[themaclad]

Looks like Sky are now making matches kick off at 8 pm which means Garforth Town v Hemsworth Miners Welfare will be the first match to start in England this season, and for your information I have been on Garforth's ground.
Tonight expect Sky to mention Vincent Kompany once every two minutes and Burnley big club etc etc.
It's back and to praphrase Martin Tyler, "It's Live"
Enjoy see you at the League Cup tie can't wait honest

[Lord Snooty]

[jjamez]

Start as I mean to go on. Missing this one due to a nice case of the flu!

[Lord Snooty]

No Pearson. Oggy says he's on crutches.

[themaclad]

Second best at the moment by a long way

[Lord Snooty]

Second half much better but that first half was unacceptable.

[Lord Snooty]

Hopefully that will be a mirror of last season, as in we played the best team in the division at home first.

If that's the case, we got away with a 1-0 defeat as opposed to 5-1.

That's the only crumb of comfort last night. It was only 1-0.

[Devongone]

From a neutral point of view, who would have liked you to win really I thought just about everything was wrong with you in the first half. You were outclassed by a decent team Vincent Kompany is set to improve. They beat you with a lad up front who looked well below the standard required. Yesterday I did my predictions for EFL final tables and I put Burnley 2nd and you 19th. I might put Burnley up a place if I were doing it today. You, well a snake would be more likely than a ladder.

Russell looked bereft without O'Brien's work rate alongside him. Thomas wasn't getting the ball, but when he did he couldn't even manage dead-ball delivery to anything like his own high standard. You might as well pick me as select Koroma and tell him to stay out wide. He has to get inside to do his thing. You can't possibly score enough goals with Danny Ward as a lone front runner. The side selected struggled at the back against a forward threat Kompany will strengthen, Cullen and Maatsen took you apart in the middle of the park, out wide you delivered nothing, and up front you were powder-puff light. The second half gave you Rudoni, who looks a player, but you have to let him come inside more, Tino looked powerful and dangerous, but lacking a plan of action in his head, his efforts could be swallowed up by sheer weight of numbers. The gap between the two sides remained nearly the length of the division sadly.

I fear you might soon by taunting your manager with, "you don't know what you're doing," because I'm not sure he does. He's got a fairly impossible act to follow with a weaker cast list, as I'm sure you all realise. At one point I was considering your chances of recalling Kyle Hudlin from AFCW. But panic would be silly. Certainly you need to strengthen weak areas, but you also need to make those areas, in which you were very strong last season, work for you once more. Thomas is allowed one bad game - make sure that is all it is, and surround Russell with workaholic, ball-winning, enthusiastic partners, so that his perceptive play might give the forward player/S!!! you choose, space and something to work with. Luckily you won't play Burnley every week. Luckily you got away with a 0-1 you weren't worth. Oh I do wish you well. I loved how you surprised everybody last season. I don't want you to do a Barnsley.

[Lord Snooty]

Very good assessment of our situation there, Devon.

I'm still not sure if Burnley were that good or were we making them look good? Certainly Vince has got them playing "fancy football", so much so that their fans were singing it throughout the match. Poor sods have been starved of it recently. 

Koroma has come in for a lot of stick. Quite rightly as well. What on earth has happened to him? He's just got no confidence at all. There was one occasion in the second half where he'd cut in and made room to get a shot off. Instead he went the other way and completely mis-kicked it for a dead ball.

Russell had his worst game since breaking through. They'd obviously got him sussed that he likes playing "fancy football" and just pressed him every time the ball went near him, giving him no time at all to perform.

Definitely missed Toffolo and O'Brien's work on that left hand side. Toffs was always a good out ball for Nicholls, but last night he was pumping it long for Ward, which is pointless. If we're playing that game, should've kept Hightower Hudin.

It's a shame we don't have the League Cup match this week. That would've been a good way of getting this game out of the system and playing the new kids. I think Yuta should be in for the Brum game and possibly big Willy Boyle, assuming that Pearson is crocked. Though I do think we defended well last night. The problem was the powder puffiness of the midfield. Their number 8 had the freedom of the park. Hogg and Holmes were anonymous.

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[theo_luddite]

A fair assessment of what we saw on the night Devon. Our previous apprentice in charge had a season with no fans in the stadium to let him make his mistakes. As Snoots said, Fulham mullered us last season so the defence at least stood up to criticism, to some extent.

In January, we played football, they hoofed it, it was pretty much the other way round last night. Hard to blame Ward for anything when he needed a step ladder to get near anything that came his way.

We were a lot better when Tino came on and we gave him or he won the ball off them and ran at them, but then we stopped giving it to him. He also tried to do too much on his own but if there's anyone in the squad to replace O'Brien it's him.

Hell we lost our first ever game in this stadium to a very average Wycombe. I'm not losing any sleep over losing to a slightly better Burnley with a slack handful of Prima Donna League players, a coach that played at a higher level than ours and a ref that couldn't spot a foul from a dive in the last 10 minutes. We'll see plenty of the latter this season.