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It's pretty clear he means the June panic sales, to be fair to him, rather than Joelinton being the damage. Not that I was/am in favour of selling him. To me a big question is how much we would've got for him - I'm not certain it would've done the trick for us anyway, to be honest.

Well, if they say he came from Bournemouth on a free it sounds like they've palmed him off on us like us ditching Fraser or Hayden. So it's a perspective thing, I guess.

Was gonna say something pretty similar to that

Can't say I'm optimistic but we should definitely be looking for a statement win here. We've always underperformed against them and ought to be bucking that trend this year.

It's going to be very very hard to replace him. There aren't many like him at his best. Hopefully Hall can do it one day, but we're a way off from that yet.

It's a decent question, though I don't think so, for a couple of reasons. One, I don't think Eddie would stand for dramatic changes in training, and seemingly he feels more secure in his position now, rather than less. Secondly, I don't think we were all that different to how we were in the second half of last season... Pre-red card I mean, obviously.

I think that's probably the situation, yeah.

Fabian says relax!

I don't think Howe would've picked him ahead of Barnes if he thought there was a chance that was the case.

From this, combined with the high profile Parish interviews and such, it sounds plausible that this whole saga in the media is a made up story being orchestrated by Palace to try and drive a bidding war. Like a last desperate effort. Maybe Mitchell knows something we don't and we're anticipating getting him for less than has been said after all? It's my hope talking as much as anything, but it's pretty clear that something weird is going on.

Honestly, I'm fairly paranoid about this whole situation in terms of how he sees things right now. But bearing that in mind, we have to be careful not to overanalyze things, and even cause problems where there actually aren't any. Things and possibilities to consider in that clip include 1) he clearly was trying at first, it seemed like a conscious choice to stop rather than a general sense of not caring 2) he's managing his fitness 3) he's under instruction to generally not chase back into our own half to retain a presence up front 4) other players did similar things several times yesterday such as Isak.

The arse grabbing on the other hand... Wouldn't have blamed Jesus for getting his team to walk off the pitch.

Yeah, hadn't seen it until that clip. Looked relatively reasonable to me, expected far worse from the noise being made. More excusable than what Havertz did to start it.

All this fantasising about rage and grief over losing him. It's pretty blatantly people's repressed feelings leaking out at this point.

Neither did Bobby Clark, if you're playing that game. And Minteh's time here contributed far more to the club than he did. And arguably most of the others, for that matter.

Spot on. I don't see what the issue is with following a player we had who we didn't want to lose and looks to be great. In recent days we've had posts on here bemoaning losing Merino, talking about Perez, and Joselu, and Ben Arfa. People are still rightly pissed off about losing Bobby Clark for bobbins a few months before the takeover. What's the big deal?

Well, this post has convinced me Brereton should have been sent off and Schar shouldn't. I can guarantee I'd be totally ashamed if the roles were reversed and someone like Gordon did that out of the blue.

Yes, you can't keep missing chances like that and stay up. Was the kind of game they'll probably rue in a few months.

3 points, which is all that will really be remembered of this in months to come. Glad we ground the result out, could prove vital in May. Think Pope was really the difference between a win and one of our February-March performances.

Love me some Krafthy. Our CB situation is a problem, obviously, but one reason I was less worried about it than most is I've got a lot of confidence in him there.

Baptism of fire for him as captain today. Grew into it, got the impression it was playing on his mind a bit at first. I've got full confidence in him.

I know what you mean but I'd say this was the quintessential sort of game you don't want to throw on the shoulders of an inexperienced debutante, so I can see where Howe was coming from.

Missed him.

He's naturally brave with the ball, which is catching him out sometimes at the moment, although fundamentally it's a good thing. Never ever get a sense of him feeling overawed, quite the opposite.