TRon

Goodbye sweet nonce.

Well I enjoy them doing badly so I'm disappointed they sacked him. Hopefully you are right, if they haven't got a clue they might find someone even worse.

If he is, he's our cunt.

I'm reading between the lines. How often do you see Howe commenting on matters above his station? He didn't say it in so many words but I don't think he wants Ashworth around the place.

That's true, but Trips takes all the set pieces because he can put in a decent delivery in the first place. If Miggy had much of a left foot he'd be worth his weight in gold giving us an option for set pieces from the other side. It says quite a lot that he's never even been considered. His left peg is pretty useless basically, and that's his favoured side.

Because it soon became apparent he's a snakey cunt would be my guess. I reckon Eddie sussed him out pretty quickly and tipped off the bigwigs upstairs.

It would have been more compelling evidence if they'd kept him on tbf.

Everton fans through and through, the unfortunate bastards.

Considering his penchant for job-hopping, I'd say it was a wise move to restrict his role. Hopefully that means he won't have had access to all of our intel, although in reality he probably has. The Times was reporting today that we are looking for £15m compensation, not the £20m reported yesterday. Hard to tell if that is accurate, as the national rags are probably negotiating on Man U's behalf.

Definitely an era thing then. I could have typed that word for word.

Seen it mentioned on one of the podcasts today that Trippier has more assists in this one season than Miggy has managed his whole career here, which is six seasons. If that's true, it's an absolutely disgraceful statistic. Don't really want to see him starting games from here on in, although with the injuries we've got he's probably going to be starting most of them.

Savage.

They aren't playing great stuff, but they are defending a lot better than we have been this season, and they have a guy scoring goals right now.

We played some good stuff second half of the season. The real luck we got was injuries which forced Pardew to play HBA every game.

We couldn't manage to get lucky two season in a row though.

Put it this way, if there's a chance of Isak being fit to start next week against Arsenal, I'd rather give him an extra week off, or put him on the bench at a push if there's any chance an extra week would allow him to recover fully rather than rush him back in a game we will probably lose anyway.

Will be interesting to see how Eddie sets up for this one. If we try to go head to head, we will get slaughtered. IMO we need to sit deep Rafa style, then try to release the three forwards on the counter. Given that we don't have a striker available I don't really see how else we can approach it, at least with Barnes, Gordon and Miggy/Murphy we'll have pace on the counter.

He looks a better all round player for sure. But is he a one season wonder? Wilson whatever else his failings, you know for a fact if he's fit for the majority of a season he scores goals, every season.

Solanke's far more mobile than Wilson these days, but Wilson is a proven finisher. Not sure Solanke is yet.

Burn is actually a top competitor, he's part of the leadership group for a reason. He's just not physically or technically capable of really high level football these days. Miggy and Longstaff are support players, alright as back ups, but they don't really have the temparement to be in the limelight when our main stars are missing.

He's just making the point that a DoF is actually far more important than a player who costs £10m these days, he seems to think £10m is the compensation figure for Ashworth. It's actually a pretty good article as he makes the point that even if we did the same to Brighton, we aren't trying to stop Brighton competing whereas Man U as one of the cartel clubs, are directly trying to stop us doing so. He's making a case for making Ashworth stay on gardening leave, but my impression is that Howe wants him away from the club as soon as possible due to the snake factor.

Neither of them are effective at this level. There's a reason no half decent clubs have been in for them.

I think that works fine when we are close to full strength, but when you have so many key players out who are integral to keeping the ball and pressing it effectively (Joelinton, Willock for example) then the gaps start to appear. I don't know, I think there has to be a reason we are conceding two goals a game every game at the moment. Not to mention we look much less likely to score them with our strikers missing.

As long as we have the mindset of just taking whatever we can get that's fine. Just don't put too much expectation when we are relying on too many 2nd tier players starting games. Looks like Schar might be out for a while as well now, not like he's that important.