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I think back to his performance against Aston Villa and think "where has that bloke gone?". It wasn't that long ago that he was a ball of energy.

Agreed, and then Wilson really needs to start pulling his weight in that arrangement. If he doesn't, I don't know what to say about him.

I think he's already got the contract, hasn't he?

Agreed re Isak and Wood. But Isak has looked pretty uninspiring on his own, too. I think we need to rework a large part of our approach right now. Hoping every game for the rest of the season is treated as a cup final now, with us trying whatever we think will work on the day, tactically-speaking.

Done us proud, but another big challenge for Eddie. Interested to see how we look 9-12 months from now. Hope to see some more variety. Genuinely relieved he made the Isak change at half time.

Would love to know exactly what's wrong with him. Lots of ideas but no certainty. I don't believe it's anything like just relaxing after hitting his world cup target.

That's it for me. Pope might well have got it as he's Stretch Armstrong, but that was a very awkward one and 19/20 times he quickly made exactly the right reaction for the intended shot.

Wanting an alternative to take free kicks makes total sense, but calling him shit at them and permanently removing him is ridiculous hyperbole and definitely controversial. There's something deeper wrong with our set plays than the deliveries at the moment.

I'm pretty comfortable with bad life outcomes for people into playrape.

Outside of seeing the teamsheet, everything has told us that's the case.

Yep, the minority, which I'm A-OK with

I hope he spends most of those 3.5 years on the bench and that he's happy with that, but he's good to have on board.

@WillDanceForChocolate and co. will be over the moon... Ironically(?), our Twitter had a post about him and Burn in training for the first time in a very long time just a few days ago.

I genuinely have no concerns about him. Kind of looking forward to seeing him play to be honest.

Using the Puffin style guide.

Fairer. But I believe we're now a better run club.

It's not about the popularity contest, just the performances demonstrated. A bit like Woodgate being seen as the master defender despite barely playing in the great scheme of things. Pope has been the best, most meticulous and reliable keeper I've ever personally seen for us.

There'll need to be some changes as there is with any functional team, but yeah, absolutely no way. We have really solid foundations. One testimony to us is that while it's easy to obtain and then piss away a spawny goal scoring record, having the best defence, and some of the best overall metrics, in the league is not built on luck.

I'm not persuaded that preserving a 3-2 losing scoreline instead of taking a risk to score a last minute equaliser is the right attitude. It would involve Alex Ferguson and Peter Schmeichel being wrong, among others. I'm open minded, but not convinced...

Good post. Further to this, I'm expecting our first campaign in Europe to involve us getting possibly a few humpings against good standard opposition. Which is one reason why I'm hoping to get Europe sooner rather than later, to get it over with. It'll be a valuable education process for Eddie and the club. And I trust him to gain from that education.

What happens happens. Collectively, we need to bed in for the fight. It's a much much rosier picture, but ironically I think we're at a similar stage in our season to where we were in early January last year. Only good option is to stand our ground and fight. Being accusatory and lamenting things helps nothing. Yes, we are on the wrong side of the transfer window, but the upside is just about everybody is dropping points like drunken sailors. So we should slog on and treat every game like a cup final.

I'd like to see that combo too. In the pre match press conference, Howe specifically talked about not being married to this formation, in fairness to him. But I think he's conservative and up to now has taken the view that it's brought us so many successes that it shouldn't be thrown away hastily. But we're in an interesting spot now as I think you could say we've hit that reboot point, but remodeling in our next match involves experimenting in our biggest single game for perhaps 20 years. That would be a big call from a big manager. I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly what he should do in the next week, though personally I'd have started mild experimentation and rotation a few games ago.

Agreed. If he removed it from his game, you have to ask what we'd lose, and I suspect it would include a lot of points.

Certainly mysterious. But not one of the things I'd criticise massively without hearing the justification at least. That's what I mean when I say there's plenty to debate.