The net result of the matches played so far this weekend is to put a total of 3 points between the bottom 8 clubs.

Wigan beat Birmingham, Wolves beat Villa away, Blackpool and Blackburn drew. Absolute raffle down there at the moment.

WOW just took a look at that bottom half. Holy smokes it's crazy close.

The entire bottom half and maybe even the bottom 10-12 teams can all still get relegated.

Suarez and Carroll are starting for Liverpool.

Carroll is a 35m machine for putting his head on the football. Pretty reliable unit albeit unremarkable.

Effective if you design your game around it but for a team of Liverpool's ambition you would expect a bit more.

Given how bad Pool are through midfield - Sunderland were giving them an absolute bath for long stretches of the first half - it makes a lot of sense for them to base their game around set pieces and the big man.

Carroll could well make a huge difference when we take them on. He's going to toss Squillaci and Koscielny aside like dolls.

Lampard makes such a huge difference to this Chelsea team. Quality player.

Torres off.

People keep saying he'll show his worth eventually, and they may be right, but surely one perks you'd expect from a £50m player is he doesn't go through a year long spell of god awful form?

Dzeko looks like garbage at the moment too.

Infact, for two of the most expensive squads on the planet the quality of football on display is shocking. Except for Luiz, he's just awesome.

I am finding his scoreless run quite amusing, I have to say...

David luiz is obviously a top player but he's got that annoying cunt factor about him

Wish we had signed Suarez.

Suarez and Luiz, and we'd have walked the league.

Was never going to happen though.

Would only have cost around £50 million plus top salaries too.

Klaus wrote:

Would only have cost around £50 million plus top salaries too.

😆

Klaus wrote:

Would only have cost around £50 million plus top salaries too.

Well, slightly less, and we could have always not signed Koscielny and Chamakh - that would have saved a bit.

They would still have cost the same.

It doesn't matter anyway. It's a completely theoretical line of arguing. I'm content with Kos, Djourou and Vermaelen and I'm not sure Suarez is better than either Nasri or Walcott. The problem is squad depth, not starting quality.

Hard to be content with Vermaelen when he's barely played this year.

Just underlines that we've got what we paid for really - second rate signings. Hopefully our manager in the summer will have learned this lesson. Unlikely as it might be.

Well, sure, but who knew that in the summer or, indeed, even a few months ago? And I'm not talking about "knowing" in the sense of referring to Murphy's law ("It's always a season-ending injury whenever an Arsenal player picks up something!") but rather in the actual sense of the word. He's a player we've got on our books. You can't stack up on players for fun unless you're City or, indeed, Chelsea.

... and I don't agree that they were second-rate players at all. I think Kos is a quality centreback who's done a good job this season despite being put in a difficult position. He's a bit rough around the edges but so is Luiz.