West Ham (H) - 4:30pm, 11/12/16 - Nail 'em up I say! Naaiiilll some sense into 'em!

[Baltar]

Mane was class again, a proper footballer. Pacey, intelligent, a good passer, hard working and a perpetual menace to the opposition. £30M very well spent. Gonna miss him when he goes off to the African Cup.

[an tha]

Mane was class again, a proper footballer. Pacey, intelligent, a good passer, hard working and a perpetual menace to the opposition. £30M very well spent. Gonna miss him when he goes off to the African Cup.

Offers something none of our other attacking players do...gonna be a really big miss in January.

[Harry Squatter]

Agree about Mane. Quality player and has exceeded all expectations. Pity we will lose him for 4 weeks.

[G Richards]

Just finished watching that. I managed to not hear the score all day.

 

On reflection not great, not terrible. A point is not enough, but then again it was a point more than last week. We are now six points off the top and three off second. We've had some adversity with injuries so it's not bad at all in the big picture, but we hoped for more.

 

Looking at today's game from a defensive point of view, their first goal saw Karius standing a good yard too far to his left, which then offered way too much of the goal to Payet, who did not need a second invitation. Karius possibly should have had a stronger hand when he got to the ball too, although it was curling away from him. Lallana should never have given the free kick away either. It was sloppy from his point of view, and dangling a leg out like that on the edge of his own box, with a free kick expert like Payet waiting for such a gift, was frustrating in the extreme.

 

Their second goal was mostly down to the deflection, although ideally Matip might have readjusted and cleared, and Karius might have cleared his lines too, but that was a lucky deflection.

 

On our end going forward we scored two goals and probably should have had more. We were a bit too over elaborate in trying to turn and overplay it a bit too much in their box.

 

One thing that is concerning to me is that our plan B, sans Coutinho, is not firing on all cylinders. I'm not sure Origi, Firmino and Mane are quite on the same wavelength. It's not bad as such, but it's a bit laboured. The best partnership I've seen that included Origi was with Sturridge, and their high point was the 6-1 at Southampton last year. They both seemed to know what the other needed and it was devastating. I'm not seeing Firmino and Origi click, and it's a pale shadow of Origi/Sturridge and obviously also a pale shadow of the sort of magic we see when Coutinho and Firmino are firing.

 

The hope is we find a way to start grinding out results and stay in touch at the top while our magician is out. But then last week was a blow, and then today saw us fall another two points behind. Meanwhile Chelsea just keep on winning - a lot of them narrowly, it must be said, and Arsenal keep on winning too. Neither team have dealt with injuries to key players and both have deeper squads, so we have our work cut out.

 

Hopefully a win at Middlesbrough will get us back on track. If not, then it is starting to look like we will be fighting for top four and looking over our shoulders, instead of looking to the summit and fighting for the title. Miles to go yet, as we're not even half way there, but we look like we need a signing or two, and if we have designs on the title, it would be nice to see a little stumble front the teams ahead of us. Something to give us hope...

[Paco]

on a positive note we have enough points on the board to drop 5 points and not be out of the running for anything

[LFC 6 Times]

Fucking Karius, still fuming.