You have neatly sidestepped acknowledging the points made and engaged in a bit of whataboutery. Fair play.
Being a thread about Roy's comments, it reminded me of a game during his first stint where Wickham made his comeback after a lengthy injury, and did well. From memory it was a cup game.
The interviewer suggested that Wickham had had a good game on his return, Roy's answer was basically "No".
Looks like Roy can't change.

Yes, I can.

1. Roys '' favourites ''. Every manager at every club has them, and gets questioned by the fans at to why. Hodgson plays the players he trusts to implement his tactics. Results suggest that these players do not perform badly '' week after week ''.

2. Joel Ward. Definitely needs replacing. If you believe the rumours, Palace were hoping to get AWB back at a reduced fee. That never happened. We all know how the summer transfer budget was used, but if you are using Ward's continued selection to critisise Hodgson then I think you need to look elsewhere. Nobody knows, but I find it difficult to think that Hodgson would have signed the players we did if he had total control of transfers.

3. Of course Hughes is not a centre forward, nor was he asked to be. His selection in that area was a tactical one, and until we went behind, it worked. I acknowledge that Roy focussed more on stopping Spurs rather than us trying to force the issue, but how do we do that given the players currently available ?

4. His post match comments did not blame the subs. We were losing the game and their introduction made no difference was the main thrust. But you can choose to use your own interpretation to suit your agenda.

5. Give youth a chance - well didn't he do just that ? How many U21 and U18 games do you watch ? As teams, the club are competing well in their respective leagues. Looking at individual players though and it's a different story. Ozoh apart, I can't think of one player that I think could add value to the first team squad. I would be interested to hear of other people's views on that.

Old, Ungifted and White

No, I can only say I'm not sure on Hughes being a 'centre forward'. I guessed that Roy played him in an advanced midfield position (not CF) as he did look to congest the midfield and stop Spurs playing out from the back. That worked first half as Hughes was like a defensive midfielder playing as an attacking one, meaning they had to move the ball forward quickly with few chances to catch us out as our defence was ready. This is the problem however as Spurs did get a goal, which all started with Johnstone f-ing about and ended with an entirely avoidable and unnecessary hammer of a volley from the once again calamitous Joel Ward.

A here lies the huge problem for us. Roy plays for the 0-0 and sets the team up to try and negate the other side when playing any team deemed to be superior to ours, as opposed to seeing what we can do. I think what most fans would like to see is us being a bit more 'positive', 'attacking' or showing intent. The issue with the pragmatic or pessimistic stance is that it does work occasionally however the inevitability when a team get a goal is that we look entirely uncompetitive in yet another match, sinking to yet another narrow loss. There is no 'plan B', as has been referenced ad infinitum so we painfully draw out the narrow loss as opposed to looking to do anything ourselves.

The argument probably will and should be that this means over the course of the season we should finish somewhere reasonable, we shouldn't take too many 'hammerings' and that Roy does not have the resource available to do anything but be pragmatic and responsive. Therefore it's the old conundrum: We don't like what we are seeing but do we blame the manager, suggesting someone else can do better? Do we blame the ownership, bemoan the lack of players and thank the manager for steering us safely albeit sometimes downright depressingly due to our situation? Or... or, do we learn to have a grumble about our narrow losses, move on, wait for the next game, appreciate the holistic picture and just hope for better on the horizon?

I'll settle for the last of those options for now. I fear there will be a time for a 'real moan' but it isn't now or yet.

COYP

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

I think it might also be pertinent to point out we conceded just as meekly at the end of last season under Roy when we lost 0-1 to Spuds and Eze and Olise were both in the team. It isn't just about personnel. It's these kind of performances that everyone (including Parish it seemed) got fed up with in the end of Roy's last reign.

I think the next three games will be far more telling. Roy has a very good record against lower placed teams and hopefully we'll see a bit more positivity.

The club have a very good record against lower placed teams under any manager. Hodgson has as good or better record for beating the giants than any other manager manager we ever had from way back.

I remember that game well wickham scored and had a decent game, I can only imagine that Roy's view might have been that "One swallow does not a summer make". Also Roy didn't want Parish saying well you've got Wickham you don't need another striker,Roy like most people realised that you couldn't depend on Wickham to stay injury free and so it proved.