The College Dropout

Fact. Bruno, ASM, Isak are the only advanced players with genuine class on the ball - all need to start when available.

further Added benefits: More match day revenue can raise priced generally (obvious cons) More exposure and greater demand for commercial deals Attracts higher calibre of player

People have been advocating the signing of Tierney. A man with a much worse injury record.

No there wasn’t. That rule changed a long time ago.

I mean it in a ‘I wouldn’t take 1 point’ if offered now. It’s still not in Spurs hands if they beat us. But psychologically it would be massive.

It’s must win for us for imo. We need the confidence boost. A draw makes the other 2 fixtures must win for us. If not for Spurs, for the chasing pack.

A lot of teams are doing that by having more players in the central spaces in a "box midfield" to stack out the middle. That's what Villa did to us. It was often 4 or 5 in the middle with us only having 3. That's an easy overload.

A similar thing happened when we played at the The Emirates in terms of the press failing almost entirely. But that night we quickly dropped into the low block an often played with a a winger alongside Burn to make a makeshift back 5.

Beat Spurs - we could get away with losing to Brighton. Man U could lose both and still finish comfortably in the top 4. Liverpool, Villa, Brighton need to win pretty much every one of those games. We need to just beat Spurs, Everton and Southampton. I think that would mentally have us in a great space and could deflate the morale of any chasing pack. We'd be 6 or 7 clear if we pick up all 3 points.

There’s no reason for us to ‘just get over the line’. We’ve got 15 points from the last 18. We face 4 of the worst 6 teams in the league. You would expect at least 2 of those to go down. Arsenal have much less margin for error and stronger team chasing them down. 4 wins, 2 draws, 2 losses and we are in the CL. For Arsenal many would consider that a ‘bottle job’.

Liverpool can only catch us or Man United if we do worse in the next 8 games than we've averaged for the previous 30 games. Maybe they don't need a collapse but they need a fall off of some type.

I expect us to pick up 14 points as a minimum. Spurs - W Everton - D Southampton - W Arsenal - L Leeds - W Leicester - W Chelsea - D Brighton - L Spurs is simply a must-win game. 11 points against Everton, Southampton, Leeds, Leicester, Chelsea is the minimal acceptable. We should really look to win 4 out of 5. 14 from 8 is good form but below our season average. Liverpool would need to win all 8 games to beat that.

You're right. Fulham are the ideal *beach* team too.

I've said this before. He's crucial. He's always a fret to opposition that needs active mitigation. He's also very productive in his output whether it be goals or assists.

Everton just lost 3-1 at home to Southampton. 1 win in 5. 5 points in 5. They are not good.

When everyone does badly it's because the system was being battered and exploited.

Keeping Gomez and the Irish GK is a no-brainer.

Tbh this is probably true about Foden but it’s not tiki taka. It’s still essentially an attacking player with individual quality which is what Gerrard did at his peak in Liverpool. we still don’t produce players in the mould of Kroos, Thiago, Xabi Alonso etc. The biggest criticism Rice gets in the media is that he doesn’t score enough goals or get enough assists. Not that he doesn’t dictate play enough. Use his positioning rather than his athleticism to sweep up. Funnily enough Fabregas ended up being a Gerrard style player rather than a Xavi style player people expected. His tactical indiscipline was a big issue at Barca and under Conte. His game ended up being all about goals and assists and awful off the ball. Toni Kroos lost his legs at 28 but can still compete at the highest level due to his positional sensibilities.

@The Prophet agreed and always been the case. We need to beat Spurs. it’s such a crucial game. Beat Spurs we need 9-11 points from 7. With 4 games against bottom 6 teams, we should get that comfortably. If we beat Spurs. Another team need to be shit hot and us to fall apart to finish below 4th. Beat Spurs. ASM back. Avoid major injuries. 9/10.

Don’t think he needs to be replaced. But we do need a proper back-up in central defence with pace. Current 4 are slow. Need some pace at left back too.

Some pace at the back is needed and another DM option.

We need a cultural shift. Grass roots coaches and players aren’t encouraged to think about the game tactically. Steven Gerrard was a tactically undisciplined player for his entire career and fell off as soon as he lost his athleticism but he’s lauded as the best English central midfielder of a generation and his play style is encouraged to youngsters. It’s no surprise Alonso and Arteta - tactically astute footballers have become tactically astute managers. I can imagine Rafa spending lots of time talking through positional play with Alonso and just thinking ‘we’ll build a solid base and just let Stevie do Stevie because he doesn’t have the capacity to do anything else and he can win us the game doing that anyway’.

Example of this. Good video covering points we’ve been discussing across different topics in the last few days. The end scaenarios is similar to what Villa did to us on the weekend. Continually waltzed pass our press and we were regularly 4 vs 4 ok our backline.

I don't. If we beat Spurs as we should, we will wrap it up long before the last day. We should have at least 63 points by GW33 with a game in hand with Spurs on 59 points at best with 5 tricky games to go.

Gary O’Neill if he had better PR would be spoken about for manager of the year. The Forest coach gets a lot of credit in the media. O’Neill doesn’t.