80

Thanks for the update, will be interesting to see what happens.

We have one or two Swansea supporters on here don't we? Isn't @Groo one?

Possibly. But I was thinking more of ruthlessness. Certainly the referees have cracked down on dark arts so we're avoiding them, but even putting them aside, we were bullying our way to results last season (think of us pushing Havertz around at home against Chelsea), and spikiness doesn't seem to be so much a part of our game now. We're focused on crushing teams with our quality, which is fine when it works.

We're definitely lacking a bit of our old bite.

I think it's just one of the downsides of Howe being so fastidious in everything he does. Overall it's massively beneficial to us, but it does minimise any serendipity. In my mind there's no doubt that Livramento and Targett would've been beneficial for us yesterday, but by and large, if he hasn't planned for it, he won't have it. We tend to stay the course until we hit an obstacle which prompts a reboot and a replanning session which unlocks another great run.

I said many times last season, and I stand by it, that this season will very much be about learning lessons. Both for the players, management and fans. So it's acceptable if things like this happen in my view, we just need to bank as much success as possible and learn from these experiences so they're minimised in the future.

Arguably the club should've offered Howe some cover at the start of the season by stating that much of our transfer activity was not with a view to immediate success, if that really was the case. On the face of it, it certainly looked ridiculous to have so many drained players out there yesterday and supposedly no feasible way of relieving them. Personally I'd hope we could have more faith in Tino, Targett and Hall by now.

Hoping for 3 points today. Don't care how we get them - the scrappier the better, frankly. But think a win is important for us.

Spot on. The idea a wage cap will help anything is extremely foolish.

An addiction possibly, but maybe not to gambling? Next chapter in this story is Sandro Tonali getting caught having a danger wank in the referee's dressing room.

When they're singing and dancing with a couple of people specifically from Saudi Arabia, I don't think we're in a position to assume they're making carefully calculated political comment. Given the Arabians (Hejazians? Calling them Saudi is like naming us after the House of Windsor) are, at least to some extent, embracing associating with our region and it's drunk men and half dressed women, I find it striking that the response to overt warmth and odd couple cultural interface is greeted with a chorus of simply at the mention of the word Saudi. What else are they supposed to call them? Should they give these tourists the cold shoulder to avoid embarrassing easily embarrassed strangers on the internet? Or would that be a microaggression and a sign of Gammon mentality?

Losing track of what is and isn't racist here. So we shouldn't express distaste for Saudi Arabians but we can express distaste at people expressing affection for them? Aimed more at the STM situation rather than these revelers for what it's worth...

Bit of a sod. At least he knows, I guess.

Any idea how?

Their reliance on him certainly showed up. You could see them giving the ball back to him in the hope that he would know how to dig us out of the situation in the second half. He was willingly taking the responsibility on, but it was too much to ask of him today.

Damn. Big loss. Gonna be rough on our right hand side for a while. Wouldn't be surprised to see Livramento doing some deputising over the next few weeks.

I'm not sure it's him insisting, but yeah, it clearly wasn't happening tonight.

The strength of reaction is strange to me as I see similar things posted on here all the time. Pretty sure STM was just posting that to fit in, in all honesty. There's a strain of poster here who takes glee in slagging off countries, whether Saudi, England, America or Russia, and religions, whether Islam or Christianity.

With the additional benefit of clobbering Italy's chance of getting the 5th Champion's League spot... France aren't really a problem.

Yeah you're right. I was looking for this post of mine, but was going too far back in the season.

Is there a way to search for all a user's posts in a particular thread? Had a quick look back through, he was still getting dog's abuse in mid October. Would guess it was the Aston Villa 4-0 match where he smashed the post where it all began to turn around for him. Suddenly this thread went very quiet for a couple of months.

My memory is hazy but you're probably right. I was wanting him to come in to replace Miggy in Jan-March so I must have had a good reason I remember thinking around September time that it looked like he was the one player I had hopes for that didn't look like he was going to get Howed, though. Then finally his brain clicked.

Was hoping for more of a reaction

In the second half of the season, certainly. He was a very big part of getting us out of that non-scoring lull we had January to March.

You're right, but it works both ways. There are a lot of people falling over themselves to worry for the little lamb and his devastating illness. Which might well also be a load of shite - supposedly there are dozens of Italian footballers involved in this that haven't come out yet, and it seems implausible that they're all helplessly addicted Paul Merson made a good point yesterday that they'll be able to assess his historic betting activities to get a clearer idea of where he's been at mentally. In the mean time, we're largely in the dark though, basically.