The College Dropout

Helps mentally vs a defeat

It's just going around in my head. "Longstaff. Pressing. Press resistance. Space in behind Trippier. Space in behind period. Danny Welbeck might be stronger and faster than Schar and Botman. Ah I reckon Howe starts ASM or Joe LW. Maybe pressing can work with real intensity." Can't wait until the game is over. I was always looking past this fixture too.

It didn’t work straight from the off against Arsenal away. We realised it and changed tact. But those were the Longstaff and 2 Joe days. I’m not sure we have the personnel to play that way.

I’m certain we start with plan A. I just hope we quickly revert if it’s not working and avoid conceding early. Will post variants of this tweet nonstop til tomorrow btw. So get used to it.

They haven’t like. They’ve been doing what they’ve done for some time. Play well. Sometimes results are great. Sometimes results are bad. Good but unpredictable team.

At that point, I think the club was expecting more Europa or Conference league next season at best. It was deemed not worth investing in January for that - which I kinda understand or at least has logic behind it. Finishing 6th (in the Europa) or 9th doesn't change much FFP-wise. And then we would go again in the summer for priority targets. Turns out we've had an amazing run to CL. If that was the expectation in January and it was felt we needed CM cover to secure it, I reckon they would've kept Shelvey or got in a body. I count 5 with Shelvey. Anderson was never pushing to start and would be loaned in ideal circumstances. The aim on Jan 31st was still just to do better than last season. Which is why they didn't strengthen CM. Had they thought we would be here in May - we would've signed a purple.

Good thing about being in Europe is that we will get a proper squad. Even if it’s older players on 2 year contracts. We can’t go into another season with 4 CM options for 3/4 positions. Crazy decision.

He hasn’t (Anderson). But i don’t like how the midfield has been operating and I’ve liked the Joe’s down the left. If we had another genuine CM option I would say them. Think Anderson started the Liverpool game in midfield iirc. Bad omen? Maybe. I’ve ran the Shelvey discussion into the ground. But I said it when we sold him. We needed his warm body and decent ability on a good day. Or someone else in that position. I think I said it could cost us Europe and I was wrong. It could end up costing us the CL or risked it. He did decent at DM last season.

I'd be tempted to go EA at RCM too tbf. Joe's on the left.

has he trained?

Different profile of player entirely and Tierney isn't that good. I hopewe do not sign him.

Balogun & ASR is £50m-£60m. And that's all FFP profit.

I’m all for an early heavy press. But then sitting in once things settle down. Just don’t concede for the first 30 minutes lads.

Him and Bruno in midfield - the treacle pivot

Aye but the margin is still big. We can drop points 1 more time. And it will still be in our hands. It could be all over within 5 days in our favour.

When Richarlison made it 3-3... it was all but in the bag tbf. The margin of error would've been huge. The margin for error is still big though. So I'm confident.

But they've not shown it for a very long time. I am not talking about 3-4 games here. And there are lots of genuine reasons for their performance being bad. They've not beaten anyone bar Bournemouth at home in... 12.. 13 games? And they weren't much better before that under Potter. And yes, it is. In the last 10 league games, we are 3rd. In the last 10 league games, Chelsea are 16th, Leeds 18th & Leicester 19th. If we don't get 7 points from these + Arsenal and Brighton at home, it's an underperformance It's the Brentford game for me. After that we only had Villa, Arsenal, Spurs & Brighton from good teams to face. The rest we are genuinely better than. And then Spurs sacked their manager and looked awful in the run-up.

It’s because we have a fairly big margin for error. We have 2 home games against teams below us. We’ve only lost to 1 team below us at home. 1 of them is very tough mind. the last game is against a side that has been awful since their manager joined. If we play like we’ve played for the majority of the season. We finish in the top 4. We need serious under performance to not make it from here.

Could easily do both.

And if we beat Brighton. It’s 2 match points. Nowhere near 50/50. It’s ours to lose.

No. Even if we lose to Brighton we are still favourites. Over the last 10 games and most of the season. Leicester and Chelsea are as bad as it gets in this division as teams.

Also add Evans to Leicester from a relegated team as a good signing.

They don’t really believe they’ll get it themselves Liverpool.

The second one… he’s offside twice no?

CL obviously changes the budget.