TRon

They haven't been great all season tbh, if we were at full strength I would have fancied this one. We've done well to be winning with this team though.

That midfield is going to get wiped out.

They would probably have been even better off sticking with Frank. Not saying he's a good manager, but he was struggling with the same injury list.

He missed quite a few before being dropped tbh. I think he's made poor decisions which have led to us losing possession quite a few times as well. It's not necessarily an attitude problem, might just be he's playing poor football in general.

He's probably our most valuable asset right now IMO.

Get him on an improved contract which reflects his worth.

He's fit according to Howe. Just not performing as expected for whatever reason.

I saw him trying flicks and lay offs early on in his return and they just weren't coming off, but the intent was there. A lot of poor first touches as well so to me he just looked rusty. For the accusations he's lazy or just doesn't give a fuck, that would be a surprise, he looks really happy here. I can understand why people would think it, but it's just opinions at the end of the day. If Howe shares that opinion, then that's an admission we made a massive blunder going for him in the first place. Even at £30m you wouldn't want someone like that at your club.

The thing is, he was supposedly lined up as a replacement for Wilson not Isak, so presumably that was in the works before the summer drama with Isak's exit. So we must have scouted him extensively and had a good idea of what he brought to the table. I don't buy into this idea that he's disinterested either, pretty sure we'd have done our homework and checked on his character references as well. So the conclusion I draw from that is, we ended up overpaying for him, but he should still be a top level striker for a couple of seasons at least. Unless we really didn't do our homework which I find hard to believe.

I think we would miss him more than we realise if a club came in for him and we ended up selling. I was thinking about how Olma managed to salvage a point for Barcelona with basically the last kick of the game by drawing the pen, and was thinking who could do that for us? Gordon basically and that's about it.

I see the Spurs CEO is blaming Levy for their fall from grace in the last few years. He's talking about selling players to meet FFP demands.

I'm not sure he's disinterested tbh, it might just be he's not really sure how to play in our team. From his goals videos, he looks the poacher type rather than someone who presses relentlessly across half the pitch area. He has bursts of pressing where he looks pretty rapid, but then you barely see him move after a couple of those. Maybe he's just not up to it physically.

Hopefully this season.

Funnily enough I always thought DCL made sense as a Wilson replacement, and I assumed that the reason we didn't go for him was his wage demands were considered unreasonable given his injury history. Howe was keen on him a couple of years ago supposedly. Woltemade I just can't make sense of unless we are planning on changing the way we play at some point. He does look like he has some qualities, just looks like a fish out of water in our team.

I think we made City look a lot better than they are, maybe because we are always fatigued this season. City have struggled to break down a lot of teams in the EPL.

There's nothing to say we can't get a result there, Chelsea are very beatable this season. Only issue is they do score goals, and we tend to concede them so that will make it more difficult.

He's getting to operate more centrally with Bruno out, he's almost becoming the hub of the midfield. That opens up the pitch for him and we are starting to see some of his ball skills, not just the wrecking machine many have pegged him as.

There's not much excuse for him not to be fit now like, he's been back for months.

Yeah I was quite happy to see us pushing for a second up until the final whistle, 2-0 would have given us a great chance, and we aren't good at sitting deep these days anyway. Although once we got into injury time with only 4 mins left we should probably have closed up shop.

He'll be class when he starts finishing moves and not just playing some nice stuff up to the final third. He had a decent game, and looks very promising, but ultimately he still looks like he's not quite delivering the KO.

We did in that moment though. Our shape was good, and if he hadn't caught Olma, Joelinton was well positioned to close it out.

But ultimately failed to deliver on any of it. That failure to cross to Barnes in the second half with the goal gaping was criminal. I'm not a fan of Murphy but he provided one decent cross which led to the only goal we scored.

He would have closed down the goal if Thiaw didn't bring Olma down.