He came into the squad with everyone thinking he'd replace Michael Carrick. A decent World Cup with the Ivory Coast and a solid career in France had many optimistic. His early career was quality, driving runs and plenty of questionable ...

With expectations thoroughly tempered for this match, it was nice to see Tottenham come out firing. Really firing. So much so that I worried that we peaked about 20 minutes into the match and would be battered the rest of ...

Well, kickoff is about an hour away and I'm surprisingly calm. Maybe the utter stress of the past week has made me numb, but I'm just hoping for the best at Old Trafford. That said, we couldn't have asked for a worse time to play United. They're a wounded animal, angry that they've dominated matches from start to finish but somehow their finishing has let them down. They'll be looking to send a message and sending it against an alleged Top Four challenger will be exactly what the doctor, or Sir Alex, ordered. If you had to pick out a massive weak spot in our defensive unit (other than the Black Hole Of Doom known as the Jenas-Zokora partnership) it would be our ability to deal with crosses. Doesn't matter if it's open play or a set piece, you'll find Paul Robinson rooted to his line while our defenders are letting their man go free left and right. It was a problem for us even when Ledley and Dawson were in the side and it's certainly not going to be better with Rocha and Gardner in there.

A combination of both, as far as I'm concerned. We lined up pretty close to how I wanted from a personnel standpoint (only one man off), and played exactly like I wanted from a tactical one as we took full advantage of a Derby side reminiscent of us last week. And the week before. Defenders: No point talking about defensive work, because what Derby put together could not be considered an attack. But even a half fit Lee reminded us how important he is to our formation. Confident on the ball, barely put a foot wrong, and makes a mockery of the idea that you have to have goals and assists to be a key attacking ingredient. Chimbonda was the same on the other side and actually won a couple of those far post headers for once.

There've been a lot of match reports and analysis in the fallout of the Everton match, but some crazy looking site called Electric New Paper has one of the better write-ups. Rather than churning out the usual dross (boo ...