TRon

Wish we could channel the underdog spirit for once. Up and at 'em.

I'm with you, think we need to do something different to shore up the back. Whether that's a back 5 or fortified midfield, either would do me.

Can barely be arsed to watch this. All our footballers are out injured, while Longstaff is in.

Good luck to him. He was never really fully trusted here, maybe for good reason. He did a job for us, hope he gets to resurrect his career in Italy.

Sean Dyche, the poor man's Graeme Souness.

Makes sense as it's always our best players who get injured.

Of course that's why it was brought it, PL officials are basically employees of the cartel clubs. It's their job to look after their interests. Like all cartels, they will only be brought down by international courts or in the case of the Italian mafia, the armed forces would have to go in. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Although I wouldn't mind tbh.

If we really believe that's true then we shouldn't need more than one or two signings in the summer. We might be able to do that without selling. But of course that means that we assume that Barnes and Hall will play a major part next season, although I still see good options on the left wing and none on the right.

Why not? It ain't over til it's over as the great Lenny Kravitz once sang.

That has to be the ultimate hope in breaking the cartel. PIF have said they are in for the long haul, maybe that is the end game they are looking at if nothing else works.

Let me guess...you were predicting we'd get Coventry in the QF's as well.

Man U do seem to throw money at every other club bar us. For some reason we seem to bring out the accountant side of them, if we were called FC Sporting Magedica they'd have signed off on £40m by now.

You haven't seen our comedy line ups yet.

I keep hearing how we will get £20m for Tripper, £30m for Miggy, £25m for Longstaff etc, etc. I said none of that would happen in January. It didn't. Now the fees will be less and decreasing with every window, even assuming any of those players are for sale or will be willing to be sold. We do have players who will fetch real big money, but they aren't the ones we want to sell. But I'm not sure how else we generate the funds to narrow the gap with the cartel clubs.

We might have to sell one to buy two. The sale of a Bruno or Isak is probably the only way to unlock the sort of funds which make a dent in this market.

Depends totally on the game plan and whether we have the players with enough confidence or desire to execute it. We might have players missing, but we do have 2 or 3 players capable of hurting them if we can get the ball to them. With Gordon and Barnes missing though, it really will depend if Miggy and Murphy turn up. You know Isak can put them away if he gets played in on goal.

Playing Longstaff through injury is a weird one. Could we not have found a midfielder on loan if things were really that bad? Just confirms my suspicions that we wrote the season off in January basically. Probably considered the cost of replacements for all the crocked players was going to do more long term harm than it was worth to try to salvage this one.

I think I'd rather miss out on Europa if I had to watch West Ham lift another trophy. We need to win enough games to finish 7th, it's not that hard if we just have to finish about the Hammers and Brighton. If we don't then tough, we just write it off as a bad season.

That's fine, just don't expect him to pull up any trees if he moves away. He's very much a homeboy IMO, if anything I think he'd find it harder playing at another club where the fans won't be as forgiving because he's a local. He's playing above his level at the moment, I think he'd look far more confident in a championship side. Even at a lower half Prem club there'd be a lot of pressure and moaning fans.

I mean it's not hindsight to comment that Gordon has been getting flogged all season because we've been so short of bodies that he's played just about every game this season. That said, this injury might be totally unrelated to getting overworked, but it would have been a surprise if he'd gone through a full campaign without breaking down at some point.

I get it, in theory it makes sense. Just the same was said in the Arsenal pre-game thread as they were playing a CL game a few days before us, and I said then that it never actually worked out like that, for us anyways. Maybe a more even way of looking at it is we have a weakened squad, West Ham will have played a few days earlier so MIGHT rest some key players, or be tired. But overall it evens itself out so let's just pretend we are going into the game at the same level with no pre-conceived advantage.

Ah yes. The old "they are playing midweek so they'll be too tired to play against us". Like Arsenal were.

He looked fucked tbh. He's out for the season IMO.

Well at least he took Maquillo off our books before he got sacked.

I know this is a bit of a wind up, but there was signs that both of them and Schar were just jogging along by the end. Don't think they expected this season to be such a slog.