He knows we’ll be safe, but that’s as long as we don’t lose Wilf or Dann doesn’t recover and one of Sakho or Tomkins are injured for any length of time. Also throw in the striker shambles since this false number 9 tactic won’t work at home vs as many as we’d like.

Most of this isn’t Roy’s fault and I take my criticism back, unless we get back to lack of ideas again somehow. However he could have emphasised to Parish how much we need a proper 2nd striker but how much Roy wanted Sorloth I don’t know. (He can come good imo but we put ourselves in situations we need form quickly)

COYP

This is our most dangerous problem. Even if we got a proper goal poacher we still only have a good first 11 and no back up.

Kelly is a reasonable stop-gap in place of Tompkins, maybe Ward for AWB and that's all we have.

Not sure I agree with this tbh.

We're stretched right now because we already have injuries. We're missing our first and second choice striker and our back up centre half but we're starting to figure out this system and play well regardless.

That's why our bench looks a bit thinner right now, but overall I still think the squad is stronger than it has been for awhile.

That bench with even one of Benteke or Wickham on it would look a lot different.

Employee of the month is a good example of how someone can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

A great performance all over the pitch yesterday, but in the pleasure/relief of finally seeing Meyer show what he can really do, I think Kouyate's contribution to the team might have been a bit overlooked, I thought he was MOTM yesterday.

Luka and Jimmy in the middle together didn't work because defensively they are too similar. They are both good at going to the ball, harrying people close up. It was too easy for teams to make one pass and take them both out of the game. Kouyate looks to be much more comfortable playing the space instead. When Luka goes to close down, he fills the gaps that appear elsewhere. When PVA and AWB (and Sakho) go wandering, he drops in and covers them.

He's not Andrea Pirlo, but he generally moves the ball on quickly and lets people like Meyer and Wilf do what they're good at, it was a great ball into space to set Andros away for the second. It hasn't quite happened yet, but he does look like he's got a couple of goals in him as well.

He looks like one of those players who, similar to Cabaye, when he has a good game everyone else suddenly seems to play much better.

Employee of the month is a good example of how someone can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

In the (hopefully) near future maybe but we cannot rely on the imminent return of Wickham or Dann. Maybe not till after the January window.

And as for Benteke, the jury is out on that one to put it lightly. Would he be prepared to be a regular impact substitute, for example?

As the broken record repeats on this forum, we would be much better off with a goalscorer in the CF position.

I agree about shape - both last week and this. People asking how many we'd score if we had a half decent striker - well we might not be as potent - so don't change anything the formation/shape and pass is working just fine.