I like you would love to see attacking free flowing football but I am also realistic when I look at our players and realise that the majority of them can not pass the ball 5 yards and are awful in front of goal. (Not Roy’s fault) Roy will not be with us for many more years but I definitely believe he is the best man to keep us in this division for now until we can get a whole new squad of players and hopefully play a different style of football. Most of this team won’t be with us in 3 years and either will Roy, so you may get your wish then and only time will tell how it pans out.

I think we are stuck in limbo at the moment, our squad is not good enough to push onto a European place and we hope we are too good to go down so every year we just end up in no mans land in mid table.

Not sure our back four was any different in strength as always. Tompkins and Cahill were as good as ever yesterday. They are prem players who give it every week. It was right and left backs, the whole midfield plus Zaha and Tosun who were really poor last night. As for finally catching up with us as Hodgson put it, a lot of our home matches have looked in large spells like the 90 minutes we saw last night. Arsenal and Brighton recently played like Southampton and should have beaten us. And let’s not forget Derby in the cup as well. We are mostly shocking at home but do seem to be able to put points in the board. Saying that we are only 7 points of 3rd from bottom and that worries me as it did a couple of months back when we were 8 points from 3rd from bottom. It’s now a lot tighter below us?

We were at home, yet registered no shots on target and didn't win a single corner.
The lowest of the low.

I don't believe we are safe in the slighest. I can see this year being the highest points total to stay up in recent history.

At this point last year we had

Cardiff 19 points
Fulham 17 points
Hudderfield 11 points.

so already there is 4 point difference on the team in 3rd last and the bottom teams this year are stronger. we are far from safe.

I think Roy is a very decent “recovery manager”

His strength is organisation. When he got the England job he organised the team - but it looked sod all like scoring at times. Then the rot set.

Same here. He isn’t going to play youngsters, or have an eye on the future too much as he won’t be here in 5 years.

I think the main frustration is the board does acquire players - Meyer, Camarasa and he simply won’t use them - whether out of stubbornness or simply not knowing how. Hodgson for all his nice guy (which I’m sure he is) has an arrogant streak too.

Look at Liverpool now - Alexander Arnold, Robertson, Gomez - the fullbacks they use and all young, vibrant players brought through. Roy went there and signed Paul Konchesky. Those players wouldn’t get a look in from our youth team. The one that did was through an injury.

If you gave the man £100 million to spend we would end up with an aging squad of functional journeyman pros.. Great for the next few years but then the D-Day comes. A bit like Stoke.

No young player would want to join us and if they did they wouldn’t get used. The recruitment policy and manager don’t seem to be aligned, and if that’s the case it is which one goes. With an eye to the future, and sustainability it might have to be the manager.

As the old Blackadder Goes Forth approach of the secret plan of going over the top for the 18th time (as that’s what we’ve done the last 17 times and it’s the last thing they will expect” isn’t working.

It just goes to show, if your not on top of your game in the Premier, you will lose, there are no easy games. There is no doubt the injuries have limited his selections and we looked tired last night, whilst they could rest their top scorer.
Not having Luca in front of the back 4 cost us, both there goals came from outside the box, where Luca plays.
10 days rest and maybe some players coming back will help.