FIRST THING - I'm Croatian and want Jelavic to succeed but more importantly I'm also an honest man. I just re-watched this weekends match and I have to say Long was MOTM. Been thinking about how the two lads are playing together and had to look back at Jelavic's Everton time when he was banging in goals. When Nikica started at Everton Tim Cahill was there and Tim created a huge majority of the opportunities and was also a massive player at Everton. Once Cahill was sold and they brought in that selfish POS Mirallas opportunities for Jelavic dried up. I'm predicting this now. Long will have a hat trick before the end of the year, we'll finish top 9 or better and they'll only get better. I think Bruce might have created a scoring machine with this paring but we still have to shore up our midfield post haste.
Think 9th is to optomistic personally. If we had started with them then maybe but 9th or better would mean we would have to gain 10 points with our goal differential on the current 9th placed team with only 11 games to play. I dont think that is realistic.
Long could have turned this season around for us, with hardly anyone in the midfield or elsewhere really creating chances up front he has made us more a threat with how he links up and creates. It's a blow that he isn't eligible for the cup run. It'll be hard to score goals against better teams in the semi and final should we get past Sunderland.
Hopefully we will should we get through, but hard to count on that. I also think only the final should be at Wembley.
