cowl

Apart from those that have specifically asked him who he's referring to, of course—and considering we're all Wednesday fans, you'd think references to players would generally be readily understandable as an absolute given.

Why are you banging on about dyslexia?

Why do you think this has got something do with dyslexia? He's said himself that it's unrelated.

It's not even a debate when the person you would be debating with can't even get past calling the subject of discussion childish names though. If you can't even see how it weakens your position then that's your lookout. (I suspect you know that though and just don't want to be seen taking one on the chin.) In the meantime, I suppose you could just keep getting touchy about it and going off on some weird tangent about your freedom to post pathetic arguments being violated (it hasn't, of course; you, knock yourself out there...) In any case, I'm also clearly not the only one that finds it weird that you insist on using an obscure reference for him. At the very least it's just confusing—or is that what you're calling ‘style’ here.

I don't think Monk's being entirely straight about this. For one thing, he's not going to say anything that would implicate too negatively his own performance as our manager. These TV appearances, after all, are as much about advertising himself for another job in management as they are about pocketing some easy cash for a few hours work. Anyway, I'm not sure his point of how we ended up with so many players in their final year being down to some kind of plan really makes much sense given how so many of them were on contracts we simply could no longer afford anyway. Yes, this is still indicative of DC's abysmal planning, but it was probably the only viable solution for us given the situation rather than an actual strategy. He's also neglecting to mention his own contribution to help foster player unrest when two very long serving players in Westwood and Hutchinson were simply excluded from the squad.

I think it was more to do with playing his former side. He usually greets his goals with a celebration and massive grin.

Of course. I'm not trying to defend DC's transfer policy as a whole, as it's been utterly disastrous, and indeed, his inability to sell when the goings good has been chief among that, but I do wonder if this running of contracts down has been more forced in the last two years rather than it being part of some strategy. The players coming through from the youth team is another matter altogether though.

Word of advice, when you have a point to make about a player, you weaken it as soon as you resort to using needlessly childish nicknames for them. It just makes it seem inexplicably personal for you. I say this for your own sake because obviously gobbing off about Westwood is something you feel a great need to do.

I do wonder though whether it's not exactly Chansiri's ‘strategy’ to let the contracts run down, per se, but just that it has been these last couple of seasons while we've had all the financial bother. The reality is that we couldn't, and shouldn't, be offering the players anything like what they were on before.

After not passing to Pelupessy that time, he's turned into one of the most unselfish players we have. The kid loves a pass in the 18 yard box now!

The most bizarre thing is that we scored 5 goals today and somehow made each one look utterly effortless for us; as though we typically score at least 10 a game.

I suppose there's a very sad aspect to that, but I think it's actually very true. Superb player.

Just outstanding today. I thought he played well at Watford, but this was another level. I'm not sure precisely what work Moore was doing with them during the international break, but Bannan seems to have responded superbly to it.

It's good because it gives us hope that we have a manager and coaching staff that are capable of improving performances (instead of just subtly moaning about the players not being good enough). Hope for a better future is something we've been in desperate need of recently.