Canarywary

I don't want to see Dowell starting until we've picked our form back up again. He's offered nothing so far since coming back from injury and is clearly low on confidence/rusty, which is not what we need at the moment. I don't think I've ever seen Onel low on confidence so I'd rather go for him (or Vrancic).

You must like this season's then? For me it's gotta be egg & cress. Personal nostalgia as well as being iconic in its own right. And so 90s (and therefore good).

Forest Green Rovers - relatively local to me, environmental credentials, vegan like me, nice ground in the countryside, play in green and they play on 'the Lawn'. What's not to like? Plus about 20 different teams connected to places I've lived and family links.

Maybe he can get forward from a CM position, but is he going to be our best CM option for getting goals considering we haven't scored in 4 matches?

I'm still yet to see Placheta do anything that makes me think he'll be a regular starter any time soon. Although it seems like he still needs to regain some fitness, I'd start Onel over him every time.

I wonder why it didn't go ahead?

I would have been interested to see what Drmic would have done at Huddersfield. You'd have thought that if he went out on loan and performed it would have boosted his value for when we sell him. Then again, the opposite could have happened too.

A nice little interview in the national media with the big man: https://www.theguardian.com/football/football-league-blog/2021/jan/29/tim-krul-way-we-play-norwich-similar-holland-netherlands-goalkeeper

I hope he gets up to fitness enough to play some minutes out on loan in the EFL for the rest of the season, I seem to remember him being quite a positive signing based on his age and how regarded he was by Sochaux. Seems a real shame he went on loan to quite a small club and then got injured. Same with Sinani. Both of them were really excited about signing for us and then got sent off to Belgium!

They were good and put our rusties under a lot of pressure which worked. I maintain that Placheta isn't that effective. Loads of people on here seem to be really excited by him based almost solely on the fact that he's fast. You need more than speed to be effective in any league, but especially the EFL. His touch and decision making were poor today. He's young though so hopefully lots to come. Dowell on the other hand worries me more. Didn't offer anything and has been around in the English game for long enough to be better.

Surprised Sorensen is at LB. Is Xavi injured?

When we're getting consistent results as we have been this season, it's always tempting to keep the same line-ups (this definitely seems to be Farke's policy anyway). But it's often said by fans, and also in the media, that we still have more in the tank, and I guess getting players like this new guy, or Xavi, into the LB position so we have an actual LB playing at LB, is a way of getting that extra out of the tank and improving an already great team. Sorensen has been really good at LB, but that doesn't mean another player wouldn't be even better. We're generally winning games by only one goal, so maybe a more attacking LB will help that?

Start with Hugill and then bring Omotoye on I think. Hugill is our first choice cover for Pukki so we need him to get some decent game time to maintain his sharpness.

Mumba I was including in my 'barely-seen youngsters' comment. I had completely forgotten about Byram though, another good one. Gibson yes, although he's only just got injured. And I intentionally left out Placheta as I don't think he's as good as most of our other midfielders, so i don't know if he'll be challenging for starts when everyone else is fit.

And we've achieved all this with some crazy injuries. I was thinking this morning whilst brushing my teeth how good it is that we're top and yet we've still got Krul, Onel, Idah and Xavi to come back, plus Cantwell and Dowell are only just getting back into the team, and then 3 hours later I've just remembered that we also have Rupp (arguably our best midfielder before he got injured) to come back! Our squad depth is absolutely insane. And that's before you even start thinking about some of our barely-seen youngsters.