midds

There's being poor and out of your depth and then there's Sheffield United this season. Honestly don't know why the bothered getting promoted if this is what the reward is. They're getting humiliated every single week. The daft thing is that they finished more than 20 points ahead of Sunderland last year too... Imagine

Aye, I can see a strong end to the season. Fixtures are reasonably good and the more difficult games are still opportunities for points. Each game in winnable, not dating we'll win them all but I'll be going into each game looking to get points in every single one. Man U away looks the most difficult but we've beaten them 3 times on the bounce and knocked them out of the cup so that's a chance of a result. Spurs at home isn't easy but I'd expect at least a point. No reason why we can't aim for 6th and be in poker position if one of spurs or villa blow up. We need a run like Liverpool made at the back end of last season though

Not sure even Southgate could get away with anything other than a Bellingham/Rice CM pairing now. Kane is automatic and there's about 10 names in the picture for the other 3 forward positions in that team, Gordon is just one of them. Foden should be automatic too imo so that leaves 2. Could make arguments for Bowen, Grealish, Sterling, Rashford, Saka, Gordon, Mount is a favourite, Sancho has disappeared and I've probably forgotten a couple too. They can't all go Edit - forgot Maddison too

Almiron out and Chiesa in would be a ridiculous upgrade for us. I reckon that player movement would be worth about 10 points over the course of a season

He's been excellent and is showing me things I'd never seen when he was at Everton. More than happy to eat a bit of humble pie as I was hugely sceptical of signing him 14 months ago but he's been fucking brilliant this season. Effort and ability is 100% and he's a thankless grafter who'll play in multiple positions in the same game as and when the team needs it. Given the fact he played for the England youth team last summer I'd quite like it if he put his feet up this summer and had a rest, he's been going flat out for almost 20 months now. He's fucking class ps - the internet would be a much nicer place if people just admitted when they were wrong. I am in that position right now and I'm very glad I am too

He's got to finesse and spin it somehow though. It's 100% pigshit obviously but if he says they just played it long ball, got lucky once then just sat back he'd get slaughtered. Standard fare from a bullshit merchant like him

"meh, it's nearly full time mate, just let them take the corner then just blow for full time. They'll not be bothered, they're winning"

2023/24 really has been the Murphy's law of football seasons for us - "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time." Absolutely nothing you can do other than just try and enjoy the rest of the season and look forward 6 months down the line to August. It is what it is, fuck it

City Away, of course it is. Why the fuck wouldn't it be? Can only laugh at this point

Did really well tonight, fair play. Saved everything he had a chance of saving and kept out a couple on pens to send us through. One of the few positives from tonight

Agreed, we definitely go the rub of the green from the ref tonight, thought he had a shocker tbh, but thankfully in our favour. Loads of 50/50s that he gave us, nothing huge or important but enough of them to piss of a Blackburn fan I'd imagine. It happens

Regardless of the outcome of the pens, this has been a fucking shocking performance, got to be said. Shit from front to back, no urgency, shit defending and rank finishing. It's hard to argue Blackburn don't deserve it if they go through

Talk about making heavy work of this shit, jesus fucking christ. This should be dead, buried and patted down with a shovel long ago

Is that.....a bench......that I see??

'should' they part ways 'when' surely?

Possibly? But it would still be nice to see the impact or otherwise the new rules have had. There's always a decent chance I could be being a little paranoid and thinking the reason we're not seeing the stats we did last year is because we're way off the pace and not a threat this season. Maybe it's all just a coincidence

Speaking of which, does anyone have the 'ball in play' stats that were rolled out every week while we were doing really well and threatening the top teams last year. Come to think of it, has anyone even seen it mentioned it this year? Funny that.

Ashworth found out he had a gambling issue - Bruno grassed

Fuck off

Leao with an absolute banger

He just looks like a squad player who is struggling when a few things aren't there for him to function. He's a bit like Dabizas used to be - solid enough as a squad player to come in and become part of the system he's been dropped into for 4 or 5 games. But as soon as you either a) leave him in longer than 6 or 7 games or b) take the quality players away, then he starts to stand out as being pretty poor. His mistakes are more frequent and more noticeable. Then he becomes a liability who the opposition target and pressure as they know they'll get joy. That's where we currently are. Lovely lad, grafts all day but just not quite good enough technically It's not his fault, he's doing his best and Howe doesn't really have much option but to stick with him for a little while longer yet. But I'd agree that he needs to be moved on sooner rather than later. Selling him would be a boost for FFP profit but we'd be losing a home-grown lad, it's swings and roundabouts

We still have all of the clubs around us to play yet, nothing has been decided yet. If we get players back and if we play well then 7th, maybe even 6th at a real push is possible. Not sure why anyone is even considering chucking the towel in and accepting a bottom half position, it's in our hands where we finish

Also, another thing that fucked me off tonight was the ref. Arsenal outclassed us and would have won regardless so it's not a biggy but the ref was so weak tonight. He, rightly, booked Odegard for chopping down Almiron as we're breaking at 0-0 in the 8th minute . I think it was their 2nd foul. He then allowed Arsenal to make another 13 more fouls without getting close to booking another player. Arsenal took the lead and were allowed to sit on it and kill any break we made chasing the game with a soft foul in the middle third that was never punished for the remaining 80+ minutes. When you're chasing the game and ref is just letting the winning team kill any/every attack you have without any punishment then you have no chance of getting back into it. Arsenal were brilliant tonight and fully deserved it but they played the ref like a fiddle and he let them control the game. We need to learn from it and do that more

I think the biggest legitimate criticism you can throw at Howe has been his inflexibility to change players and/or formation over the last few months. We all know injuries have played a massive part on things and he's had his hands tied in some respects but going with the same players in the same formation game after game after game - even when he's had the chance to swap things just a bit - has lead to us becoming a bit stale, predictable and soft. It would be naive to think other managers don't do their homework on us and come up with a plan and I do think he's fallen into the trap of doing exactly what the opposition expect and they've exploited it to the max. Not changing anything at all despite being cut open by team after team can't be anything other than a legit concern. Again, i accept he's only got so many players available but that's all the more reason to ask different teams different questions in different situations. Trying to implement a consistent structure and method of playing is one thing, doing exactly the same thing every week while you're shipping an average of 3 a game for months on end is ridiculous.