Pata

I’m honestly wondering if I watched a different match to most people. Are we really expecting now to go to Stamford Bridge and dominate against an in form Chelsea that have spent infinite money lately? We were pretty much equal with them and on a different day walk away with 1 or 3 points. We pressed them high and caused all kinds of problems to them. It wasn’t perfect but we’re not Man City. Yet I see so many call that performance unacceptable, limp or lacking in everything. There’s been a significant uptick in performances since Man City and we’ve deserved so much more from those matches after the lacklustre start to the season. Individual errors and key players not performing like they should is the main problem right now and leading to unfavourable results. I’m confident we’ll beat Chelsea at home and will cause problems to Arsenal. Honestly should just stay away from here after a bad result, the knee-jerking is embarrassing even after a decent performance like today or Brighton last week.

That's absolutely mental take.

If you can’t kick you have to save that second goal. Think he tried to steal to the backpost but Palmer is good enough to notice that and made him pay.

Fucking hell.

He was garbage but at least he was semi-consistent with his 'anything goes' decision-making until the Nkunku penalty. VAR did really well to take it away, there was contact so would have been easy to just hide behind that and do nothing.

Was good defending IMO, never grabbed the shirt. You are allowed to use your hands to some point after all.

Decent performance away against a decent team, got done by individual errors and Palmer. We easily could’ve got something out of that. Only Man City can go there and be in complete control all match. Feel bad for Howe, backlash is unwarranted after that performance. He was once again let down by his players.

Hooper hasn’t given those at all today. Well done VAR, not hiding behind the the minimal contact.

No.

Would expect Pope to save that.

What the fuck Isak?

He’s extremely tidy and rarely loses possession, will not get caught out like Murphy often does.

He’s been fine and hard to blame him for the goal either, it’s just brilliance from Palmer. Tino takes one step to cut the likelier pass to Neto and Palmer launches it behind him inch-perfectly.

Hooper is not going to give us anything.

I really don’t think we’ve played badly at any point. They’ve had some dangerous counters but that will always happen. Same people crying about the high line would be asking ’where’s the press’ if we sat back.

TOO EAsY

This is his first bad half in ages, give it a break man.

What a ball that is by Palmer, Tino makes one wrong move and is out of it.

Weaker foot, damn.

Did you have working eyes between January 2022 and January 2023, Bobby?

I'm from the 'he did his job here' school but he was absolutely wank at NUFC and getting our money back was amazing business. His non-existent hold-up play was the biggest disappointment, expected that to be one of his strengths but all he could do was get his head on long balls without any controlled direction.

Lovely ball from ASM

If VAR worked like it should they could play on and the ref could give the foul later if necessary. All this ’respect the original call’, high threshold to intervene and having two separate referees (on-pitch and VAR) means no one knows anymore when VAR should intervene and 99% of the time everything depends on the original call. Which is hilarious considering the reason VAR even exists.

We were too big a club for him and he never had any self-confidence. It’s pretty clear based on his time at Burnley and Nottingham that he’s not as bad a footballer as he looked here.

I think there’s a reason why no team uses orthodox wingers anymore, there’s data available that shows inverted wingers is better. Murphy playing right is actually weird in the modern game.