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Nothing to stop us hiring our replacement while he's on gardening leave and Man United's plans are on hold for a couple of seasons so far as I can see.

So much oof.

Yeah, that was the first time we properly hit the wall. There was just no fuel in the tank.

Yeah, it was a bad one and he's reintegrated into the team in some of the worst of circumstances. He's not up to par, but at least he knows it and has time on his side.

Grim bastards probably hoping to skip on compensation if he doesn't pull through.

Yeah, it was a few little moments like that that held him back today. At key times he did things that ordinarily would be correct in his standard role rather than what was actually correct today.

Must admit I was worried for him! Somewhat surprised Trippier didn't take it (despite Chelsea...). Was spot on in the end though

Putting the merits of Burn aside for a second, I remember the video you're talking about and you're right, I think that's exactly the kind of micro-coordination we're missing out on since Dubravka came in.

To provide a threat down the left with Livramento and Barnes/Gordon, you mean?

Here's an idea: is it possible Hall himself - as an 18 year old moving to the other end of the country - has a veto on the deal? Maybe he just declared in private early on that he doesn't want to stay long term? His Dad was a boyhood fan but I'm not so sure he feels as strongly.

No blame required if the harm isn't self inflicted. We would not be so reliant on Trippier's assists if we had a dual threat down the left for a change, giving the opposition something extra to deal with.

Originally I imagined we were going for two interchangeable starting elevens to handle the strain of four competitions. Gordon in Milan on Wednesday, Barnes for Forest on Saturday kind of thing. But Eddie's selection policy, even before the injury crisis, seemed to knock that out of the park. I thought Gordon had as good game today, fwiw. Just not the game we needed, but I can't hold it against him. I think with a bit more experience he would come good in that position, but he's just not trained for it in a long time.

I take your point, but he was scrapping well today. Most combative I've seen him.

I get that, but what if we're sitting 10th at the end of the season? That's where things start getting twitchy.

I think the clincher is whether we qualify for Europe. If we don't, as seems increasingly likely, all bets are off at that point. It's not about what we think, it's what Riyadh thinks. It's funny, during the match I got paranoid about that Mourinho interview that just got released in which he spent half of the 15 minutes largely on the subject of us and Robson. Keeping playing Burn is now looking like a gaping wound of logic. It doesn't matter about Burn, Livramento is genuinely one of our best players, and could've threaded some sweet balls through to Barnes if they'd been allowed to share the same pitch. This season has been murder. I don't want Howe out, all managers have their weirdnesses, and he deserves a better shot than what he's had. It'll be unfair if his time is brought to a close prematurely, but life isn't fair, so we're treading a very fine line right now. The board might be of the view that we can't afford to let momentum slip and risk repeating this season next time around.

Struggling to get his head around where to be as a centre forward at times today, not attacking the box. Keeps instinctively reverting to his AM role.

Steady on... He's a lot more than that. Part of what's good about him is I think he's one of the players that will find a way to play and adapt to his circumstances as his career develops. He'll be evolving when he's 31 where others never change after 21. I mean yeah, if you take away his work rate and off the ball intelligence it would damage him badly, but you're talking about a different player at that point.

Yes @Geordie Ahmed, I didn't really feel strongly about hiring him beyond the fact we were getting lots of pats on the back for hiring him. So to me the most exciting thing was NUFC demonstrably taking it's backroom seriously for the first time in my life. I think there are legit question marks over whether he's as good or important as his reputation suggests - everything about him personally comes across like a fraudulent NHS managerial consult - but on the balance of probabilities, he's one of the best at what he does, and his reputation itself is beneficial. If we lose him, so be it. I've got full confidence we'll hire someone of comparable if not superior ability. As one or two people have already said in this thread, if he's as good as he's meant to be, we'll have already absorbed a substantial percentage of the benefit of hiring him e.g. our new youth scouting structure, initial designs for our new training centre/s. We'll know what good looks like when we speak to potential replacements. Apart from the knife in the back, Eddie looked truly unfazed about him not being here in the future.

I dunno, thought it was weird at the time. Maybe another Dan Ashworth accomplishment.

Breaking my own rule here but I thought it was a little vote of confidence from Howe in today's press conference at the 22 minute mark when said that he believed last summer's signings would eventually come good. Effectively acknowledged that last summer doesn't appear stellar right now but that he believes in the long run the transfers from that window will prove valuable. Hopefully he's figuring Hall in among them.

Pretty sure there were articles since that one saying he couldn't play in friendlies and/or NUFC remained unclear whether the ruling applied to friendlies and were worried about making the situation worse. It would be properly ridiculous if he's banned from friendlies.

Yeah, protecting a lead we'd already given away twice. I think it's silly having a go at him over it. It's exactly what Shearer used to do.

Yeah, I'm not inclined to slag off last summer too much. It was a shocker that we didn't get an upgrade on Miggy, for example, but I don't feel I can strongly criticise until I know what our options were. We seem to have a policy of not just buying anyone for a needed position, which I approve of. If the players we genuinely fancied couldn't be had, I can sympathise. Specifically on Hall, it's worth remembering the only reason we got him was the first season was free. So it wasn't £30m we could've used elsewhere for this season.

That's fine. Make them wait.

I didn't think so. Different predictions