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Was worried he'd done a Burn when he fell. Still am to be honest. Allowing for the fact we've been crying out for the opportunity to make substitutions, it's a real shame he had to come off.

Agreed tonight, but I think that partly reflected on who was playing in front of him.

This is the thing. People might accurately say no one has called for Howe to be sacked, but when, after two bad results in an injury crisis lasting months we have people nitpicking, inventing hypothetical scenarios about what might take place months from now, and nominating what their preferred type of replacement would be, it's clear the table is being set.

That's the best explanation I can come up with. That it's the off pitch demeanor which is holding him back. Otherwise I don't know as I agree that he hasn't done that badly in his cameos - certainly not hook him off at half time bad.

I'm expecting this to be a long and painful month. I'm not expecting to stop backing Howe. I can't think of anything he's done which is unjustifiable. Questionable, fine, but definitely not unjustifiable. I'm more impressed that we have as many points as we do from games like Man United and Arsenal. Some of the biggest potential criticisms involve him not being enough of a defeatist and coward. Should we have thrown the Man City League Cup match and saved our energy? Maybe. Should we not educate our players to think every game can and should be won? Maybe. Should we lower our standards in training and give players, who might put in less than 100% every day, repeated opportunities to start in the first team? Maybe. But if we made those tradeoffs, I don't think he'd then be the manager that took us, and players like Almiron, Longstaff and Schar, from whipping boys to the Champion's League.

Been saying this for ages. There's definitely something there.

And people persist in thinking human nature can be improved.

To be fair, that's basically the same standard isn't it? "Men can be commentators if they're good at what they do". Nothing wrong with that. I don't really watch much TV analysis now. Not sure if that's chicken or egg regarding the airheads (female and male) they often use now, but arguably I don't have a dog in the fight for that reason. But I just want people involved who genuinely like the sport first and foremost, and then ideally can say something insightful about it. Mainstream media coverage is infected with hangers on trying to make careers for themselves out of it without any interest in truthfully representing themselves, whether they're media studies graduates or ex pros. I never doubt Gabby Logan has a genuine interest. I absolutely doubt Eni Aluko does. Ian Wright loves the game. I couldn't give a fuck what Agbonlahor thinks, he's an arsehole. All other things been equal, I'm sure the vast majority of people qualifying at the standard I set will be men, but there'll be great women in there too. That's fine, we don't need equal outcomes. Most women frankly have better things to do than obsess about football - more power to them. On a side note, one problem with many women media contributors is they obviously feel compelled to cosplay as male commentators to fit in, in terms of the way they speak and the things they say. It feels fake and off putting. I don't blame them for it though, and men do the same thing too e.g. unconsciously mimicking Motson or whatever. But I think it will be a breakthrough if people have the confidence to speak in their natural way and emphasize the things they themselves think are important. Then just let ordinary people decide what voices they want to hear. I put money on it that female commentators would get a warmer general appreciation as a result.

It's difficult but we just have to take the long term perspective and hope for the best. In a sense, there's no great loss as we haven't exactly paid Chelsea anything yet - so it's not a case of saying we could have had someone else in instead.

If they get it right, the atmosphere will be more like Everton away in 2022 which we did end up losing - a lot more bile-filled than bloody Paris' yellow submarine... Being loud and being personally, nastily engaged are two different things. Can't be denied that it's often really hard, especially for foreigners, to wrap their heads around domestic cup matches against lower division teams being highly important and viciously competitive however. It's the discordance that can knock them off balance. I think we'll come through it fine though - for a lot of reasons e.g. their character, our lads will strike the right balance overall.

On that subject, it's another reason not to publicly junk Lascelles too quickly. We might need him back in the team full time a couple of weeks later...

I think he'll have to earn his way back in. Think it would be a bad message to yank our club captain straight back out, goes against the standards Lascelles and others have set about being patient and taking opportunities. With the fixture list we've got coming up though, there's no doubt he'll get games through rotation if not suspensions sooner rather than later. I'm sure he'll be a mainstay again pretty quickly.

Understandable, but then we could just have one of them and get the - apparently necessary - upgrade when the window opens. Bearing in mind we've got Gillespie and others lurking about too.

If we've got that little faith in Dubravka and Karius, I'm not sure why we're keeping them both.

Considering the state of his last two teams then, is it safe to bring him here?

Anyone got the quotes? I could use a laugh. What a week to talk about us turning on him!

Fair enough. I think your answer pretty much sums it up. Our recruitment has been consistently outstanding for a long time now. You could even say longer than merely since the takeover considering the performances we're getting out of players that were clearly being misused beforehand. He hasn't pulled up any trees yet, but he seems to be settling in socially and he's very young. I don't think he's looked bad, incidentally, just a bit overwhelmed - which Anthony Gordon said about himself about last season and look at him now. There's every likelihood it would be a big regret in two or three years, as Trippier sails off into the sunset, if we didn't 'buy' him now.

I was very excited about this. But it's a good point about us having no choice but to go just about as strong as possible against them and not give players like Trippier a rest. Probably no other club in the league would've forced us into that position. That's a bugger. But the idea of Bruno, Joelinton and hopefully Burn up against them is great...

In theory, it doesn't have to be about favouring a specific team, just about satisfying the betting markets in some way.

To be fair, Southampton got a good price for him in the circumstances. They bargained strongly. The fact they had a massive sell on clause agreed with Chelsea was their own issue. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have had him in the first place.

I had to click on the link to see if those quotes were real because I couldn't believe it. Good god.

I'm not really too fussed on the conspiracy side of things. I'm disinclined towards it for the reasons you said, but I'm not proudly anti conspiratorial either - we know it's been corrupted in the past, and it would be more weird if this incredibly lucrative, unpredictable business run by underpaid administrators wasn't corrupt. It's true though that there's certainly no way they could have confidently relied upon a ball hitting an elbow deep in injury time. And to some extent I think the conversation distracts from the core problem of VAR - corrupt or not, it's ruining the game. With all that said, it's plausible that the corruption bidding hit the right price in the last few minutes of normal time. Why pay if you genuinely expect to win the proper way for most of a match? So the refereeing continues in an impartial fashion, lending credibility to the overall game, until a message comes through on the right channel saying 'ok, do what you can for this price. If you succeed, this is the bonus payment". Such a method adds deniability while also explaining a mystery 8 minutes and nonsense handball.

Yeah I don't feel bad today. Last night was one of the greatest performances in the club's history, all things taken into account. The fact we had victory stolen illegitimately doesn't take anything away from it. A proper Viking saga of a match. They were heroes last night.

Really? Thought it was crap. Loud maybe, but 90 minutes of a loudhailer leading Yellow Submarine doesn't do it for me.

Can see arguments in both directions on this. But in fairness to him, PSG never broke us down and scored. Without a VAR robbery, Livramento intercepted yet another cross and we won 1-0.