80

You'd think it ranked somewhere beneath Squash until recently.

Heresy

Good summary.

"Do them"? Think it's pretty well established Alex Ferguson had his (often changing) assistant managers handle huge amounts of his tactics and training for matches. Whereas I'm under the impression Eddie, fundamentally, closely controls what goes into readying for each match. This isn't about who stands on the sidelines for the actual match. But I'm disputing that you can meticulously prepare for each individual opponent if you're playing a game every three days, plus international travel, for several months.

Definitely think there's something in your last point. Especially against the smaller teams, I think I'd rather Eddie let Tindall or Jones handle the preparations while he dedicates himself to the league games. I don't know for sure, but I suspect part of this season is explained by him spreading himself too thin and trying to give every game the full pre-match treatment. As has been said, it's all part of using this season for learning lessons.

Nobby has a fantastic line in bullshit Got to love him.

Any patriotic Brazilian - and there's a lot of them - who saw Wor Flags' recent display would sit up and pay attention to NUFC, and their current population is 215m. It's not out of the question one or two of them would be good at football... @Heron There have been indications that the ownership are very interested in the Brazilian/South American market, in terms of clubs and players. It hasn't been said explicitly but I've wondered if they see it as a relatively untapped potential fanbase too. One that functions as a backdoor into the US, also. People here tend to assume all South Americans follow Real Madrid and La Liga etc. But the evidence is that's begun to shift over the past 20 years. Look at how Bruno and co. talk about Rooney and Gerrard.

Reading the full quotes, it looks like a lot of people have been suckered by Craig Hope spin here. It's pretty clear he's just having a chat and Hope is trying to blow it up to the maximum. He's said nothing more dramatic than Howe has about the same trip. There's really no need to talk about him leaving under a cloud...

Seems like fitness and attitude, with emphasis on the attitude, in terms of Eddie's own attitude towards him. In fairness, he'd just been thrown into a totally new situation as a young lad, having left the chaos of Chelsea.

Ok, now we have evidence... Very silly if true.

So what is the falling out story? I refuse to believe anything until there's something approaching real evidence, mind. Some people - in Twitter land and such - have been aching for disharmony for months now. Satisfies a deep psychological need.

Seemingly set pieces are delegated to Tindall and others. I'm a defender of our set pieces generally, by the way. I think people have a habit of remembering Trippier's bad ones because he takes such an incredibly high number of them and usually very well. His stats speak for themselves. I think the thing I'm least comfortable with is dragging him out of position onto the far left of the pitch for corners and the like. Seems to induce far more risk than opportunity considering who else we've got that can hit a dead ball well.

That's something the management have to take responsibility for, mind.

Yep, it's the kind of decision I can live with in a non-VAR world. I thought it was a penalty immediately, but the aggro comes from the existence of VAR.

A timeline came out soon after it concluded. I forget the source, but supposedly it was something stupid like: 1st offer - Free transfer, 2nd offer - £2.5m, 3rd and final offer - £6m. It was a shocker and made telling them to get stuffed sound a lot more reasonable.

A key question. Psychology? Fitness? Howe being over conservative?

He was carrying a heavy load tonight, being our only real attacking quality - aside from full back Lewis Hall - for most of the match.

Supposedly the third and final offer from Bayern was far less. Something like £6m?

Jim Beglin putting in one of the worst ever co-commentary performances tonight. He's been dogshit for 20 years now, how does he continue to get work?

Weak stuff tonight. I'm in the 'have deep patience' camp for him, but this was a disappointing one. Didn't like the positions he spent much of the match in.

Looked gutted.........

From the way he played I imagine he wouldn't have started tonight had there been a solid alternative, in fairness to him. Not his best self at the minute.

Has rapidly become one of our most important players.

Feels great to lose Livramento and still have this guy on the bench ready to step in

Tremendous statement from Wolverhampton.