cowl

For a few games at least after Agnew and Clemence came in, I do recall seeing him in the dugout, but I've not seen him for a while (not that I'd been looking out for him).

I'll be surprised if we end up being able to sign him permanently. Had he more than a year on his contract, we may have been able to get him on loan again, but as it is I expect Chelsea will only be interested in selling him.

He was fine last season (mostly - Millwall, QPR, and Bristol City away though - wtf?!?). This season though he just got completely wrong. We may well still find that the squad will need to be dismantled, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of 'forward-planning' in that regard, and maybe that was what Luhukay's plan was - but I suspect it was as much to do with ego as anything else. That Hutchinson and Westwood - two very strong personalities - were excluded seemed to have been purely about showing the squad who's boss. I just hope Bruce can put a competitive squad together for next season, and that the regrets of this season can be quickly forgotten about.

Nothing wrong with that performance today. Double save late on was excellent, but was generally fairly dominant of his box all game. I still hope we retain Westwood though, of course, and I'd really hope we can get Dawson out on loan playing week in week out in League One.

Even while Jos was here he was having a decent season, but like the others he's playing better than they were before now Jos is gone. By the far the best of his three seasons with us. I remember the first 20 minutes of his debut for us on the opening day of 2016/17 against Villa at home before he had to go off. He dominated Villa's back line and won absolutely everything. I really thought we'd got the player that was going to see us over the line, but somehow it just never really clicked for him after that. He certainly had his moments, and seemed to relish playing with Hooper in particular, but overall, whilst always at least average, he was a bit of a disappointment. This season though he's put in a string of wholehearted performances in which he's been a standout performer more often than not. Hector's had a good season, but Fletcher will be getting my vote for the season's best player.

He's started no more than three consecutive games for us, and so he's hardly had a consistent run in the side, but that's because he seems to have picked up a fair few knocks this season. That should probably tell us enough about whether we ought to be interested in bringing him back for next season. If you loan a player in, they have to remain fit as a bare minimum, and Onomah's not even come close to that. We're not going to be in a position to sign him permanently unless we go up, so him missing games through injury is as much a failure as if he plays but plays poorly. There is a player there alright though, and it's a huge shame we didn't get to see more of him. He'll go out to another Championship club next season, remain injury free, and no doubt do very well. As it is though, he epitomises the grand failure of this season for us in more ways than one.

And for those that aren't ignoring that but are moaning about the inconsistency of refereeing when it comes to time keeping? Had the ref - correctly - not given Fletcher's goal for handball, would he have had a different measuring system for how much time he was going to add on? Bad reffing that we're expected will just even itself out either over the course of a season (or as a small mercy within a single game) isn't good enough. How much time to add on ought to be one of the easiest jobs the ref has. And there's no reason that if you take 100 refs out of 100 they shouldn't all come to the same conclusion about how much time to add on. Adjudicating over whether contact was made when you're twenty yards away - for that they have my sympathy for a thankless task, for which I'm genuinely amazed they seem to get right far more often than they get wrong - but time-keeping is basic stuff, and the only issue is whether to decide a team is deliberately running the clock down.

He's not missed a league through injury (it was sickness that kept out of the Forest game apparently) since Jos left, so Monday will be the first he's missed because of injury for four months. The biggest problem with Hutchinson in his time with us has been the number of times he's had to go off in games because of a knock - particularly in the first half. Yesterday was the third first half withdrawal in these last four months alone. Even so, I think he's definitely worth persevering with because we still get more than 50% of the games out of him, and he generally just slots in when fit without needing game time to adjust again after injury. The key here though is having adequate enough back up.

It shouldn't be the case that each ref can have such a different take on how much time is added for stoppages though. This for me is less about the time that was added onto the five minutes, but about how the ref came up with the 5 minutes in the first place. I'd say whatever the scope for interpretation exists within the rules, I think last night's ref was fairly extreme in giving 5 minutes minimum off the back of a second half which had very few stoppages - there were four subs, but I don't recall any injuries requiring treatment on the pitch and a stoppage in the play. It's not as though we were time-wasting in any obvious way. After a game like today I'd like to think the ref's analyser files a report suggesting the ref be given a 'refresher' on the guidelines for adding time on for stoppages.

To whatever degree we re-structure the squad, I do hope that DC has also learned that it's not just merely okay to sell a player when their stake is high, but also desirable and for a club in our position, even necessary. I hope that the resale value of players is a strongly guiding consideration this summer. We have to break out of what could potentially become the cycle of giving it a go for two seasons then spending the next two recuperating financially. And though I'd expect the club to always maximise it's opportunities to make money on the commercial side of things, I hope by now that DC recognizes that by far the best way to balance the books is by selling players - it doesn't matter how much he'd like the supporters to dig that little bit deeper into their pockets, there's just no way to compete financially with bringing in 7 or 8 million plus from player sales each season.

Forestieri It's no coincidence that he looks better when playing wider than as a central striker. Even in the first half when we played something closer to an orthodox 4-4-2, he still spent a lot of the time quite wide. I really hope Bruce has seen for himself now that this is the best place to play him. His strike for the goal was phenomenal.

Credit where it's due because I thought he played well. He always plays with 100% commitment, and certainly has no fitness issues in terms of his running and getting around the pitch, but it's just that he's so often 'late to the scene', and the comparison to Hutchinson in this regard is quite marked. I thought he did very well last night though against what are probably the division's best. Norwich play it through their midfield very quickly and I would have predicted Pelupessy to struggle with that in particular, but on the contrary he coped quite well. He needs to make this his performance level now.

There's also the issue (the main issue for me) of where 5 minutes of injury time came from in the first place. I don't remember any 2nd half injuries requiring lengthy on-pitch treatment, and the four second half substitutes were all done fairly speedily, especially Norwich's. It's not like we were even time wasting in any excessive or obvious way. It's the inconsistency amongst refs about how much extra time is added that is annoying.

I'm surprised that we only take the 18 players with us that will be in the matchday squad. I'd always just assumed we took more. In fact, though I don't recall whether it was home or away, I do recall it not being the first time within recent memory that we've made changes to the starting 11 after injuries during warm-up, but I don't recall us ever naming one sub less on the bench because of it. And no, 2 keepers on the bench would obviously be overkill, but like I say, I would have expected 3 keepers to travel as part of the group, even if only 2 would ever typically be named.

Just looking at our bench again and it seems we didn't name a sub keeper. Did anyone see Wildsmith on the bench, or do we normally only take two keepers with us to away games? Seems incredibly risky if so - especially given what happened with Westwood then Dawson's good fortune in getting only a yellow for handling outside the area.