TRon

The loopholes carry the risk of further punitive action down the line. You can't look at Chelsea and use them as a yardstick because they already part of the supergroup club so have more leeway than unwanted interlopers like PIF. Even if they threw everything at it, including a new stadium to bring in extra income, they still wouldn't be on a par to compete with the cartel. The only way to do that is to buy the best players and pay them the best money. Then win stuff. With PSR/SCR or whatever the new version is, we can't do it.

We'll never really know whether they would have thrown £5-10bn at the project to propel us to the top, because the rules were changed immediately following the takeover to ensure we couldn't. My own personal opinion is that they would probably consider it a good investment to do it given they've got the money to do it. The top is where all the big money is after all. In the circumstances, PSR or SCR is probably a safer strategy investment wise, so they aren't going to complain too much. They'll just divert that £5-10bn to other sporting ventures like tboxing, he WCC and their own league.

I really rated Elliott Anderson before he started playing for us, I remember when he was on loan at Bristol Rovers and one of their fans came on here gushing that we had a future superstar on our hands. I think we just couldn't fit him into our system and that's what made him look worse than he was. He seems to have gone from strength to strength at Forest and England. Ditto Minteh, who again looked a real star in the making, but we sold him before he could even kick a ball for us, then ended up spend an extra £20m to bring Elanga here. It wasn't great business.

Looks too good to have no super club interest. If none of them step in we might have a chance.

It's just another reframed rule adjustment to lock in the cartel advantage. We just voted for the one which shackled us slightly less.

I wasn't a fan of ASM just to be clear. That's why I put in the bit about him being less intelligent and harder to work with for team mates than Gordon. But in tight games against packed defences you do need to get past defenders, and he could do that. His problem was that he wanted to do it all by himself and wasn't aware of what was going on around him.

Far harder working, and more intelligent in working with team mates for sure. But Gordon doesn't really have much of an answer to a low block, ASM could create out of nothing. Wan Bissaka might have had a harder job putting Maxi in his pocket for 90mins.

I'm not keen on this either since I think he's one of our real top tier players. He's going to have the odd bad game, that's the nature of his job.

Well it all seems quite shortsighted now. Howe was probably thinking Burn did very well there last season, but he's a year older. Also it doesn't look like we have the same engine as last season either, some of the parts look like they've seen better days.

Not a great look to get out-coached by Keith Andrews haircut.

I never thought we'd have an issue at full back but Burn and Tripps ageing has really caught us short. We should have had a young prospect ready as back up for Hall.

They messed up with the DOF shambles, but mostly the club has let Howe have his way, even to the tune of spending £55m on a 29 year old striker who will only depreciate. I think we are past the stage where we can blame the club for poor performances.

We overpaid for Wissa because we needed someone who could replace one of the PL's best strikers in the last two years. Our plans got wrecked by the injury, but no one could have foreseen that. I'm not sure what other options we had at that point. Maybe we could have cast the net for some young up and comer a bit sooner.

How do you create chances for a striker who doesn't attack the box very often? He's a lovely player but I think we are going to need other forwards getting beyond him to make the most of his unique talent. It feels like Howe still hasn't figured this out either for what it's worth.

Our next two games after the international break are against Man City at home and then Everton away. We are going to need to go on one hell of a run again this season to get back in the CL next time round. I am just not a fan of leaving ourselves a mountain to climb even if we did it last time round.

Well I agree, but that's the problem. PL teams are switched on these days, they are finding ways to isolate him.

This is what I saw. Also in the previous game against West Ham where they were able to isolate him and attack the space around him on the deck. He's a defender, 1v1 he needs to be able to match his opponent. If he's getting overloaded with 2v1 then I can put the blame somewhere else.

Well I never really expect much from Burn going forward, so no complaints on that score. But when he's being given the run around defensively by wide men looking to hit the space behind him, then it's a problem. You seem to think he was MotM today which I find just absurd.

I'm including this season as well. This is just my impression, I haven't gone through every game, but it feels like our good performances are little patches then we revert to the disjointed stuff.

That's why I said most of the year. We've had some sporadic good wins, but it's been more bad performances than good.

Well that's sort of the point. Without help that left side looks really exposed. You can see opposition wide men looking to hit that space because they know he isn't going to be able to match them over the ground. Trips is similar on the other side, but at least he's still a good footballer going forward.

It's weird because I love having Howe as our manager, but most of this year the football on the pitch has been pretty crap. If that garbage was served up by Bruce I'd be roasting him.

How about last week when Bowen had him on toast?

Yeah you could never have predicted that like.

The first one should have been given though. You would think after getting booked already then getting away with one for the penalty shout, Howe would have took him off at that stage and thanked the Lord we hadn't been punished. In the end he didn't even get to make the substitution, the decision to take him off was made by the ref. It was awful management.