Laivasse

Boils down to tactics for me. This business of 3 of the back, especially when you've got three so advanced as Zog, Gabby and Benny, means you're shorthanded when you need to press or close down quick. So far we haven't needed to do that much since baggies have been shit and have had nothing of the ball - until they get a little bit of pressure going.

Bannan coming on

****. Been coming since they kicked off.

Shit, Lichaj, SO CLOSE!! Beautiful move, N'Zog central to it yet again.

To be fair all of the play is falling to players like Benteke, Zog, Gabby, who we know can produce quality (likewise Weimann when he's playing). The problems come when a game shapes up in such a way that players like Clark, Bennett, Lichaj, Bannan etc. have to take charge.

**** BEAUTY GABS AND ZOGGY!!!!

We are the better side so far but it's not like chances are free flowing for either team atm. Before the goal it was worrying how much space they were getting. We're seeing more of it though, Zog and Gabby doing well down the left.

Awful mistimed swing of the boot by Delph, nearly shattered his own foot.

Zog had the ball down the left, played it square. Benteke picked it up with his back to goal outside the area - he does a little jink to completely wrongfoot the defender behind him, turns inside with space and slammed his foot through it. One of thsoe strikes you always know is going in from the moment it leaves his boot. EDIT: bugger I was slow.

Amazing, GET IN

I've been playing a little indie game called Drox Operative, currently only on sale from the maker's site. It's a repetitive loot grind clicky-combat space game, but made interesting by the fact that the universe is filled with AI factions who play out a power battle in the background, almost like a game of Civ where you play as a rogue element on the map. It's super addictive and seems endlessly replayable, if you're not turned straight off by the mousemashing combat. Here's the Giant Bomb quicklook and there's also a demo on the site.

Might have missed horrible sitters today but he was also instrumental to practically all of our attacking play. Without him I suspect we'd have spent most of the game in our own defensive third.

Look at our goals conceded column. We're not in a position to laugh at any other team's defence.

Even Cuellar deputising at LB played better than who we currently have there.

Bannan on for Holman. I look forward to our possession stats plummeting this half. Is Bannan Lambert's secret lovechild or what?

**** terrible from Lowton.

We had lots of luck first half with Swansea...

Ridiculous dive but we didn't half make a rod for our own backs with that shitshow of defending. At the point when the player dived a So'ton player still had an open goal to aim towards (looked like he was going to fluff it though).

Clyne looks simply terrified of Benteke.

One: stop making the false statement that we've ever had 4 CBs simultaneously injured this season. We haven't. Herd or Lowton come into the team to make up one of the central two when THREE CBs - Dunne, Vlaar, Baker - are out of contention. That three includes Dunne who was on his last legs and injured before Lambert even arrived, which brought Herd or Lowton even closer to being starter CBs, considering Lambert didn't buy enough cover. Discounting Dunne, it only takes two injuries at CB to force us into playing one of Herd/Lowton there. Alternatively all it requires is a terrible 3 CB strategy. Please stop babbling about 'emergency' and 'back-up' nonsense. Two: I explicitly said I wasn't criticising the decision to pick Herd or Lowton. Is English not your native language? The problem is not that Lambert played Herd or Lowton. The problem was that in the summer window he bought a load of inexperienced kids, instead of one extra reliable CB, and as a result now we are forced to play CBs who can't defend for toffee.

You seem to have cooked up a worthless distinction in order to avoid addressing the fact that our CBs aren't good enough and Lambert didn't replace our outgoing ones.

Baker and Clark should be our emergency CBs, because they are not good enough to play week in week out. Herd and Lowton are one level even below that as CB choices. Even if Dunne hadn't been injured, he's been nearing the end of his top flight career for a while. If Lambert was seriously counting on Dunne coming back and saving our season (which actually I doubt he was) then that's just another mark against him as far as I'm concerned. Thinking 'he had bigger priorities elsewhere' was part of Lambert's whole problem: buying 2-3 players who we'll need to wait years to see the best of, in positions where we already have players as good bad as they are, does NOT constitute a bigger priority than ensuring we have more than 1 serviceable CB. I know why Lambert played 3 at the back - because he's tactically inept. He wants to play dynamic passing football, but he did it while deploying a deep-lying counterattacking formation. That left us shorthanded in midfield in order to fill our back line with players who can't defend. It also meant he played our only fit natural CBs along with one 'emergency' CB and the inevitable happened - we conceded a shitload and our defensive injury problems worsened. It's all on Lambert.

No, he played them because he only bought one injury prone CB to replace two departures from an already threadbare defence. Also you're responding to me without bothering to follow the argument of the person I was responding to. I wasn't criticising the idea of playing Herd and Lowton at CB, I was criticising the idea that they good enough for backup CBs therefore we had sufficient cover at the start of the season. And Lambert's '1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th choices' have never been all injured; we don't know where Dunne falls in the pecking order atm but Clark has always been at least 3rd if not 2nd name on the teamsheet. Furthermore if you have injury problems at CB, probably one smart thing to do would be not to play 3 of them at once.

McLeish probably knows more about football than the average fan, maybe we should have kept him on, since that's the only criteria for being beyond criticism in your job as manager? That and harking back to achievements in lower leagues. We had Clark and Baker last season when our defence was poor and they still weren't good enough for the top league. They weren't then and they aren't now. If Lowton and Herd are CBs then I'm an F1 driver. Cuellar might have had a shit season so far but it's a different tier of shit to what we have atm - he's not heading up the worst defence in the prem for a start. In any case I already said it's irrelevant how good he and Collins were. We needed to sufficiently replace outgoing players and we didn't. As for hoofing, have you seen our games lately?

There are no excuses for Lambert. Lerner's got everything to answer for, of course, but Lambert came into a struggling team and tried to impose a new order without properly assessing his resources - maybe he thought the power of his own hype would be enough to sort him out. Fact is, our already poor defence shipped out 2 CBs and he decides to replace them with only 1 injury prone guy. It's irrelevant how good Cuellar and Collins were - fact is they needed to be replaced, but they weren't. He supplements his one CB purchase with a couple of inexperienced children at fullback who are no better than the bloody awful dross we already have, whom Lambert also did his best to alienate the moment he got in the door. He didn't buy the midfield enforcer we so sorely need and he's taking an absolute bloody aeon to notice that Bannan and Delph are not good enough to start. I said in the summer that his transfer policy was madness and our current circumstances merely reflect the truth of that. 'Injuries' my arse - players like Ireland, N'zog and Bent have been left out even when fit, despite the fact we absolutely have to get the best out of them, given our situation. There is no other choice. Tactically Lambert has been a complete shit show, too. Each of his silly unorthodox formations are unsuited to our players and have the nasty tendency to leave our opposition with acres of space all over the pitch. Our players look disorganised and terrified on top of being untalented, which is little surprise since Lambert gives every impression he's way out of his depth. The emperor's got no clothes on... tired of watching this travesty.