Oh bum!!

[Branton Rover]

I’ve always said it won’t be until Marquis moves on we’ll fully appreciate how much work he actually gets through.

His likely replacement will be a striker who doesn’t get anywhere near 20 goals & the masses on here will be baying for us to sign a Marquis type. Ok he’s not a natural goal scorer but has managed 20+ in 2 out of 3 seasons - I really don’t understand the stick he gets because last night the problem wasn’t the forward line it was the midfield engine room or lack of one

[ravenrover]

And just think everyone said our end of season melt downs were all due to Fergie bottling it

[The Red Baron]

Looking back to last night, and indeed the last two games, I think McCann must take as much of the blame as the players.

To compensate for the loss of Whiteman we had switched from 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1. We'd won four games on the spin. Whiteman came back at Sunderland (although he clearly wasn't ready) and we reverted to 4-3-3. We got pulled apart in the first half. To all extents and purposes we did the same last night, and McCann compounded the error by asking Kane to play Whiteman's role and May to play Coppinger's.

I would urge McCann to go back to 4-2-3-1 for the next two games irrespective of the personnel available.

I noticed Marquis was all over the place last night. The 4-2-3-1 does have the virtue of making him work more centrally, although I think he started looking for the ball in deeper positions because for most of the game the service was so poor.