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Michu was always on borrowed time. His ankles were knackered before he signed for us. It's one of the reasons we got him so cheap in the first place. Other clubs were aware, but decided not to take the risk. It was always possible, maybe even likely that he'd struggle to hit the same heights again.
Vipotnik this season has two goals and an assist in three starts, in a team playing in a way to suit another striker. There's absolutely no reason to believe that if we shifted back to a style that suited him and actually gave him a game or two to get up to speed he couldn't be as prolific as he was last campaign.
Leon Britton was five foot and a fart and excelled in the right style of play. I don't think Just is that much bigger.
It's nothing to do with physical stature. This is the way that Matos wishes to play and he doesn't seem interested in playing any other. Hopefully that will work in the long run.
It's dangerous territory when people feel that they have to caveat questions with the phrase "it's not a criticism but"...
It absolutely is in this case. We're not creating enough opportunities and a player who appears to be capable of doing so has been bombed out on loan, only to be replaced by another who very much isn't based on what we've seen so far.
As well as Matos has done he should be challenged when he screws up, and this looks like a big one.
A Nation State is its borders. It should have full power to decide who to allow in and who to turn away. Removing those borders weakens the Nation State, which some would claim is a deliberate tactic.
I have no problem with anyone moving to the UK from anywhere as long as they contribute to society, can pay their way or prove that they can support themselves and their families, and respect our laws & customs. Anyone who doesn't do that should be subject to removal with no legal protections.
No. I couldn't care less about the Ospreys. If I'm being honest I expect the crowds to shrink again once the novelty of a new ground wears off. I know several people who went last night who otherwise haven't bothered going in years.
I'm not here lecturing people about things that I can't be bothered to do myself though. I do possess some self-awareness. Unlike others.
Certainly our good start has led to a degree of arrogance and perhaps complacency when it comes to assessing our chances in games and this season in general, but today was probably an outlier in that we're unlikely to be 3-0 down inside 15 minutes again any time soon. We were spectacularly bad.
We need to be positive, we need to take our game to teams and we need options when Plan A isn't working. I've not seen anything like a hint of a Pan B so far.
The scale of the defeat may be surprising, but the defeat itself is not. As I've said elsewhere, despite us turning over the lesser teams we've faced, we generally come up wanting in the games that matter. We've not spent the money we have to get turned over so easily by the better sides.
Clean sheets and goals against Watford and Derby are all well and good. Clean sheets and goals against West Ham matter more.
We have to start doing better against the sides in the higher reaches of the table. We can't keep writing off poor results as a one off when in reality they're beginning to point to larger issues with our play. We can't keep picking the same teams and players and expecting different outcomes.
As it stands now five of our seven wins have come against teams in the bottom six. We've scored three goals in four games against sides currently in the top ten, and conceded ten.
We have to do better against the teams we hope to be competing against or we're going to find ourselves rapidly sliding down the table. I hope the complacency doesn't extend to the club as well.
He's done nothing all season and he's straight back into the team in the #10 role again today. It's astonishing how much faith Matos has in him despite his almost total lack of contribution.
But, as I said, it's not really his fault today. We've just been hugely weak defensively. Maybe the players you mentioned would have made us less porous. Eom can certainly consider himself hard done by to be on the bench again.
Franco and Fulton aren't creative midfielders. Eom could probably do it.
I don't want to keep going over old ground, but we're continually selecting a player in a key creative role who is simply not doing enough and all people can seem to come up with to defend that choice is that he's good at pressing. If that's the standard required we could have kept Oli Cooper.
We've put all our emphasis on one way of playing. It works against some teams, and doesn't against others. If we can't defend (and today we clearly can't) then we've got nothing else to offer.
Just is a nonentity but as little as he's done in a Swans shirt so far it's a bit much to single him out today. Defensively we've been all over the place.
Idah's decent if we're on the front foot but Vipotnik is better in a battle. Stamenic isn't doing much. Eom should be one of the first names on the teamsheet instead of on the bench.
These people have absolutely no idea what austerity actually is. Look back at the privations people had to live with post WW2 where rationing still existed until the early 50's and then try to claim that not increasing NHS spending as much as usual is remotely similar. We've not had austerity in the UK in most people's lifetimes.
Certainly it's not a thing in France either where state spending is well over 50% of GDP.
Bottom line is that many Western Nations have been spending money that they don't have for far too long, restricted economic growth with taxation and regulation, and tried to plug the gaps with mass immigration, which has neither driven actual economic growth as far too many of them are a net drain, and also pissed off the native population as they think, with quite a bit of justification, that they're being sidelined in their own home.
It's probably not much of a coincidence that a lot of this nonsense started after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those on the left have shifted to other means to achieve their aims.
Yes, we've had a good start. Admiration of it should be tempered with the acknowledgement of who we've played. Of our seven wins, four have come against teams currently in the bottom five. Three of those were at home. The fixtures have been kind.
If we want to stay where we are then we need to do better against other teams likely to be at the top end. We've barely laid a glove on either West Ham or Southampton and mustered up a grand total of four shots on target in 180 minutes of football against average Sheff Utd and Wrexham teams at home. Teams we might have managed to open up with a bit more emphasis on creativity.
I'm really not sure why it's so verboten to be looking at areas for improvement. We have to create more chances, especially against better organised opposition. If we don't then we're not going to stay top for long.
I would always, ALWAYS have a creative presence in the middle. If four defenders plus at least one additional midfielder isn't enough defensive strength then you're doing things wrong.
I often hark back to our last promotion season. Sinclair's goals kept us there or thereabouts, but the addition of Stephen Dobbie into proceedings instead of playing what had previously been a fairly flat midfield (not dissimilar to us now) just transformed us as a side to the point where we possibly could have gone up automatically had Rodgers done it three months sooner.
Managers, especially modern ones, sometimes obsess over their systems to the point where they stop considering whether making changes might actually make us better. That's my only real concern with Matos.
Getting more service into and around the box would certainly help Vipotnik. I've been a little disappointed with some of the stick he's been taking as we've certainly not been playing to his strengths this season. It's a repeat of 24/25 where he's taking flack for things beyond his control. Dragging him to the flanks is wasting his time as much as it suits Idah.
I just think we just need to be a bit quicker and more decisive in what we do. Getting the ball forward faster is only going to help us slice through defences. It'll give Yeo and Opuku (or whoever) more space to operate.
I also certainly believe that we're long past time where Eom should have a chance centrally. His willingness to pick a pass or have a shot would be an upgrade on what we've mostly had so far.
On the face of it a tricky away fixture so I wouldn't be amazed to see a Fulton/Stamenic pairing if there are any lingering doubts about Eustaquio's fitness.
I do think we need to start showing a bit more ambition and pace going forward in general though just to get us in the habit of doing so. Once the cautious mindset settles in it can be hard to shift it, and we've been a bit too slow/passive too often.
If we've got serious ambitions of a top two place, we need to start seeing a bit of swagger about our play. We've only had glimpses so far.
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