Completely agree with Phil. This summer has been a disappointment and we now only have a few days left to bring in the key creative modfielder that we very blatantly needed last season (as said by Pulis, and then Pardew, and the local press and the fans, but apparantly not by those at the club).
Going to be tough to make the top 6 at the moment.
Our midfield has been a problem since we lost the balance of having Yacob and Mulumbu in there.
The problem we have is a lot of our midfielders are the same, Barry/Livermore/Brunt/Field all offer the same type of play, so when we play a midfield of 2 and 2 of those are picked, it limits what we can do.
That's why people wanted Morrison to stay, not because of sentiment, but more because hes the only one in the squad who can play in the middle and offer us a bit more creativity going forward.
Personally I think we need to play a middle two of possibly Field and Livermore sitting deeper and having a three infront of them of Morrison/Burke/Barnes/Phillips all rotating and trying to play.
When we play 4-4-2 we lack any sort of imagination.
The biggest confusion for me is we have hardly played 4-4-2 all pre season but revert to it for the first game of the season, hopefully we look at a 4-2-3-1 against Forest.