midds

Need to adopt the Alan Partridge approach when buying players. How much is he on the market for? £35m. Would you take £34.9m? Yep. Excellent.

Monumental fixture tbh. Not quite as perilous as Portsmouth (H) Kelly winner but it's not far away. Absolutely pivotal fixture for the next few years of the club, no shit, not joking.

Well, yeah. As we speak we have zero strikers so Wood is better than nothing. But the only way to get anything out of Wood is to ping the ball into the box at any opportunity form any direction from either flank in their half. If we're not prepared to change the entire Howe philosophy to accommodate him then there's no point in signing him and we need someone else. He's a big lump and he'll score goals as long as you arrange the entire team and tactics around him. He can be effective but the cons outweigh the pros imo.

As far as Wood's concerned I've always thought of him as a big lump targetman who eventually coverts a dozen chances a season. The fact the whole team is geared up to servicing him and there's little other plan puts me off him. If we're going to lump it into the box constantly then he'll inevitable score a few. Fuck me, even Joselu notched a few when we were bare as fuck but it didn't make him the answer. Wood's not the answer to any question we should be asking.

We desperately need a big horrible mobile nasty destroyer in CM right now. The defence gets zero protection from the 2/3 in CM right now and it hurts us every game. Cantwell has many attributes and he's technically better than pretty much anything we've got in CM as we speak but he's not who we need if we we're going to get out of this mess. Swapping Cantwell for, say, Longstaff won't keep us up . He's better than Longstaff and you could rightly argue it's an upgrade it it wouldn't address the massive issues we've got in CM. We need a totally different type of player. It's not a sleight on Cantwell, it's just where we are as a squad.

Surely he's suing the individuals here rather than the club itself? This has to be a personal thing rather than a club thing.

Sick a more puns about this bloke.

New thread needed, previous one ends here:

Good move for all concerned if they get it done tbh. Villa get a very good LB, Everton lose a problem player and have already replaced him. Digne starts every week so he can cement his French squad place.

Of course...

Remember when we got leaked news of how well Howe interviewed? He'd done his homework on the players, he'd identified how he would make improvements, how he would improve the training and so forth, very impressive stuff. They clearly liked what they heard and appointed him. Questions I'm now wondering are - has he been able to implement these methods? If not, why not? And also, were the problems and issues he identified from the tapes the actual problems and issues he's encountered now he's here and in the thick of it? I'd love to hear his responses.

How many strikers/clubs have said no before we got all the way down the list to this nugget? Fuck me.

From the little I saw before and after the Cambridge fans seemed sound. They will clearly have had a good day and fair play, they deserved the win. Absolutely no hard feelings at all, good on them.

At some point we're going to have to offer a deadline bid and walk away and look elsewhere. He looks and sounds like a very good player but if they're taking the piss then give them a deadline and stick to it. I appreciate they're looking for maximum money, who wouldn't, but we only have a finite amount of time to get our shit in a pile. Take it or leave it but decide now.

The players have been conditioned into staying goalside and not taking risks for several years now. Getting ahead of the ball and making an aggressive run has been drilled out out them, none of them take risks, none of them move from their zones, it's rigid and also means we're a fucking dream to play against. The whole mentality of the squad needs to change, "pass and move" is simple but it's been so long since players were looking to get forward that attitude has vanished. It's now "pass and stay", zero ambition, uncreative, miserable and ultimately ineffective football. This is Howe's biggest challenge. Get them to actually get on the ball and play football and take a few risks, be more ambitious on the pitch and ask some questions of the opposition.

Even being asked to play in a different position shouldn't be as difficult as he seemed to make it today. He's been in the game long enough to know that if he's been specifically told to play the role of a striker for the day then he should be making a better fist of it than he did today. He knows what strikers do, where they play, where and how they move and his attempt at filling that role today were pretty pathetic tbph. I know he's not a striker and it's definitely not his forte but he was basically ignoring his instructions, ignoring his new role for the day and drifting out leaving him in the position of trying to put in a cross to an empty box. The CM today also need to have a word with themselves too btw. They should have spotted the potential to get on the end of something but either didn't fancy it or weren't capable. The whole thing was a fucking shitshow.

Performances like that dross today have, and always will, lead to a slating from the fans. I like Howe and I'm still right behind him but he and his players deserve a bit of stick for that today. Doesn't mean I want him out or anything close to it but putting him on a pedestal and rejecting justified criticism is utter shit. He and his team were fucking rank today.

Genuinely shocked at how poor we were today, first game in ages an we look a shadow of the last Pardew side I saw last. Lots of comments to make after all of that but I think the overarching theme for me today was fear. They're all absolutely petrified to have and pass the ball. They're frightened of taking any chances or leaving their own little comfort zone - imagine 11 Colbacks and you're not far away. Dozens of times we managed to work a bit of space and there's no-one in the box, not 1 of the CM breaking to get on the end of a cross, hanging back because they're too scared to miss a chance. Cowardly fuckers. Which brings me on to Shelvey. This fucker is stealing a living. Happy to play 10 yards in front of the CBs, receive the ball under no pressure and make a short 10 yard pass square of ping it 60 yards on a diagonal. That's pretty much all he can do or at least it's all he chooses to do. Offers no protection, no movement forward, can't tackle and cant'/won't get about the pitch. Longstaff doesn't even offer the ability to ping a pass, he's just there and you don't notice him. Like a vase on a shelf, it's just there. Lack of movement is also crippling us, just standing static and waiting/expecting the ball despite being marked, it's fucking infuriating to watch. Can't recall a single header won from crosses and corners, there was a Cambridge head on it every fucking time in the first 80 mins. ASM is also now playing for Instagram. He's not a Newcastle player he's doing it by himself for himself. His decision making is abysmal and he constantly refused the dangerous pass to a teammate because he wanted to beat his man. Again. Then again. Then he lost the ball. He's no se to us when he's like this and needs a boot up his hoop. At 3pm I was pretty confident of staying up, 2 hours later I'm thinking we probably deserve to go down, we're just not good enough in every position. Rancid, shit performance (Trippier aside, he looked good imo), waste of an afternoon.

First game in about 7 years and safe to say they let me down. That was fucking disgraceful. Fair play to Cambridge though, they did all they needed to.

If the player wants to leave then it becomes virtually impossible to say no if the money offered comes close to the asking price. Same applies with any club tbh. I've never seen the lad play, no idea how he'd fare but it can't not be an upgrade. He's highly regarded, young and if it did turn to shit we'd be no worse off financially if we needed to move him on. Get him signed and let's see what happens.

Fuck it, I'd love to see us bid £25m + Longstaff for Doucoure or something like that. Ruffle a few feathers, I wouldn't even mind if they flat out rejected it - it plants a seed in their minds. It lets them know we're looking at their players and we've got the cash to buy them. If you never ask the question then the answer will always be 'no'. Time to step up and give them (not just Everton, all the teams we're planning to leapfrog) a decision to make.

If he doesn't want us then I don't want him. I don't blame him in the slightest either btw, he'll have eyes, rightly, on a bigger and better club. He's a very good player, he's probably too good for Everton being completely honest.

No idea how that have the energy to be so angry for so much of the time. Imagine how exhausting it would be to be that aggressive and furious for hour after hour, dozens and dozens of posts from the same people saying the same thing day after day after day.

The amount of times players get an opening about 20 yards away and just blast it as hard as they can. No thought as to getting it on target they just leather it and hope it's actually on target. 95% of these shots fly high, wide or both and the opportunity goes instantly. Absolutely infuriating

We do need to strengthen both positions (CB and CM) as a matter of urgency, that's pretty obvious. The ideal solution would be to get one of each but given how short the window is that might not be a goer at all. I just compare the 2 scenarios: A new CB pairing playing behind a CM of Shelvey, Willock and Hayden A new CM playing in front of 2 of Fernandez, Schaer and Lascelles Of those 2 situations I'd be far more comfortable with an upgrade in CM first. I think our current options at CB are adequate whereas our current options at CM are really poor.