80

Saw some of his best and much of his worst tonight. Largely ineffectual unfortunately.

Yes, think the guy has really broken some psychological barriers lately.

This is stopping looking like coincidence and starting to look like habit

It's plausible he's had a heavy dose of covid and still feeling the effects I guess. By the standards of a professional athlete at least. I look forward to having him back in, though, personally.

I'll echo those saying an early goal will make a big difference to how the game goes. I'm expecting a battle here. Breaking down teams happy with a point is our sore spot.

Think that would be a serious improvement for the game.

Heard Jonathan Woodgate bemoaning not quite managing to sign him for £2m in his Boro days. Would have been quite a signing!

Certainly wasn't his best game. His passing was wayward by his standards, as was the rest of the team's. Give and go routines with Almiron that are usually very smooth weren't coming off.

Got to be really optimistic for this one. Can be sure we'll fight like hell for the result. Can't say the same about Man U.

I'm naturally a little bit dubious about organised displays and such, but what you do is always with heart which is what makes it impressive.

Lovely ball to release Joelinton for the own goal. Smart.

It's understandable, but I don't think people always get that we are the ones in the process of becoming the massive club. There aren't many clubs in Europe not looking over their shoulders at us now. Anything is possible, but we don't have to be too despondent about chances of him being here for a very long time to come.

What a post.

Should we set up something like the Cabbage Cup to be contested among his former clubs?

https://archive.ph/7IrmF It's just like 12ft, go to the source website and enter the URL.

Agreed overall, but I am thinking of the player threads with a lot of it though. To be fair, I don't remember it being as bad for a weeks now for whatever reason. Like with your Mike Ashley exception, I don't mind people being insulting or abusive often times, but when it's the whole bin/sea thing for players who are blatantly doing their best it's pathetic. There's a certain sort of person who obviously gets glee from it. They don't even have a go at the shit ones, they like to target the innocuous.

This place is pretty dire a lot of the time though. People veer between between telling players to get in the bin if they have a bad match or get in their arsehole if they have a good one. Maybe the best of a bad bunch? Can't comment on that.

Everybody should probably be forced to read the whole thread every year as a kind of Thanksgiving to keep people grounded in the future.

Maybe let's not tie ourselves up in knots about the definitions of words and our precise footballing status at this time...

The article specifically states we're wanting both a midfielder and a right sided forward in January

Can't help but wonder if it's something more extraordinary even than Maddison...

https://archive.ph/Jfmva

It would be cool if there was some sort of liberation element for the junior clubs in such relationships e.g. after 10-20 years of ownership they're made available for sale to a fans group for something like cost price. So that there's reasonable light at the end of the tunnel at least.

Definitely see where you're coming from, but I'm sure some of them e.g. West Ham will be hoping to copy our last season's turnaround and significantly outperform their first half of the season. Meanwhile, to look at it glass half empty, we've had a fairly soft start to the season - only wins against newly promoted teams and not having yet played most of the typical top 8 (Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Man United, Leicester and West Ham still to come). Some of them have had poor starts, sure, but maybe it's a shame we've not already faced them before they hit their stride? Time will tell. Re: them having worse teams than us, I can maybe go along with that, but we shouldn't forget that we have a worse club than them at the moment - great work is being done off the pitch, but we're still literally years behind on the sports science, infrastructure and culture building side of things. That's not the fault of anyone now at the club, but it's a challenge the likes of Brighton aren't having to face. I don't want to make excuses, but I wouldn't be surprised if we're picking up injuries on many of our players right now because of the previous years of deconditioning they experienced. Particularly considering the January transfer window, I think this could turn out to be a great season for us - even bettering 7th. But Bruno breaking a leg could also see it go pear shaped pretty quickly. So we're operating on fine margins, and it seems we'd be setting ourselves up to be underwhelmed if not outright disappointed if we judge 7th as the acceptable league finish.

The sensible approach. We don't need to create more stress than necessary, and that way we'll actually be more likely to overachieve. Does anyone see Howe as someone who settles for steady 10th if you're not on his back?