Not so bad……

[miasmum]

For a team including 8 from the Championship and of those 4 from League One, including Walton our League One goalie who the fans have been screaming for. Finally Kieran put him in goal and we kept a clean sheet.

[cromwell]

That's a good win for you MM.

[Workingman]

Not so bad……

Shell, it was only Chelski.

If the Tractors keep this up they could overtake Man 'Untied'. You are most people's 2nd favourite Prem team.

[miasmum]

Well we couldnt beat 'only Southampton' WM

Fulham next, could be tough.

I know everyone wants us to stay up, it's nice being liked, wont last though if success comes knocking.

No idea what is happening with Man Utd, maybe Jo, can explain?

Felt really sorry for the player they subbed off and the crowd booed, these are human beings, not AI in your Fifa games

Leeds doing well Frank

[JoM]

Honestly Shell, I’ve not been able to stop thinking about Josh Zirkzee being booed off. It really upset and disgusted me, and many others who I know. He’s a young lad, trying to find his feet in a new country and a new league. It’s not working out for him yet which, in my opinion, is why he should be shown more support and encouragement.

What’s happening? It’s not just a matter of something recently going wrong, it’s the culmination of almost 20 years of Glazer ownership.
Recruitment over the last few years has been poor and decisions made on players who we already had, giving them new long contracts and ridiculous wages, means we’re stuck with ageing and/or injury prone players (I’m looking at you Luke Shaw). Mason Mount is another one which has us scratching our heads as to why we bought him. We paid something like £60m for him when we could’ve got him for free the following Summer and he’s played so few games due to injury and had such little impact that you forget he plays for us. That’s money which could’ve been spent on an experienced striker that Summer instead. We brought in Hojlund who is young and inexperienced and Ten Hag wanted someone he could learn from to work alongside him but there was no money left for that so he was stuck with Tony Martial who was also injury prone.

Marcus Rashford is another issue. He’s on something like £325k per week and looks like he couldn’t be arsed. He’s lazy and selfish. A journalist spoke about him last week, Andy Mitten who is a United supporter through and through, well respected and has contacts in the club and he said that every manager since he broke through into the first team has spoken to him (Andy M) about the disciplinary issues they’ve had with Rashford. A lot is said by supporters in the area too who know of him and see him around and he’s not known locally as the nice humble lad that people are led to believe he is.
Word is that he’s up for sale, but who is going to pay the wage he expects when he has an attitude that stinks? You would’ve thought that not just being dropped by United but from the England team as well would be the kick up the backside he needs but it hasn’t made any difference.

Then there’s Onana. Always got a mistake in him. It’s reported that we’re sacking Tony Coton who is the chief goalkeeping scout because Amorim is so unimpressed with the keepers who’ve been brought in recently. He’s not the only one.

Amorim apparently wanted to stay at Sporting until the end of the season and then join so that he could have a Summer transfer window and preseason but he was told it’s now or never. He’s trying to implement a new system, and you can at times see what he’s trying to do, but the players he’s got to work with aren’t up to it. He’s been asked in press conferences if it’d be better to revert to a system that the players are familiar with (you know, which led to previous managers being sacked) and he said no, because we’d still be in the same situation in a year’s time. I can see his point there. He also said that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

[miasmum]

Jo, that really not so dissimilar as when Marcus Evans owned Ipswich. Started off seeming like a good idea, then lost interest and just used it as a tax dodge. Never spent any money, elusive, etc. Ran the club into the ground.

Regarding Rashford and Onana, trust our luck that those two have their day in the sun when you play us. Rashford scoring after 2 mins and Onana being voted Man of the Match. We'd have been 3 up if he hadnt been on fire that day.

[cromwell]

Jo, I watch a fair bit of Italian football and I saw Zirkzee play for Bologna and Hojlund for Atalanta. Both OK, Hojlund more so than Zirkzee.
Zirkzee scored 13 in more than fifty matches for Bologna. He had a good first half of last season but by the end scored 11 goals. He didn't light the pitch up so I was surprised when Man U signed him. Hojlund showed promise but £64 million was a lot to pay I think.
The problem is these "fair play" rules, which I don't pretend to understand. If you overpay for players you seem to be snookered and Man U have certainly done that. Anthony, Mason Mount, Zirkzee, Onana, Harry MaGuire, Ugarte (who can't get into the team); it's a long list.

[JoM]

I think the issue with Ugarte was that Ten Hag didn’t want him, he was making excuses about him not having had a preseason (despite I think being on international duty for much of it) and therefore wasn’t ready but since Amorim has come in he’s played quite a lot and he’s been quite impressive.
Zirkzee made a huge difference when he came on last night, and he showed that he has nerves of steel by taking the fifth penalty at Arsenal last Sunday.

We definitely overpaid for Hojlund, he was bought as one for the future and I think I’ve said before that the plan was for an experienced striker to be bought in at the same time. That didn’t happen and we were left with the perpetually injured Tony Martial. Really hoped when Ruud came back that he’d work with Hojlund but of course his stay was short lived.

As for Antony - if we had a facepalm smilie I’d be using it.