The College Dropout

You mentioned the defence. Hall is coming back from injury. The only other player is Krafth. Most teams in the CL don't rotate CBs much.

Have functional leadership.

You want us to start Krafth?

Aye we've still the worst squad of all the clubs in the CL from PL

There's a profession that can help us with that. We have our pick over Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth and 95% of European teams. There's maybe 12 clubs with greater pull than us in Europe.

Agree he's more suited to teams who will camp opposition on the end of their box or deeper. Even if he ends up a supporting striker. He still needs to make more runs in behind.

Eddie shouldn't be in total control of signing players. It's not his fault he had free rein because of a power vacuum.

Burn didn't play LB last season though. Howe would prefer Burn to Targett at left-back anyway. I'm not sure Howe even has Hall over Burn at LB.

Did you think 3 fullbacks was going to be enough? It required Tino to be fit all season to have chance. And pretty much play every minute too.

It's the clubs fault that we spent £55m on Elanga. It looked sceptical at the time and looks worse now. But he's here, so what now? I'm not going to blame Howe for the transfer window, he filled a vacuum that shouldn't have existed. At one point we were just going down a list of PL strikers that had scored 10+ goals. It was amateur hour. Has Strand Larson even scored this season in the league?

Everyone that was integral to the cup win has crazy amount of credit in my book. Particularly the final.

Ok so let's play an inferior team so we can rotate that inferior team. We can still go back to 433 or a back 5 when needed.

Aye. I think the vision is 4-2-3-1. Wissa in place for tap ins, looking to get behind a defensive line. Woltemade supporting.

The money has been spent so now what? For me the issue is the squad. It's not one another manager can greatly improve anyway imo. People keep talking about the money spent and it largely doesn't matter to me. Is it a stick to beat Howe with? The money was spent poorly. Nothing can be done about it now. It's about what we can do going forward.

He does need to bust more of a gut to get in the box.

Literally everyone else got some type of rest. Again he was the only player to complete 2x 90s in Asia. It’s not about rejecting a call up. It’s managing minutes and travel. If it was a one off I wouldn’t mind.

We’ve only got 2 proper senior CMs. We’ve got 3 hybrid midfield players in Willock, Ramsey and Joelinton. Howe likes that profile but give him 2 at the very max. If we couldn’t shift Willock, we shouldn’t have bought Ramsey and got a proper CM instead. Or a proper 10.

Thats the point of having a Sporting Director - someone to ensure the squad is well maintained for the medium term. Ashworths last summer was bought 2 players for the future, 2ish ready made players and a marquee signing. Hall was 19, he was never going to be a regular and anyone with sense knew that. It cost us that season but we should see the benefits now. Tino was ready and his initial lack of minutes was bad management from Eddie. We were unlucky with Barnes and Tonali both have contributed a lot since. We also signed a RW for £8m that is better than our £55m winger and would likely start for us now. Tbat summer was always going to be insufficient to get us back into CL because of FFP but we bought players that were better than what we had or would go onto to become really good (high potential - and we paid big for that potential too, even Minteh considering where he came from). But without the Sandro suspension we probably sneak into Europe. With the possible exception of Barnes - everyone we signed had a super high ceiling. Who is the Bruno, Sandro, Isak of this window? Elanga is bad bad business. No DOF worth his salt signs that off. Ramsey?? Even Wissa who I rate, he had to hit the ground running. If he was 23 like Sandro missing a year it wouldn’t be so bad. He’s 29. This is the moment we signed him for. It was a short term signing. The Joelinton contract was short-termism. Ramsey and Elanga premium fee was meant to come with immediate success. We sold better, younger players for less money. We came into this season with 3 dedicated fullbacks. 1 of which played in a tourney in the semi and another is 35. The third was injured and missed most of pre season. Is Bruno the only proud Brazilian? He was the only outfield player to start and complete 2 90s in those Asia friendlies. A man that if he stays fit will start 50 games minimum for his club in the most intense league in the world and play 90%+ minutes. It’s even dumb from Brazil’s perspective they are risking burning him out. He can’t even get a direct flight to and from Brazil can he? So much travelling. The mess about the club was always going to impact the playing side. That transfer window was it. It was a debacle too far.

How shouldn’t be building the squad. Thats lack of leadership from. The owners to put in a proper structure. The last sensible squad building left with Ashworth. And someone needs to manage our players better on international duty would talking to nation FA’s. The Wissa thing I think was unavoidable but Tino shouldn’t have played in the euros and Bruno shouldn’t fly all over the world playing 90 mins in meaningless friendlies. The likes of Joao Pedro and Enzo Fernandez get a rest, so should Bruno.

He doesn’t try and get in behind at all. He’s often not in the box for low crosses either. Or for a lot of the high crosses but he’s scored a couple of those. He’s had a few shots in the box mind. The way we play requires a fast and instinctive mover in the box that goes straight for goal. I do like Wolte but it isn’t working at all. And some of it is him.

I’ve never seen him not take the easiest pass available. I’ve not seen much good from the lad. Doesn’t drive forward much. Doesn’t pass forward much. Doesn’t eat the ground up all that well. Hasn’t had many minutes so perhaps this is harsh but he makes a prime Willock look like Patrick Vieira.

He doesn’t make the runs you really need from a striker.

It doesn’t. Especially not your way we’ve spent it.

They aren’t playing 8 extra fixtures at an elite level. I didn’t think we did good enough in the summer. I said we could finish 8th without complaints. Squad is bang average outside a small core.

I don’t think he’s been as good as Burn at CB.