80

7 points from that lot last season. Would take that if offered it now, I think... Very happy with 8 or 9. For the full picture, away in the same period is: Wolves, Fulham, Everton, Chelsea, Forest, Palace. 7 points from 18 last season... Got to be bettering that. 11 points from 3 wins, 2 draws and a loss sounds like a nice enough run for me. I'd be disappointed with less than 9.

Nah.

Hopefully no ructions? You do great work so hope all's good.

I'm a big Krafth booster, but this isn't doing justice to Aaron Hughes, to be honest.

Ha, valid point. Howe will be going for it though, so it'll be him or Isak, I reckon...

The Sela Cup is a far cry from the Premier League though. I think the (small number of) games we've had so far have been too tight for Eddie to want to throw him on, and I don't blame him as things stand. Don't want to Tomasson him. Hopefully he'll get 45 minutes against Wimbledon. Can see that happening, with Wilson (also hopefully) starting the game.

Right, agreed, and Wolves away is exactly the kind of game we should be looking to improve upon. Despite all the talk on here about us away last season, most of our bad results were against teams you'd 'expect' us to struggle against - Man United, Chelsea, Brighton, Tottenham, in addition to the really big boys. The major disappointments were Bournemouth (+1 point already), Luton, Palace, Everton ('always tough at Goodison under the lights for us'). And Wolverhampton. 22/23's success was built on us running roughshod over the bottom half of the table, home and away.

These are the games we should be putting away, though. We can't assume we do the double over Villa again, beat Arsenal at home etc. 4 points is not devastating, but it is the same amount we got against these two teams last season where we didn't qualify for Europe. P.S. Tonali absolutely starts this one for me. Anything else is crazy talk.

Thought that was comfortably our best performance of the season. Which you can take as a comment on our earlier games, if you like. The players seemed really well drilled in the first half. I feel very out of step with a lot of the majority opinions on here. Obviously, very far from perfect, but I felt comfortable for about 75 minutes of the game. Most of their (half) chances came from deflections, and we had to score their goal for them. Their attacks were generally snuffed out by our interventions, rather than their players fluffing opportunities. And there were periods of nice fluidity in our offensive game that didn't involve us just throwing numbers forward. That said - and it's easier posting this knowing we won, given what I was saying about showing support the other day - I was pretty annoyed with Howe not making changes prior to them scoring. We were on the ropes, coated in yellow cards and I thought we needed fresh heads on urgently. What happened seemed inevitable, and we should have been less passive in countering it, by getting Tonali and others on prior to the pre-planned slot.

This place produced him

It was slick conditions for catching the ball at speed, I'm not holding him focusing on making sure the ball finished up outside danger areas against him.

But the best part is this one won't go into folklore as being a VAR fuck up because it was never highlighted as one by the TV. There's plenty that goes unnoticed with VAR in addition to all the horror shows we already know about.

Obviously we're aiming to change this, but right now we're the wrong team for him, really. In terms of showing him at his finest.

Same. Thought it was totally the wrong substitution, sending him out on his own at that time, to be honest.

Been wondering about that. Guess the calculation is a bit different as a) he's more reserved in terms of running the club, and b) the family's property interests in the area.

No. Crystal Palace in the first season, I think. Almiron's first wonder goal.

Can't say I'm in love with him yet, but alright overall. Pleased with his assist.

Come on, let's get that win. Should be gunning for 6 from this and Fulham.

Superb today. My MOTM, also. Very responsible in every area.

I don't think there's any serious rupture in his relationship with Howe. Just have to see how Eddie and Tindall spoke about him in that recent video they did - both named him as their player most likely to be a good manager. He's just getting on, in a difficult personal situation that's affected his form, and is one of the few players we could actually sell for money. So they made a solid decision with a view to the future. Not an easy one, but probably the right one.

One interesting little claim in Hope's article was that Freedman didn't join due to unhappiness with the remuneration offer.

Ban?

Definitely. The single best, provably true thing about this club right now is the team spirit, the connection between the players and fans. It's bruised at the moment, but Forest showed it's clearly still there. There's plenty of justifiable suspicion about everything else. But we have to hang onto that united identity on and around the pitch for grim death. Imagine Howe went - what would replace him? At this time, it doesn't bear thinking about. The board and players must understand where our loyalty lies.

Watched the conference. Thought Howe was reassuringly protective of the club and its processes and people. Different ways of interpreting that, but it doesn't look like he'll be knifing anyone or storming off any time soon. He seems to be dipping his hand in the blood, which is better than the alternative. Regardless of anything else about him, I see Eddie as someone who truly wants the best for the club, so his opinions count. It's a smallish thing, but I also liked him overtly stating that he believes the club should sometimes hold it's money back with a view to the long term picture. There have been suggestions in the past that he's all in on short term, 'this season is the only season that matters' thinking. I think that's the first time it's been actively, convincingly dealt with. Honestly I'm just looking forward to getting back to football at the moment. It's sad, but I'm actually looking forward to hitting next summer thinking we won't have to sell, and if we do we'll be able to extract maximum value and potentially set the club on the right path. It's quite funny watching some loyalists shit themselves. Somehow I'm shocked and somewhat disappointed that now is the time it's happened. I think this whole thing is less disturbing when you don't start out from the assumption that everything is always great. There's plenty to be concerned about, but there's still a range of possible explanations, and some of them are still honourable - given everything else, I think we should dig in with support; I think the alternative will do more harm. Remember the good old days - 8 weeks ago - when people were convinced June was a well planned trick designed to mislead the media about our secret war chest?