Premier League :
Watching Woltemade is like imagining watching Berbatov trying to play well up front for Wimbledon '95 or Stoke in the 2010s. It's just not going to happen with how the team is asked to play. I saw him more than once ask our team to slow it down with massively exaggerated hand gestures today.
We have zero patience in possession and our build up play is non-existent. All we have is sit deep to defend with no press in our half and hope for a counter on transition or bust.
But then, the kicker is we work it out to the left as our defence deals with the most basic of presses into Burn who has no nous on the ball, it's like watching Dummett get passed to who could only kick up the line in panic. Okay Burn is a bit ahead of Dummett in that regard but you get the picture. If it goes the other way to Trippier, it never goes through the middle, it'll only go over the top or down the line.
We have Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro fucking Tonali in our midfield and we can't figure out how to pass them the ball? It's shape, it's tactics, it's patterns of play. It's instructions. Sorry, it's on Howe and I don't see him evolving over night.
Elanga was 100% a Howe signing, an analyst or director of football worth their salt could tell you he was not the player we needed and we overpaid massively for someone that has all the qualities of Gordon but worse at everything.
Champions League :
Been said to death, the PL is tougher than this comp now bar the big hitters. Our style is like the rock to everyone else's scissors. The CL position is the 'what about' counter to any Howe criticism currently.
Transfers :
2 years I've been complaining about us only buying kick-and-run players for the wings. Why weren't we in for Grealish? Granted he got injured early doors but you saw what Isco did for Betis vs Chelsea in the club world cup final, we could have had him for peanuts as they were desperate to raise funds to sign Antony. I'm fed up of saying 'well he's not a Howe player so we won't be signing him'.
Not even touching on rotation and squad management. If his one strategy is Intensity, explain how you're going to press like dogs for 90 minutes every game across 4 competitions if you don't even rotate your bloody team. Why does it all seem so obvious?
Final thoughts :
Eddie is a club legend, we're not going down, but the impact of not even seemingly capable of challenging for Europe is going to put question marks on several of our best players for the summer window and it's that long term damage I'm worried about more than anything.
If we were evidently trying our best and we were missing chances and the ref was out to get us - fair. But it's the repeated mistakes with no answer that's so frustrating. We have one plan and teams are wise to us now. We can only hope but there's just no signs of improvement at the moment.
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Pounds spent per PL goal