The College Dropout

I always thought the 2-6 was the end of the SBR reign. We never recovered mentally from that. Barca result could have been similar. It's like when a boxer suddenly gets a real beating. They are often never the same. On the flip side - the team that one the League Cup was the strongest team of characters we've had. The star man left, the stalwarts at the back have aged another year. It's tough.

Leadership and character was one of the big positives of signing Guehi imo. It's also the big part of signig Tonali at the time too but we've failed to build on it since that summer. For the fees - I liked Norgaard and Xhaka last summer. I thought we needed that. We need that blend, any PL team does. All that purely focussing on youngsters stuff can turn you into Spurs.

Last summer was a total mess. Because we seemed to sign depth options rather than real class.. and we still lacked depth. The fullback thing was a shocker from day one. We started the season with 3 first-team fullbacks, 1 being 35. Then we let the RB/LB hybrid play an U21 tournament in the summer - a 50+ game, no break season into this season. And people are mocking him for picking up injuries this season. Thiaw and Elanga aside - the profiles of all the signings were weird imo. The quality of nearly all the transfers is questionable. All time horror show.

I've got little trust in PIF's ability to make great appointments in a timely manner. It's the main reason I want Howe to stay. Howe is a known identity. Nobody else is. I want some evidence of competence from everyone else before replacing the manager.

Woltemade had a great 2025. Didn’t do anything of note prior. I’m not sure about him at all at this level.

I think the l players have lost faith in the project.

Been poor since coming back from injury. Not doing his World Cup or transfer chances any good

It's Bruno but Hall would be second, Thiaw third

Como have the largest net spend in Serie A by 110%. And the 5th highest total spend this season more than Inter, Lazio, Fiorentina, Roma. I don't know a lot about them but clearly there's great investment going into that club. Fabregas might be a generational manager but this Como run is extremely well funded

And spending a lot of money

I think this is true. That side that won the league cup has the perfect blend of age. Losing prime Pope, Trippier, Burn, Schar, Lascelles, Krafth and likely Tonali is going to be difficult to replace as a dressing room unit. That I always felt like was the biggest disappointment in not signing Guehi. Like Tonali we were signing a natural leader who would replace what we lose in Schar in the dressing room as well. Dressing room is the dressing room. Real Madrid don’t look the same as a unit since losing all their leaders.

Teams that take the first pen win like 66% of the time too. It’s why they tried that tennis tie break format but it was too confusing.

Can only replace so many players in a single window.

Nice first touch but nothing Willock can’t do.

Probably means he doesn’t want to go to Saudi. Thy are the only ones that would pay a sizeable fee. He earns £20m-30m a year. Getting him off the wqgw bill cleanly is a win enough

This is my issue with the word cup. I love all the teams personally. But this is awful and the prime reason it’s in North America

My point is - it's not a major reason for our slide. Turds can only be so shiny.

Bit of a contradiction there. We were patient against Chelsea but didn't press crazy.... and didn't start either upfront. And if pressing is so key, Woltemade in midfield wouldn't be viable at all. Our midfielders also need to press like crazy. 12-15 extra high-level games against the majority of the PL with a lack of quality is the prime reason for our downturn in results. Last season Villa were midtable in January until they brought in quality in numbers.

We barely even try the pressing stuff. And frankly - we are never going to out football the PL + CL football anyway. The big difference is we lack quality. We have the squad that we have + CL last 16 + Cup runs = a midtable team.

Day one: Mount? Yeh I’m dying on that hill. He’s my son. I’m even signing him in the summer.

We didn’t improve the squad greatly with a lot of money spent. That’s our own bad. Not to say we would be top 5 again if we did but obviously better off than we are now.

Italy, Jamaica and Nigeria have done really well not to qualify for this year tbf.

I think the style of play issues are overplayed. The squad lacks quality. The 5 other CL teams have much deeper squads than us - and only 2 are close to performing at the level of expectations.

Delighted

That informed a lot of our strategy. Apart from the first window and Targett tbh - we had strong belief in all the players we signed. Paying a premium at the time for players we were convinced on. The strikers at least - we had to go against that this summer.