34.

Pretty sure there was an obvious pass back there

Unbelievably bad decision.

Valdes 9 Barragan 6 Gibson 7 Chambers 7 Friend 7 Clayton 7 De Roon 8 Forshaw 7 Downing 5 Adama 7 Negredo 6 Fischer & Stuani NA Might add my usual short comments on each player in later.

City forum has a lot of sore losers. I could understand most of their complaints if we had parked the bus for 90 and drew 0-0, but we gave them an exciting game second half.

I haven't seen it on my stream but GET INNNN

Adama has his limitations of course, but its getting to the point were I can't understand Villa only using him for 200 minutes of game time.

Well there's your first shot on goal I can't even imagine if that had went in

Navas hits the post immediately.... lol Your banned from speaking about City players What if I say positive things about them? :D

Hopefully they keep Navas on, he's half the reason we lasted 43 minutes.

At least De Bruyne is in my fantasy team I suppose. :( Hope the floodgates don't open

So happy with Valdes recently

I would be very confident if we had Gastón, but I feel without him we'll probably play Downing which ruins our counter attacking potential down one side. If we play the team I think we will, then our best hope would probably be repeating the 0-0 result against ***nal.

Valdes - 8 - Probably his best game for us so far. Communication seemed no issue today. Great save from King in the first half. Barragan - 7 - Few stray passes/poor deliveries, but solid at the back and worked well pressing with Adama. Gibson - 8 - Once again a leading role in defence. Chambers - 7 - For the most part solid, but nearly let Daniels in for a goal and played a poor long ball to Adama when we aimed to conserve possession toward the end. Friend - 7 - Solid, didn't necessarily have a great amount to do at either end of the pitch with the exception of his half-chance.

Great result today and I'm feeling good about the season as a whole thanks to the Hull & Sunderland results because there should no longer be any doubts that they are worse than us and should go down. Nice to have some positivity before a tough run of games. Adama coming in for Stuani has made a considerable difference to how threatening we are on attack, but the ***nal game and Gaston's goal has shown counter attacking can be a new strength for us as well. Surprised to read Bournemouth went down to ten after an injury, I wonder how many people didn't notice that at the game (I certa

Friend didn't start this season well, but his last two games haven't been as bad so I'm sure he won't be dropped now. Barragan is much more worrying on recent form. I don't see any chance of a good result here, but football always has the potential to surprise.

Valdes - 5 - No major issues, but seemed to poorly communicate with Chambers on occasion. Didn't come out for balls he should have as a result. Barragan - 3 - What can I say? The Spanish football viewers of reddit seem to think he's some sort of awful player and up to now I wasn't sure he was THAT bad, but today was about as bad as Friend vs Zaha. He was poor in the run up to Payet's goal two weeks ago as well. Raises big question marks. Chambers - 6 - Aside from issues with Valdes mentioned above (which seemed more Valdes' fault), he seemed solid. Deeney didn't really get through. G

The worrying thing about this is that he says we played well for 40 minutes. Sure we controlled a lot of the ball, but we didn't create a single chance. Call me crazy but I don't think Success dived much if at all today. The ref was a pure joke, but the main problems involved him misjudging trips/slips and the silly business everytime Gastón went for a header as well as a bottled penalty call. I'm sure Watford have some gripes about him for not sending Barragan for a second yellow as well, even though from where I was sitting his actually given yellow seemed like a slip from Success. Succes

I must admit its good to see that AK finally isnt infallible in everyone's eyes. I've always felt we went up last season despite his management rather than because of it. As I've said before he has refused to address issues that we have had since at least the beginning of last season. We've now added to some of those issues through poor recruitment. I want to like AK as I do with most people associated with the club, but I have major concerns.

It was always going to happen but its still disappointing to see Rhodes & Fischer dropped.

BBC reckon we've lost seven points from leading positions so far this season. Something that hopefully won't become too much of a trend. To be fair if you remove the Everton game were we deservedly got whacked in the end, it's not much of a statistic I suppose. I'm not sure if this is 'must win' because of the opposition, rather I'd say its a 'must win' to stop our home form from becoming perilous.

Ratings I've gone with and a few short comments for each player. Valdes - 7 - Don't recall him having to pull out a major save at any point so decent job here. Barragan - 6 - Not a particularly memorable performance, denied him 7 for starting off Payet's goal for him. Gibson - 7 - As with all the defenders he struggled with Payet's run, but otherwise strong presence in defence. Chambers - 7 - Fairly similar performance to Gibson Friend - 6 - Was fine first half against Tore, but once Antonio swapped over he struggled a bit. Forshaw - 8 - Classy in midfield once again. Always

It's a good result, but we need to work on some of the glaring issues in our game at the moment because they're reoccurring every week. I will say though that this might have been one of Downing's better games back in a Boro shirt. Taking on Arbeloa, putting in dangerous crosses and on a few occasions I think I even saw him sprint.

Shocking defending yet again.

GET IN LOVE YOU GOAL LINE TECH Great pass from Forshaw for the Rhodes chance before

COME ON LADS I think this is the right pick too