Nyambe will be missed, I’m not thrilled with Zefuik as a defender. He looks a bit hot headed to me. Rather him than JRC though.

Gallagher must be one of the least physical players for his size at the club. When has he been a “ handful “ ? It reminds me of an American boxer being interviewed after knocking out a glass jawed British heavyweight in the first round. The Yank said “ I thought your guy was an awkward opponent “. The interviewer said “ How do you mean, awkward ?” The Yank replied - “ When I knocked him out he fell over awkwardly ! “

And what a threat Dolan was.

He’ll be missed on Saturday. On Ayala, I was watching my Rugby League team warm up yesterday. I found myself smiling to myself at the thought of Ayala warming up with them. The image of Ayala smashing into a tackle bag was really amusing. These lads are on peanuts in the terms of wages but they give everything to the cause.

Thanks as always Tony, you’re doing a great job. I’m gratified to see your scores marry up with my mental images of how the game panned out.

Nyambe will be a big loss for this game, you could rely on him to keep that RH side quiet. Zeefuik looks lively but a bit impetuous.

We are capable of winning there but we’ll have to be on our game.

We also have Davenport and Buckley that could conceivably play in Travis’s place.

I think we can do that if we’re on our game. We’ve become pretty hard to score against.

I fancy us to gets something from the Fulham game if we’re at our best.

Didn’t Ritchie Smallwood have a stack of yellow cards but manage to go ages without getting to the limit ?

Me too as a kid. There wasn’t much else to do. No gadgets, just two tv channels. It was football, football, football. If there was nobody else out playing I’d go on my own with a ball to a local car park that had a substation to shoot against. By the time I was 15 I could play on either flank, no problem.

Yes I think he would have been subbed if we’d have been able to. He wasn’t moving very freely at the end.

I agree, I think Newcastle and Everton have enough ability to steer clear. Leeds and Brentford are dropping but Ericsson may inspire Brentford to get out of the mire. If he can get proper match fit he’s definitely good enough. I see our old keeper David Raya was in good form for Brentford yesterday. They’ve missed him. Who are Leeds going to bring in ? Get that wrong and they’re gone. There’s a shop near me that does sporting memorabilia framing. I always have a look in the window. It’s mainly City, United and Liverpool over here. Nobody else gets a look in. They put stuff in the window that’s waiting to be picked up. A couple of weeks ago there was a signed portrait of Bielsa. I wonder if that gets picked up now ? A couple of years ago there was a Brazil shirt signed by Pele himself on display. Nice.

James Wilson of the “ Observer “ is usually interesting on football tactics but he’s got carried away with “ Tactical Periodisation “ today. Don’t ask, it’s as complicated as Chinese Arithmetic.

As with most left footers his right foot is just a swinger. Did he have time to get it onto his left ?

If we were mid table we wouldn’t be thinking of playing Dack in the first team for a while yet.

Johnson’s a big unit but towards the end of the game his legs had gone. Witness - his short passing game became sloppy. As far as sprinting goes I could beat him over 10 yards with two dodgy knees. Is it lack of real match fitness or has he just gone ? We would have subbed him I think but with Nyambe getting injured it left us short of options. I agree he brings a solidity to our back line and Travis can get further forward but there’s still a gap between the midfield and the front three most of the time. One or two of our guys were running on empty at the end but they’d put in 100% effort.

He must be a real nuisance to play against, he’s always buzzing around defenders. His lack of height makes us play the ball on the ground more.

We were foolish letting Carter go on loan knowing we were going to play with three centre halves and that Ayala was made of icing sugar.

Their guy was lucky not getting a second card, if he hadn’t already got a card he would definitely have been carded then.

That was Luca Toni.

Could have been a straight red on another day.

They could/would have replaced him, we couldn’t/didn’t.

Ronnie Clayton was the same.