HawK

Toney not being in the top 10 strikers in the league is a mad take, he's quality. What he's done since leaving us has been remarkable, I think some here might have a chip on their shoulder because he didn't make it with us for whatever reason. Would take him over Wilson in a heartbeat. Not seen a striker with so much presence and authority on the pitch since Drogba.

Yeah I don't disagree, but we've got 9 or so games left to go this season

I'm not sure about Gordon through the middle to be honest. I do want to see him right wing with Barnes on the left, though.

Gordon took possession of the ball just as defenders take possession shepherding the ball out for a goal kick without touching it, it's clear cut imo.

Amazing goalscorer, can't disagree. Let's see what Isak becomes in the next couple of years.

Good points - I do rate Ferdinand in leading the line though, he was way more than just a poacher and he completely bullied defenders in a way that Wilson never has. He was a battering ram. I think if Isak had someone like Ferdinand to play off, we'd have one scary forward line. But it's a bit like comparing apples to oranges - up top you've got Shearer and Ferdinand in that line-leading role, then you have someone like Isak who should be drifting about more as others make space for him to exploit. Hard to compare him to another player, he's pretty unique.

Ferdinand

Bruno is our best ever midfielder in the PL era whereas Isak is debatably our third best striker. Bruno would start for any team in the world, Isak wouldn't. That's not to say Isak can't become the player we all think he can be, but he's still a lot of potential right now wheras Bruno is pretty much the finished article.

Thought he looked class tonight

But with respect you're not talking about the 'point' either, maybe it's pedanticism on my part, but what I was saying is age alone isn't something you protect a player because of - it's age-related things. For every Pedri there's a Rooney, there's examples either way. In this instance of not playing Miley and forcing Longstaff to play through injections though, I can't see how 'protecting' Miley is the right call here.

Int it great that two people with a Joelinton avatar are taking opposing views on stuff on the internet. I love it

It proves that age itself is irrelevant, if a player is ready, they're ready. I think you can make an argument for maturity, physical development, player's game not being rounded enough etc. (the further back you play from the front, generally the more experienced you need to be), but purely based on age alone you don't need to protect people. Howe might have meant things like that behind protecting him over 'age', but I can only go one what he's actually said.

2023/2024 - Lewis Miley - 17 years old - 1701 minutes played 13 less appearances than Yamarl and 415 less minutes played. 11 players have played more minutes than Miley this season.

2023/2024 - Lamine Yarmal - 16 years old - 2136 minutes played Edit - Only Gundogan has made more appearances this season in their whole squad.

He's fantastic at carrying the ball, we need him at left back overlapping Gordon with Trips back on the right when he's fit again. He gives so, so much to the team.

Bit of a learning moment from me that, I always jump to the lazy/disinterested/moody/unhappy/doesn't like the manager reasons for players who seem to be underperforming for periods. Playing through injuries must be a lot more common that I would have thought from playing FM at least. On FM you always send them to a specialist rather than do injections, and just play the 16 year olds to keep everyone happy. But it's not your livelihood on the line and you can't save-scum IRL.

Did my ACL and kept going for 45 mins after. What was initially just a feeling of soreness just got more and more sore.

But going hand in hand with the high intensity press is an ability to keep the ball when it's won, we don't do that, we just don't have the quality. So the amount of out-of-possession running is multiplied by our lack of technical ability on the ball. Liverpool and Dortmund have and had much greater quality across their squad to retain the ball.

Came here to say pretty much exactly the same thing. Training with 100% intensity is fine if you're just playing 38 PL games and a domestic cup game here and there, and able to take a rest when other teams are playing in Europe. But with our CL commitments this season, I think many of us were quite rightly asking the question before the season started as to how Howe was going to approach this season as anyone could see training with and playing with 100% intensity every single time, with our full court press style, wasn't going to last. I'm not surprised at all with how bad it's been. Correlation does not mean causation, there's other factors as well of course, but playing nearly the same unchanged XI every game and not protecting players when given the opportunity is something I'm disappointed with Howe about. Using your full squad of players is basics at the high levels we're aiming for. There's definitely some aspects to squad management that Howe needs to go away and take stock of for next season. There's a reason that the best teams in the country just don't simply out-run their opponents like we often did last season, because they can't do it every game with the schedules they have to keep. If we're going to mix it up with the big boys, we need a quality-focused approach rather than simply running teams off the park.

Agreed, it's not just one thing. He hasn't progressed as much as we thought he would. If anything he seems to have gone backwards.