TRon

Well the rough patch has been about two months long tbf.

Pardew and Bruce set us up with an eight man defence, the idea was to park the bus and hope we don't concede, then lump it long and hope one of those punts landed in our favour and we could score a winner. It's not the worst tactic for a shit team, we did sneak a few wins like that under those two.

Better get used to it, probably what we'll be using for the second half of the season.

I was wondering about him as well, he is 18 so is older than Miley, but I just can't see Howe putting him on the bench yet.

There's Lewis Hall who fancies himself a midfielder, presuming there's not some appearance clause which we are scared of triggering. Also that Joe White fella who we just recalled from loan (I think).

We've done well out of that model but the few times we've been comprehensively outplayed was at Man City and against Brighton, and against Arsenal last season where they just passed it all around our press. I think you have to look at how we get to a level where Man City are at because they've won everything using those principles.

The TV channels seem to go out of their way to pick either the thickest or most obnoxious ex-fooballers to spout their nonsense on the mic, especially outside the grounds. There's a few more thoughtful ones appearing in the studio when they analyse the game, but still few and far between. I guess the common man relates more to your Rio Ferdinands and Robbie Savages.

I meant Henderson, my bad.

I like to watch matches I'm conviced we'll lose as well, gives me an excuse to piss and moan about my scapgoat player of the month.

If the negatives are that he's not great when being closed down, I'd say that's a pretty big negative. That said, I'm pretty sure we'd have bought him if we were able to spend the money, there was also talk of him being too expensive for a 28 year old. Even West Ham have only took the loan option, I don't think there's any obligation to buy.

FWIW I agree. I was disappointed to see him go to West Ham, we could definitely have used him in the second half of the season. But reading that article at least made me feel a bit better.

I'm glad that the Nusa move to Brentford seems to be stalling. He's been linked to us recently and seems to be very highly rated.

Yeah I get that. I was surprised that Maxi agreed to go tbh, he didn't seem all that sold on it. But for some the money will be enough of a sweetener to give it a shot. I would imagine that if the buying clubs in Saudi get a whiff that the player isn't keen they'd cool their jets pretty quickly as well. When Gerrard did an about turn, his club didn't really show much appetite to keep him.

That's fine from his POV, he's got a contract and has earned it. Equally from the club's POV, we need to sell players who are approachig 30 and if we could have got good money it would have jump-started our drive to the CL places. I'd have happily replaced him with Morgan Gibbs White for example, while I like Miggy, my main objective as a fan is to see us get better year on year, not keep depreciating players.

I've pasted the whole article for those without a subscription. Bolded the bits which I thought had more insight if you don't want to slog throught the whole article, but it's a good write up.

His close control is a lot better than he gets credit for mind. I've always liked him as a player for that reason, but if we are trying to reach elite level, he's not that. Unfortunately he's one of our saleable assets so if we want to keep progressing I could see him getting sold in the summer with only a year left on his contract.

If anything, that should make you understand why we didn't go for him. Pep seems to think he's not great under pressure where close control is important.

Yes he was passed fit according to Sky.

It's really quite prepostorus that clubs aren't allowed to spend their own money. If they go bust, that's their problem, I don't see why we need the PL officials to stick their oar in.

Don't think we are bringing anyone in, feels like we will wait until the summer and just hope we are still in touch with European places by the time we start getting a few players back from injury. That midfield is tragic though, and it's only got potential to get worse.

Feels like he's only at 80% since we lost so many players to injury. If we'd been able to rotate him with Barnes now and then he'd be that much more explosive.

And there's your trademark Liverpool fan wrapped up in one sentence.

I can't feel confident about any game with our current midfield. That said, it's not out of the question we get a result, we just need to play the same sort of stuff we did against Fulham once we went 2-0 up.

There is a bit of that tbh, but at the same time, his eye for a pass is unreal. Bruno isn't the quickest but he shifts the ball so cleverly he can still get past people. Miley is already a good player but he has potential to be a great one.