80

I mean... That ended up being dead wrong, didn't it. Joelinton is always wasteful with the ball, in percentage terms, but he gets so much of it and has such physicality he often ends up making something happen, and hems the opposition up in and around their own box, making them claustrophobic in the mean time. Barnes meanwhile... Well, I'm not looking to jump in on him. But whole new oceans definitely opened up for West Ham subsequently.

I certainly agree with most of that. I'm surprised people are so down on our first half performance. We should've been looking to disturb our setup as little as possible, and if Willock had to come off, Tonali on with Bruno moving forwards was the promising way to go.

Oh I agree. It was disturbing how quickly we regressed post-Willock into Horseshoe siege, Isak alone in the middle, followed by our lines being broken and us opting for chaotic progression, fast up the pitch into no man's land, again. Quick diagonal cross, hope for the best, expect the worst and start the cycle again after they get the ball back into our half.

I think the theory was "can we square the circle" and fix RW, have Joelinton's presence, Willock's dynamism and Gordon in his classic LW spot. But it was the wrong call unfortunately. Gordon should've made way for the outcome brothers.

I think they run out of confidence in the patterns. There's only so many times you can headbutt a wall before you start doubting the bricks are gonna start tumbling. And, thanks to experience, we fast forward through that confidence drop now compared to how long it would take a year ago.

Yeah. If we're sticking with Longstaff in the name of not spoiling a winning thing, we should be sticking with JoeJoe.

Say what you like, we looked a hell of a lot worse without him... Back to our form of a month or two ago.

Hmm... Hope Willock is back pronto. Felt confident going into halftime, did not feel confident when I saw he was replaced with Barnes. Saw the unwelcome return of our old friend, the horseshoe. Obviously, a dreadful second half once all was said and done.

That's all a faithful report, but fyi they've edited various answers together and chopped bits out to make it more readable. Nothing wrong with any of it though

I've always wondered if there was something going on with John Textor and his battles with the other Palace shareholders. Maybe he/some were more willing to accept than others. It was his other club, Lyon, who agreed a £40m deal for Minteh in June (before the player vetoed it). Despite them apparently being in dire financial straits. So we've got some kind of relationship there.

That bit was the last answer I was praising in my first post... Went into a fair bit of detail, talking about working with the psychology of your manager etc. Sounded spot on.

It depends on your tolerance for risk, to be fair. Getting a good player now and losing a makeweight later can be a great deal... But if something goes wrong you're in trouble, obviously. There's a big piece of me that would be happy if we keep our powder dry in January.

I agree the majority of fans would've wanted that, but ultimately we were hiring him for his expertise and control of transfers, so I wouldn't have wanted him to be too influenced by that. It wouldn't really have been him changing plans up as the June PSR crunch and board fallout just before he joined had done that for us... Being conservative about which players to go for when you're new is very fair, but the financial situation shouldn't have taken too long to understand, with Eales and co. to talk to. So for me, it's the opposite of careful to try and put all his remaining eggs in a very expensive basket he wasn't willing to say he fancied himself.

I wasn't saying Eddie didn't want him, but I struggled to imagine Mitchell would (try to) authorise a purchase he didn't believe in that would tie his own PSR hands up for a couple of years and make his future life a lot harder. He is - as many remind us - Eddie's boss ultimately. Backing Howe's judgement is one thing, but not at the cost of signing the next Gyokeres or whoever he's monitoring because we're in PSR debt again. So yeah, if he did bend his knee and do that, and then get publicly mugged off, I can see why he'd feel very pissed off with himself.

Yeah I agree with all that. Going back to the start of this whole conversation, that's what I was originally saying - I was surprised by how affected he was, but that wasn't a criticism. I can take a few positives from how he was last night. It also makes a lot more sense of the bad interview he did in September - how half a dozen journalists all came out with different messages. It looked like he was playing power games, but he was probably coming out with word salads.

Agree with all that. I'm comfortable enough with that being the situation, it's just a surprise given the hype was he was this dick swinging alpha when he came in. Last night made it easier for me to believe the stories some people have been telling themselves about Eddie strong-arming him into making bad decisions like the Guehi pursuit, because he obviously feels massively on the back foot.

That would be why I said spiel, as opposed to directly requesting him to use those words. It would be corporate speak, which isn't great, but would be better than looking like he's allergic to taking flak while in a leadership position.

That's the bit that doesn't add up for me and softens my attitude to him after last night. It's a bit too hard for me to believe he's been in all the places he's been and also just been that guy on stage. So maybe he just presents himself badly. I certainly hope so.

Hopefully an unedited video makes it's way out, and you'll see what I mean. I said he blamed others (specifically "their plans, their targets, their structures") in his first answer, not throughout the whole evening. It was just a pretty jaw dropping thing to do in the context of no one looking to relitigate things. It's like no one's ever taught him the whole vague "mistakes were made, but we're gonna learn from them and come back stronger" spiel. If I could sum up the overall way he was presenting himself with one word, I'd go with "Crikey!".

It definitely is the plan. Tonight looked pretty clearly about seeking permission to go for it. They're obviously nervous about the reaction so they're doing their best to make it go well. It's good that they're nervous, mind - we should be doing all we can to use that and make sure the result is top class in every way.

They had an event at stack tonight, broadcast online too. The main event was most of the leadership team being interviewed on stage together. Eales, Mitchell, Silverstone, COO, CFO. Plus legends later (Cisse) and women footballers. To be honest I didn't realise most people weren't aware of it. Would've approached it differently if I'd realised it wasn't already being discussed.

Well, if we're going with that line, I found it very surprising that he's still wanting to drag up old arguments in public about everything in the summer being everyone else's fault. Because that was literally his first contribution to the evening, off a total soft ball from Raisbeck. Then I think it was his second or third answer where he was going on about how the transfer market must have changed a lot because he hadn't expected it to be so difficult coming here when he did - which didn't exactly make him sound like a European sports director with his finger on the pulse. Honestly, it would be easy to make him look a lot worse...

I don't really want to get into a discussion about the role of sports directors again, but if we can't judge him on his public conduct, and the blowback resulting from it, or on the outcome of transfer windows (because according to some, Eddie is bullying him into trying to sign Guehi again), what can we judge him on? That's not a problem with Paul Mitchell, by the way, I'd ask that question about anyone with his job.

The engagement's basically great, and I've gone out of my way to not eviscerate Mitchell considering where my opinion of him has been at. I'm moving from thinking he's a snake towards that he's surprisingly socially awkward, which is a promotion. It's far easier to believe now that the set piece interview he did for the press was genuinely a comedy of errors rather than a political attack.

Ah, not liking a thing but not knowing what to do about it still being a thing.