Other way round I'd say - it's our right to hold him to his contract. He could have walked out and tried to claim constructive dismissal though I suppose.

Donations invited to buy the poor old lino a guide dog. As you can see he's bang in line with play. Unbelievable.

Without counting I could have sworn he booked at least nine of ours - he was pulling his card out every 2 mins. Lost the plot completely.

Even worse decision then in that case than if they flagged Dolan. Hedges never touched the ball and therefore technically wasn't active. Certainly watching on TV it appeared the linesman never flagged until the ball reached Dolan which of course was completely irrelevant as the ball was played a couple of seconds earlier.

Need a proper CB. Not to somehow shoehorn Pickering into the side merely for the sake of it.

Could do with an extra striker far more than another CB imo but in an ideal world need both. Wonder if there's any decent free agents floating about?

100%.

Or defend.

Yet he scored a wonderful "goal" and forced a great save out of Trafford at the end.

Great point. Like the transfer window, we eked the maximum possible out of that game. Playing with 10 men and more or less scored with the only shot on target. Well done lads and John Eustace.

Great minds. I was about to post exactly the same! Lol.

Looks miles better than Pickering. Just a shame we couldn't bring anyone in in the other full back berth.

I don't want to jinx it and obviously anything can happen in the minutes that remain but up to now I think we've looked fairly comfortable all things considered.

I can't say I've noticed too many players getting booked in the PL for waving an imaginary red so I wasn't aware it was an actual rule as such. In that particular instance I really think a bit of common sense is required given he's already on a yellow. The Burnley player commits a cynical foul and gets off scott free. Gueye does nothing really wrong and ends up being sent off. Surely a severe ticking off and a "this is your last chance" type warning would have sufficed. I'm going to sound like Exiled this week and say what with the disallowed goal the officials have Haa an absolute mare. I wouldn't bet against the ref sending another of ours off although having sent one off he might calm down a bit.

Half decent defenders cut off the move at source.

Don't disagree - but we have to perform infinitely better second half.

Never seen anything like that offside call, even to the naked eye Dolan clearly ran in from behind the 2 defenders. It was actually a superbly timed run and exquisite finish. I thought it had been ruled out for a foul by Hedges. On the general run of play though, don't think we can complain too much, they've absolutely battered us and we're lucky to be on terms. Other than the disallowed goal Dolan has been poor, defensively Brittain has been absolutely abysmal, might as well not be on the pitch and Hyam and Pears have also been very poor. Need to step it up big style second half if we're to get anything out of it.

Woeful from Brittain yet again. Doing his usual "Not my job to stop a cross coming in routine." He's shite. Both in terms of ability and, even more important, attitude.

Pleased to read yesterday that Eustace acknowledged there was (rightly) a perception that under JDT the team treated local derbies as just another game and weren't really up for it. I want to see them giving their all today and us physically leaving a mark on them like they did to us the last time we went there. If we do that, that'll do me and I'd happily take a point now but I think I heard yesterday it was six consecutive defeats in this fixture so it'd be nice to reverse that trend sooner rather than later. 1-1.

I got a load of grief on the Rudy Gestede thread for suggesting that as a former player himself he was better qualified than the Egg to spot a decent player. Lol.

Free agents.

My view as well. If they keep this up, maybe they'll win the owners trust and if they win their Court case maybe P and G could get some real backing? (Pig flew past the window)

I thought the post about him wanting a specific shirt was a facetious one!

And still no sign of Cantwell. What do we reckon 2/1 The "send" button jammed again 3/1 He got a better offer 4/1 Waggott changed the goalposts 8/1 The owners got cold feet 16/1 The Football League wanted to know what would happen if we went down, up and down again 33/1 We spelt his name on the paperwork wrong again. A rather unfortunate use of another vowel instead of the letter "a". 66/1 Gregg Broughton has been rehired on a short term contract to finalise the deal 80/1 Bar.