Clint

How is Klose not in there?

The random subs out in full force again tonight.

Shouldn’t be playing, either not fit or not upto it anymore or possibly both. Maybe we couldn’t help all the injuries but letting Amadou walk in Jan was a ridiculous decision.

His touch is awful but at least we’re noticing him so he is involved. Has anyone seen McLean? I’ve seen more of the invisible man. I believe it took him until the 43rd min to have his first touch. That’s unbelievable for a guy playing in centre mid!

I’d go with Hanley. A 100% fit Hanley is our best CB IMO. He’s the captain, a leader, experienced at PL level and a beast, which are all qualities that we’ve clearly lacked for large spells this season. He is also our best defensive and offensive player at set-pieces, which again is something we’ve missed badly. I believe he’s the only player this season to score from one? Plus the usual points made above about simply having another CB fit and the positive impact this could have made.

To be fair, for a team that tries to play through the eye of the needle and dominate possession, we’ve not played Leitner or Vrancic anywhere near enough this season, which is why we’ve scored so few goals IMO. Leitner is quality and whilst he’s not suited to every match, I think we’re a better team with him in it, against the lower level teams. But Farke doesn’t pick his team based on the opposition. I suspect he is very arrogant but many of the better players are, isn’t it Farke’s job to manage that?

Seems a bit ironic that we would spend almost no money to try and stay in the league and then spend in excess of £10m on one player once we’re down to try and get back to where we were.

I would love to see us show some ambition and do all we can to keep the ones we want until January at least. At that point, if we’re going nowhere, it’s only fair to let them go. I’ve no idea how the shortened transfer window and pre-season is going to work. Perhaps this will help us keep the squad together, albeit maybe only temporarily.

We need less green in our kit. We always do badly when there’s too much green in our home kit. Call me superstitious but oddly this always seems to be the case....

The attitude has been vastly different since the restart. He does not look and sound like a man who is about to take a team down and smash all kinds of bad records in the process. He was visibly smiling at points during the match this evening but not when we scored. It’s almost like something happened behind the scenes and relegation was accepted during lockdown for whatever reason.

West Ham have 3 points in the bag on Saturday so expect they’ll be safe.

We aren’t clever enough either. Watford are a beast of a team but won a number of clever free kicks. When McLean got done for that goal, he either has to wipe him out or get wiped out. He did neither.

How many goals have we conceded this season from set pieces? How many did we concede last season and the one before? This is one area that you can improve on by setting-up your team up as effectively as possible and practicing. Three years later and I still think we’re going to concede every time the opposition has a set-piece anywhere near our box. Farke either does not learn or is too stubborn to change. Why do we think it will be different next time around?

I thought we played reasonably well but with the same flaws we’ve had all season. The team is so shot of confidence now but there is a big argument to say had we started with this team vs Southampton or even Everton, we might not have played so badly and been in such a state now. I think Farke has to answer some questions as to why it has taken six matches to select more or less his best available team.

Another suicidal pass from Klose that lead to the free kick. We all know we can’t defend set-pieces so why try and be clever there? Just put your foot through it.