TRon

Fuck me how are they missing these??

i'd take a draw here all day long.

Forest are more than capable of winning, they have a mean defence, and MGW, Wood and Elanga are more than capable of scoring goals. Their style is probably better suited to countering away from home anyway. But Palace is a tough game, could go either way for me, and I am hoping they will turn Forest over.

You were right first time, neither Miley or Longstaff will start left side midfield, just think lack of pace and playing on their wrong side is something Howe won't consider IMO. He'll either go Willock again ( I actually thought he did ok) or he'll change formation.

Not a bad shout. Hall was a converted midfielder iirc, so he should have some of the attacking/defensive attributes needed. The real difficulty is replacing Joelinton's physicality. He's a beast, and with that height he's important at set pieces also.

They defended really well mind, we kept getting into great positions and put in a lot of crosses, but their defenders were first to every ball and blocked just about everything. I can barely recall their keeper making a save. Wilson's effort near the end maybe.

How do you judge that as LCM covers quite a lot of ground anywhere in the centre to LW to LB?

Does Miley play on the left of CM? You were saying that you wanted more cover for Tino in that post but Miley plays more centrally as far as I am aware, and not sure he would have the pace to cover for Tino even if he did switch out wide left.

Who would you start instead?

I think he is the hardest to replace because he's not just a midfielder, he combines that with givins us width on the left as well. The only other natural player who can do that is Willock, and he doesn't have the same combative strength in midfield. Tonali or Bruno you could arguably replace in the side with Miley or Longstaff. Obviously a step down but it's at least like for like.

Agree about Liverpool's no show, but at this stage of the season you really don't want to be relying on other teams doing you any favours. It's still in our hands and that's about as much as you can ask for.

That's really the difference a top class winger makes though. At the highest level, you need something to break the low block, and Murphy doesn't really have that in his locker. He's more about getting the cross in early before he gets closed down, and he's really good at that.

I've never been on board with us just expecting to win because we are at home and Chelsea are a joke these days. They are only below us on goal difference, and still have some very dangerous players like Cole, Neto and Madueki. And yeah, Joelinton would have been big in this one, he was fantastic in our cup win over them earlier this season. Very tough game, but hopefully our home advantage will swing it.

I kind of like that he feels he missed out here.

That's not what I said though, I actually agree Joelinton is very underrated on his passing. But how many assists does he get or goals? Not a regular occurence which was my point. The crux of it is, we can't play Joelinton because he's probably out for the last few games. So in my view we have to play a replacement, and in that regard I thought Willock did as well as could be expected given those around him were not great.

His job today was to replace Joelinton. It's not like Big Joe is putting in killer passes or scoring goals in most games either. The lack of end product really should be put at the door of the forwards, all of whom barely contributed in the final third. Judge him on his contribution as a midfielder, in that regard I thought he was better than Bruno and Tonali, both of whom had disappointing games.

Today is hardly a disaster, a point was always going to be a decent result. For me it's 50/50 between us and Chelsea, next week's game is massive, but a point wouldn't be awful there either. I see Forest and Villa as the teams we can stay ahead of even if we don't beat Chelsea.

Thinking you might lose to Ipswich or Brentford is being negative. Chelsea are a good team, with some very dangerous players. Yes we can beat them but given the players they've got, it's no easy task. I just find it odd that people think they have somehow turned into a shit team.

Yeah they have a pretty good squad, they spent over a billion on it in a single season. Just seems really arrogant to think we are just going to turn them over.

That's how I saw it as well. Thought he was pretty bright and busy, but predictably he's getting the pelters. I have no problem calling him out when he's been invisible, which he has for a lot of this season, but he put himself about today. The failure was the front three for me, none of them really produced anything of note.

The goal was absolute quality. It was the one thing our wide players never looked like producing on the day, even though I thought we had plenty of good possession in the final third. Just no one was able to do the defenders from our side, and make use of it.

Not sure why everyone was so sure we are beating them either. They have plenty of players who can hurt us, they aren't on the same points as us by a fluke.

Honestly, I think they've barely been near our goal, I don't think it's as big a factor as people are saying. The difference really has been we just haven't shown any real skill in the penalty area, and they did on that one occasion.

Thought it was a good bit of skill from Minteh tbh.

We need one of our players to show some arrogance in the second half.