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I hope supporting Wilson more would help, anyhow. It depends on exactly what is wrong with him, but I'd hope that if it's psychological, him being less of a big fish in a small attacking pond, with less pressure on him would help. And if it's his legs, which I find more likely, then maybe we can get a mini Shearer-style renaissance out of him by surrounding him with pace and energy.

The only real place I'd look at stepping away from your lineup is having Wilson on the pitch at the same time as Isak. Doing that for a few minutes got us our only league win in 2023 against Fulham. I still hope Wilson can turn it around with additional support; the alternative is pretty devastating as it implies us going overnight from having one of the best strikers in the league to a waste of a squad space. Dealing with that will eat up quite a bit of our summer resources.

A key difference between last season and this season (or, more to the point, the second half of this season) is that teams are setting themselves up specifically against us. We turn up as a big threat, and their gameplan is based on countering us. Last season, and to my surprise, also the first half of this season, teams didn't see us that way and it gave us the element of surprise and a clean run at them. That's why we're in a quandary now. Everything is literally harder now, which is a big compliment to our achievements so far, and it's why before this season began I was bracing for a slog akin to what we now have, even though I knew something much grander was possible. Basically, we need our Bellamy and Robert moment to break this cycle, in my view. Then you'll see another explosion in our results.

I think the distinction is team in crisis versus club in crisis. Club definitely isn't. And totally agree with you about fans building things up both in their head and the wider world. But we are reaching a very serious point in our season and we should be aware of that and taking action. Over the past 5 games, we have the worst form in the league after Crystal Palace. Another 3 games like this and we could be looking over our shoulder at 11th placed Aston Villa (7 points behind us and who's form, I've recently read, has them placed 4th since Emery joined them).

But, you know, Pep thinks he's good so we should really just start turning our backs on him now so it hurts less when he leaves in June. It's the only sensible course of action.

Yeah I can't take too many positives from this unfortunately. The other way of looking at it is we failed to land a glove on a club in a cup final who a week later were getting tonked 7-0.

Agreed about things being an outside chance, but that's what we're here for frankly. There are some players who for whatever reason are up for it, up for 'the project', and we should be ambitious about gunning for them as it'll improve both our recruitment and retention. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on how Bruno and Botman are rated. I somewhat agree with what you say about a mid level PL club showing ambition should go for such players though, that's kind of my point. At their age and stage, they were players who could bridge the gap and, as you said earlier, grow with the club. Coming from the Champion's League tier of a mid level league to the sub-CL tier of the top league to make their mark. I get that logic; that's why the pining for a 2nd Division Watford forward who'd cost 2/3rds of their fee seems odd to me.

Yeah definitely. If we end up in serious Europe, there's an argument to be made for signing an extra player in every position. Not saying we will or should, but I do recognise quantity has a role to play. Normally I'm quite pro a budget signing, but I think last time around we were talking £25m+ for Pedro which isn't nothing. The more limited our finances are, the more I think we should be aiming above or below that level of talent (i.e. Maddison or Burn).

In terms of specific forwards, I won't pretend to have a clue, but if we make Europe, I wouldn't be surprised to see them go for Osimhen and his ilk. Whether we get them is totally another story. But ultimately to grow the club we're probably going to have to sign players who are bigger than the club - even if they or the rest of the world don't realise it yet. See Bruno or Botman as examples of that. If we're too humble and don't stretch ourselves we'll largely stay where we are and tick over. My point isn't against Pedro per se; he might come in and be great and I'll back him from the start if it's the club's choice. It's just striking to me that people think our targets will remain static after 12 months of significant progress on and off the pitch. It's reminiscent of wanting to still be in for Jesse Lingard last summer. 6 months earlier than that he was a sensible option, but come the next window he wasn't.

*So-called Business in Football summit. Because the summit doesn't really have anything to do with business in football, of course. I like the way he doesn't actually mind if getting feeder clubs, he just wants us to have won the Carabao cup first as a kind of qualifier before we do it.

Same. I guess I would feel better if there was some kind of reasonable release clause attached to any deal e.g. no strings freedom after 15 years or something.

Well, they do, but it's rare that such a result is explicitly beneficial, particularly with the three points for a win. But if we and Burnley had both guaranteed our safety with a draw on the last day of last season, the smart money would have been on a draw. But if you introduce that opportunity into every match, you'll just grow the culture of corruption. By not engaging in it, you'd maybe be giving a 6 point advantage in the league standings to every team that did for the sake of not saying 'you have one and we'll have one'. With tens and hundreds of millions of pounds riding on relegation and CL qualification, the outcome over time is obvious. So you'd just end up with park the bus + corruption. The initiative wouldn't even resolve the stated problem of defensive play.

Not really. Whenever there's an incentive, such as mutually beneficial draws in world cups, that kind of thing emerges.

If it suited two teams e.g. one trying to avoid relegation and the other gunning for 7th; once it was fairly clear the game was going to end goalless, a nod and a wink could allow goals in at each end so that each team picks up at least a point to further their ambitions in the league. There'd be a bit of jeopardy around the first scorer welching, but not a lot.

That's the thing. We are creating chances, but we don't look lethal at all. We're trying to cause death by a thousand cuts, which can and has worked, but our opponents appear to have learned about blood transfusions so it's not working now.

I won't pretend I know a lot about João Pedro, but I think people are living in the past still dreaming of players like him. I think he was what we were looking at pre-Isak when we were aiming to step up from relegation candidates to Europa League spot contenders. This summer, I think the club will be looking to make significantly bigger strides forward than relatively expensive 2nd Division forwards, as I doubt players of that calibre will be the key to creating wins out of the draws that are currently strangling our potential. Happy to be proven wrong if the time comes..!

See where you're coming from, but it would be pretty easy to corrupt that system.

He's got scope for rapid, tight interplay with similar teammates, followed on by direct bursts into dangerous areas. Would be very effective when trying to break down a low block as and when we're drilled and competent to do those things. As it is, too many aren't on the right wavelength.

Agreed on the chances, but he's not the one creating those chances despite being in a critical team role, and think I'm right in saying his shooting rate has halved since the world cup i.e. the methods we/he had for getting him into dangerous situations have been sussed. If we're sticking with the same formation, which I don't particularly think we should, I'd try Gordon there. Or ASM if we were swapping things up.

Yes, Almiron is the core problem to me at the moment. We're too formulaic and he's Mr Formula.

Also, would be the easiest thing in the world to place your mate's bets on his team, while he places your bets on your team, to game the system. It's why there needs to be zero tolerance. Now what the family of modern referees get up to I can only wonder...

If there aren't any goals in that lineup, our goose is cooked.

I think the purchase was conditional on them being promoted as I recall.

Unreal. Don't know how you contained yourself.

I don't doubt her...