duncanjwitham

No idea if he's injured, but I don't think it's a case of 'being behind', more like there's about 20 players for 18 spots, so someone's always gonna miss out when everyone is fit. Nugent missed out a few weeks ago, Marriott has missed a few and so on. We just need to get used to it and not turn it into a major incident when someone's not there.

We've got no genuine cover at all for the midfield though. The other holding midfielders are nowhere near as effective as Johnson in this system, and there's no cover for Mount either. When Evans gets back, we can maybe fiddle with it a bit, plus there's a few international breaks coming up that we can use to recharge. Some cover has to be the priority in January though.

We've literally got no one that can do the job Bryson does. Plus he always plays better if you keep him in the team - he seems to take a while to get going again when he's missed games. Slightly surprised that Marriott hasn't had a chance instead of Nugent though, but can't fault Lampard for keeping it the same.

My dads on Sky mobile and has the exact same problem. Can't help any more that that, but it's definitely not just you.

That's not quite the case here though, Bird was doing a completely different job. There was no other cover for Bryson and Mount in the 18 - maybe Huddlestone and Holmes at a pinch, but they're not in any way like-for-like.

The big problem that marriott is going to have, is that he's one of the the least versatile players that we have. Bennet and Waghorn can play all across the front 3, Lawrence and Wilson can play either side or as a number 10, Jozefzoon can play either side and so on. That leaves Nugent and Marriott as out and out strikers, and there'll at best be room for one in the squad, as you're limiting our options if both are in there (fitness of other plays permitting etc). And at the moment Nugent is doing a good job and has hold of the shirt.

He was very good, but someone needs to sit him down and teach him how to say Jozefzoon. I think he pronounced it differently every time he said, and not once did he actually say it right.

Not so much to challenge Bryson, but to be a different option to him. Bryson, Mount and Johnson are all kind of similar in what they do on the pitch (high-energy box-to-box players). We need someone with a bit of composure and creativity in games where we're struggling to unlock a packed defence.

We can talk about why on earth we loaned Martin out to another championship club, and when can we have him back...

Makes sense for everyone really. If he's playing well, they can extend the loan, and we can maybe get a bit more cash from them. If he's playing badly or not playing, they get out of the deal and we get to send him somewhere else to have a go.

Good news. There's potentially 2 international breaks and very few midweek games in that period as well, so he shouldn't miss too many matches.

Olsson too.

Bjorn? Presumably this is for those new-fangled ABBA penalty shootouts in the league cup...

We're like totally winning the league now, yeah?

When we went on a bad run, the atmosphere at training completely changed. All of of clements principles went out of the window. And he didn't seem to like confrontation, so whenever a player went to talk to him about something they wouldn't get a straight answer about anything.