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It's a valid point of view. He'll be hard to replace. But the FFP madness means someone pretty much has to be sold, and £10-15m let's us outlay on anything up to a Botman+Bruno.

So you're saying we should blame the architects?

The time for being confident about getting proper money for Almiron was definitely last summer. There could be buyers out there. But the points Dropout's making are solid. He's a player who is worth a lot more to some than others, and the day he loses his legs he becomes almost worthless. That said, £15m isn't to be sniffed at as it would loosen up £75m this summer in FFP-land...

That also doesn't seem likely I remember having one or two mini-rows last season when I argued that I would rather play our full strength team in the league against - for example - Brentford away and de-prioritise the CL and cups if need be, to ensure long term success. It didn't really occur to me we were just going to play our first 11 in every single match!

Not a bad idea, but it does seem unlikely that Howe will move off our standard system.

A very close call. Hopefully no long term impact for anyone, but when you have a plane full of people being put to sleep, you have to worry.

He was strained and at risk of injury. Don't know if that remains the case.

Link gone?

It's one of the arguments for a new stadium for me. I think we're gonna have to accept there's gonna be 40,000+ wasting seats if we get successful - no fixing it - so our best hope is having another 30,000+ spare for more traditional supporters.

Precisely, she cannot have had anything like a representative experience of being an international supporter, whether old or new. So what can she contribute? Someone like a Mike or Kanji would have more to say about the historical challenges and opportunities for growing and maintaining this area. Honestly, @McDog would probably be a better candidate as someone who acknowledges he only got into it again recently. It's a very niche type of customer they're looking for... Small numbers of v.high disposable income people.

Twice in thirty seconds, it was brain boggling. And they were halfway decent too.

Looked like he was running with a limp today?

Was having to convince myself decisions actually stood and I could enjoy myself

In another world I think she'd be doing the same thing as him, but I take your point.

Semi-sarcastic, semi-serious - if we all agree our best transfer window was the one before he got involved (Trippier, Bruno, Burn, Botman attempt etc.), it might not be such a bad thing. Nil desperandum lads. Incidentally I think all this "it's impossible for us to get to Tottenham's level" talk is drek.

I don't see why it's hard for people to recognise that over the past few weeks we've been toothless in attack, largely due to lack of energy in the press and dynamism in our moves. Therefore as we tire during games we repeatedly surrender possession and have to defend wave after wave of attack. Conceding goals becomes inevitable because a PSG-style defend forever approach is not sustainable long term as a winning strategy. If we haven't been two goals up by the 60 minute mark - preferably half time - we've been fucked. The only goals scored after that time in a match will be for the opposition. Thankfully this ought to change by the end of January.

Most promising performance in a while. Not that that's a big compliment. First time we finished a game stronger than we started since at least November. First 30 minutes were dire but then we began to settle in and play with a belief we haven't had for weeks. It's blazingly obvious that fitness issues are a massive factor in the vast majority of criticisms you can make of us right now. Whether it's worn out players, players nursing muscles through matches or selection choices. That will continue to be the case for at least a couple more weeks. Just to prove we can do it I would love to see us set up to rope a dope Liverpool in one game. But there's such a lack of athleticism in the team right now that tonight was not the time, even if Howe was willing to consider it. Putting aside the fitness, it's clear Liverpool's players are a level above many of ours technically. Longstaff, Almiron, Burn and Joelinton too God love him. We have to cut our strategic cloth accordingly. I totally agree with people asking whatever happened to our spiky, dark arts-practicing squad. We're a lot less special nowadays.

The real time for that would've been last summer. I'm not sure what we'd get for them now, particularly Wilson.

Have to expect to be murdered here. Would love to see Howe change his habits and park the bus. If we play like we normally do it's going to be carnage. Unless the extra couple of days of rest make the difference?

100%, I thought this would be the case. It's not just the obvious saves, it's the largely unnoticed communication and organisation. He makes them look better, and conversely, now they look worse than they are.

To be fair, mine would be if I knew for sure he was fully fit.

He's anything but half arsed. He's just de-energised like everyone else, but more than almost all the rest he requires energy to look like an effective footballer. He's made several important tackles in and around our own penalty area lately.

Probably not quite that much, but we definitely missed our chance last summer on that one.

Lascelles injury, Miley supposedly tactical.

He would've made a big difference yesterday.