also can't see him as a long term option unless he can raise his game, but it will require a huge push forwards if he's to do that at a higher level than the championship. I like the look of ilias chair, seems like he sits somewhere between KDH and Maddison - and has buckets of confidence even playing in a poor team.