Out for 4-6 weeks!. Whoever owns the large black cat that seems to prowl around ER can you f*cking well take it away!!!!. Honestly, you could not script our luck on injuries.

Well on current form turning out to be a bigger steal than the Brinks Matt robbery!!. My only concern is that the relentless wheel of the championship, international committments and no real replacement on the bench, the workload may become unmanageable at the part of the season where we need him the most, hopefully I will be proved wrong.

Amps as Captain is an excellent choice and Struijk as, presumably some sort of Vice Captain I assume, is also first rate. The one I'm completely mystified about is Meslier as the 3rd piece of the triangle. I don't recall any real verbage to defenders during games, in fact any shouting at all. I can only assume that behind closed doors he is a vocal figure in training hence the appointment. Personally I would have thought that Rodon would be more suited to the role. I guess the team understand French better than Welsh!

For some reason, unless I have missed something, the players that we eventually attract into the club, seem to be from mainland Europe whereas other clubs, apparently smaller in stature compared to ourselves, appear to spread the net further and find endless amounts of gems within the African continent, for not a great deal of money or at least that's what it seems. We seem to play these type of teams regularly who have pacy players that give us real issues. Maybe I'm just over thinking things!

Well fresh from the numerous cardiac arrests from last night, we enter into the 2nd instalment of the "Tortuous Trilogy" against Quarter Pound of Rubbish this Friday, another welcome opportunity for our away supporters to sing the praises of Sky Sports!.🤣 It's been a while since I visited Loftus Road (back in the 70's to be exact) but still have painful memories of several defeats, not helped by a moron with a big drum in the home supporters stand constantly banging it (the drum that is!!). Formed in 1886, it took them until 1982 to reach the 1st Division with moderate success, however in the 70'/80's they did have some star quality players in the team, few were: Phil Parkes Stan Bowles Rodney Marsh Don Givens Terry Venables Gerry Francis On the managerial front, well they went from the sublime to the ridiculous: Terry Venables ( Excellent) Ian Holloway ( Completely off his head!!) Unfortunately for us, QPR are still in a relegation tussle which based upon our past performances against these types of teams, generally spells a difficult game. That being said, the victory against Boro should instil some much needed confidence in the players. Without wishing to sound like a broken record, we cannot afford to have someone wearing the shirt and only effective for 10% of the game, DF needs to have strong words with Rutter and get his a*se in gear. Assuming Rutter gets going, cannot see a change to the side that played last night, which should be enough to see us through. Defibs are on special at the moment!!! MOT

Well with 3 games to go, thought might give it a go and see if I can change our luck with the first of our cup finals against Boro. Real shame that Bill cannot play as I'm sure good for an own goal, although Carrick being ex-Manure would love to put one over on us🙄 Middlesbrough was initially started as a Benedictine Priory and if we ever needed any devine, intervention next Monday would be a good place to start! In keeping with most of the North East, Steel , Docks and Iron works were the mainstay of the area, hopefully we can knock down the steel curtain, have an iron grip on the game and not drown our sorrows in the Tees!! Famous people born in Middlesbrough: Roy "Chubby" Brown ( how anyone found him funny is beyond me!!) Bob Mortimer Ali Brownlee Steve Gibson Jeff Winter (Referee) Chris Rea (Top singer) James Arthur ( Apparently some X factor winner?) As regards thoughts on the game, well something has to change otherwise we face another bad day at the office. We have the players to beat this lot, but they need to beleive it themselves. In my opinion, we need to have a striker that is permanently upfront and not chasing back for the ball, my preference for this is Joseph but we'll see. Weather will be typically North East rain and wind. Scoreline - fingers crossed for a nervy 0-1 victory.

We acquire a striker who has netted 40 goals in 2 seasons and everything seems rosy. He plays the first few games and gets into the flow, links up well with Rutter. Then Bambi is declared fit and Piroe reduced to a bit part role, operating in a role (which he seems clearly uncomfortable with) and has him running around like a headless chicken, which is exactly what happened on Saturday against Blackburn. With the success of the team, it's hard to question DF on how he sets the team up and the way he wants them to play, but surely with all the speed we have on the wings, we should have a recognised goal scoring striker in the box at all times, otherwise the wingers have to continually dribble into the box as there are no real options.

Not that it would have made a blind bit of difference, but I would like the EFL to explain how the fcuk there was only 1 minute of extra time at half time??. Their goalie, took absolutely ages for goal kicks, not to mention their antics at throw ins. Yes, I am clutching at straws to find blame somewhere else!!

Any one the wiser as to what is happening with Dallas, seems all very quiet?

So according to SSN, Gnonto is now back training with the first team squad, following a meeting between Kinnear, Farke and presumably Gnonto. I can only deduce from this is that they have told Gnonto he will be sold in January providing he puts in a shift for the team until then, if he was going to be sold in the next few days why bother including him with the team?? This is of course is only one side of the coin and I'm not sure a fair proportion of the fans will forgive him for deserting us in our hour of need over the last couple of weeks. Unduoubtedly he has acted like a right pr*ck over the Everton saga, although I suspect that a greedy agent with a % of any fee is probably pushing the buttons. To my mind he should put out a statement to the fans, firstly to apologise unreservedly for his behaviour and maybe for him to try and let us know the reasons behind wanting to move. It's only pure speculation on my behalf and no doubt he will be sold within the next 48 hours!!

Given that Bambi has lost the ability to put a ball between 3 pieces of wood surrounded by a net, let's play to his obvious strength which is holding up the ball and put him into a midfield 3, he can then distribute to strikers or wingers and takes the pressure off him to score goals which sadly seems beyond him. The shape of the team would probably be a bit weird but something has to change and if it seems we are intent on retaining his services (personally I'd bin him off) then this may give him a lifeline.

Thought I may as well contribute to the list of scribes on the forum and do a MDT whilst there remains a small chance of us retaining our Premiership status. So the lads embark on a crusade to take on the armies amassed by Sheikh Your Hand and the rest of Tribe at The Etihad, with Sam the British Bulldog at the helm. The footballing world would assess our chances as next to zero and it would be a brave man to bet otherwise. The list of stars available to the 'cure for indigestion' (otherwise known as Pep!, old age drinkers will get the analogy) are boundless whereas Sam the Ego has to assemble a war party from a team who quite frankly have no idea what they are doing. Will Rutter the Stutter actually get a game or bleed us dry from the bench? Will Kentucky Fried McKennie use his own legs to run as opposed to chewing on Colonel Sanders chicken legs? Will Bamford actually remember that he is not Bambi on ice? The list goes on and on. To try and decide on a team suitable to the attributes of Bulldog Sam's tactical no how is pretty difficult given that we do not have players over 6'5" to lump the ball forward, however given that there probably will be no need for a midfield (and judging by their performances that may not be a bad thing) we can have 7 at the back and 3 up top! It's pretty ironic that Saturday's match will be the first 3pm football league game that I can recall being shown live, with us as cannon fodder for the Citeh attack. The result is surely beyond doubt, as is Haaland, scoring anywhere between 3-8 goals! (At least we will play our part in Premiership history!). The future's bright, the future's................................who knows! MOT

So if the rumours circulating are true, then we are not going to proceed with the option to purchase at the end of the season. This seems a bit coincidental in light of the alleged fracas in the changing room at half time against Palace!. The "official" line is apparently having to find funds for the Augustin f*ck up. I guess we will soon know pretty quickly.

So on the BBC football gossip web page, there was an article saying that we are interested in re-signing Kalvin from Man City in the summer. I'm presuming that this is just clickbait and nothing to substantiate it, however is this something we would consider doing? May be the less stressful Bielsa football methodology and our current system would suit him, however they do say never go back, not sure.

Well that was an absolute blast and a weekend of firsts. In Belfast for Paddies Day and actually walked up and down Shankill & Falls Roads (for those of us of a certain age, you will know that this was practically impossible a few years ago). Banksy would have some serious competition with the various murals around both areas. Ireland win their first Grand Slam on home turf, but bloody hell that was hard work and not easy to watch, fair play to England for making a game of it. Leeds score 4 goals for the first time this season!

Just been reading the Sky Sports report on a new contract for him. Didn't realise that he was actually at Leicester undergoing a medical with the clubs having agreed a fee at £20million!!!. This explains the muted celebrations for his goal against Accrington. Think the board have made a major f**k up on this. Bad enough letting him go in the first instance but to offload for a paltry £20 million beggars belief!

Any one got an idea what's going wrong for him?. Prior to the World Cup he was dashing around like a whirling dervish and creating havoc, since the World Cup (and we cannot necessarily blame that, as he was only used sparingly) he is totally off the boil and doesn't even look the same. Has Jesse's high press intensive game now found him wanting or perhaps he is carrying some kind of knock?

Seems to be a bit of noise that we are looking to bring him back to ER?

Towards the tail end of last season I, like many others, was fearful that with the impending departure of Kalvin and Rapha and our continuing sicknote (Bambi) how would we manage to get ourselves pointing forward and offer some form of competition within the Premier League. Well, we are 3 games in ( and I accept that there is a very long way to go) and the team and more importantly the new recruits, have plugged the gap very successfully. Maybe as a team and a group of supporters, we relied on Rapha to win the games single handed for us and Kalvin to be the keystone of our defence, with the rest of the team as back up to their undoubted talents. What we have now is a team that seems to be a complete unit and not necessarily dependant on any one individual. Yes there are some good individual performances in the games, but from what I have seen so far, we are not now reliant on an individual to win us the game or ensure that the defence operates efficiently. As usual, the dark, windy, wet and winter months will be a test to see if JM's energy press style will still be effective, but as there is a significant break due to the World Cup, if we continue to pick up points prior to the break, that will put us in good stead.