BoSelecta

So excited to see him play again on Friday.

That’s the thing with being decent and actually challenging for a meaningful position in the league: every game is a big game. The days of writing off fixtures before a ball is kicked and looking to accrue 40 points are over

We absolutely would accept £100m from villa for Willock man. edit: or big joe.

If Joelinton added goals and assists to his game he'd be one of the best midfielders in the world. He's already one of the best in the prem at breaking up play, pressing and generally making the oppo midfielder's lives hell.

Palhinha would be a fantastic signing but he’s 28 this summer, not sure he fits the transfer policy as he’d be big money and worthless by the end of of a 4 or 5 year contract.

Hadn’t even considered Lascelles, definitely a selection headache for Eddie. Lascelles’ attitude and training has been praised all season then he comes in and doesn’t put a foot wrong - squad management says he keeps his place?

Must win today. Nervous/excited already, hope he shakes the first team up a bit but I think we’ll win either way. A few changes and a convincing win obviously the ideal but sneaking it with Wilson and almiron starting will do. HTL!

It’s hard to get away from the fact that if we sign him then ETH obviously doesn’t rate him and we’re giving manure wedge to strengthen the position. This is obviously coupled with most people’s own opinion that he’s bang average. It’s probably all paper talk nonsense anyway.

I really need Gordon to have a storming rest of the season to stomach McTomminay in the summer. I was underwhelmed when we signed Gordon but obviously benefit of the doubt goes to Eddie et al and he’s looked bright/promising so far. If Gordon struggles and then we go in for McTomminay who looks to be a slight upgrade on Longstaff it’ll test the trust.

Let us know how he gets on ??

Agree with what you’re saying but it’s such a difficult balancing act as unfortunately we need quantity & quality.

He’s worth more than £80-90m to us imo. Could only see us selling for stupid money which would be impossible to turn down in our FFP situation. The prem tax is serious these days. edit: but I agree with the sentiment of your post completely.

It's natural to look for reasons when on a bit of a losing streak, regardless of opposition. Could we have done X, Y, or Z; the conversation is focussing around the starting team, in particular Wilson over Isak & ASM being on the bench when we are the worst scoring team in the league since Christmas. You can voice these concerns and criticisms of recent form/decisions while still holding the opinion that Howe is doing an absolutely fantastic job, we are way ahead of schedule and the future looks very bright. As with all online debate there are people who try and paint nuanced situations as a binary argument; it's really not. Howe will clearly be more aware than any of us of the current shortcomings in the team. Isak will start next week and I have a feeling we will dish out a proper mauling to get the season rolling again.

No surprise that whoever plays in front of Burn struggles. I love him but he’s not a footballer and it must be so frustrating playing on the left and looking at Trippier on the right linking up with Almiron.

Said it earlier and feel somewhat vindicated by Isak’s immediate impact; if he starts we’re still in this game. First time I’ve felt Howe has made a glaring error in his team selection. Wilson has been anonymous for months and Isak is clearly a level above.

He’s finding his feet in a new side and playing Man City away. The confidence to play it forward comes with game time.

I actually don’t think it’s outrageous to say we could be winning 2-1 if Isak starts. He’s half a yard quicker onto that misplaced pass in the first 10 minutes and he buries that chance more often than not.

Botman bouncing Haaland there, man’s a beast.

Lascelles is an animal from corners.

Wilson picking up where he left off

Scruffs works as well.

Fully behind this, great post/cause.

xG doesn’t account for the player on the end of the chance or the quality of the finish. It’s based entirely on the area of the pitch the chance is taken from. So a shot from joelinton which goes over the bar produces exactly the same xG as one from Haaland which goes in the back of the net (taken from the same position on the field). The point I was speculating on was that we’re accumulating a lot of xG from set piece crosses which are falling to burn, schar etc with (seemingly) very little chance of actually being scored. This was being masked earlier in the season by Miggy scoring from extremely low xG positions resulting in some parity between our xG and actual goals scored. Now that we aren’t scoring as many worldies it results in a relatively small reduction in our xG but has a significant impact on our actual goals scored. This has lead to a narrative along the lines of ‘we’re still creating chances, the goals will return’. The eye test does confirm this feeling; our xG is flattering to deceive at the minute.

Another thing to note is our xG numbers are inflated by ‘chances’ from crossed free kicks and corners (which we never score). Even in our purple patch we weren’t scoring a lot from these situations and were infact vastly outscoring our xG from the other chances (namely miggy’s weekly worldies). This gives a false impression that we were close to ‘par’ on goals scored and are now simply in a dry patch of poor finishing which won’t continue. I’m not sure it’s that simple unfortunately - we are likely to continue missing a high volume of 0.2-0.5xG chances from crosses; the question is can we find the goals elsewhere? I’d be interested to see our xG from open play statistics from both periods, not sure if they are collated anywhere.

I was stood about 30 metres away from that and thought it was the pub landlord (couldn't see him, just heard a southerner on the mic thanking us)