TRon

Great post.

It helped that he played really defensive formations like.

At the end of the day whoever comes in is about surviving this season. If they help do that, great. If not, Howe will be sacked, because those players are not much use for the future. Well maybe one season to get us out of the second division. I truly hope Howe isn't buying with that in mind.

Of course he can. Time doesn't stand still, he couldn't even hack it in China. He's about as relevant today as Mourinho. Not that relevant.

The best thing you can do to run down a game is keep the ball. He did that by passing to one of his players with relatively little risk. If he'd lumped the ball forward it's a lottery. How many of those have gone our way in recent years?

Nah man, that's just following instruction, he can't be held responsible for other people losing the ball.

I can spot at least two there who were awarded new contracts and maybe Bruce five bellies hinted they had much to thank him for.

Just watched a replay of the Watford goal again, he trotted back and then stopped right in front of the danger area. He's 6ft for fuck's sake, just get in there and help your defence you fucking fraud.

Well they had at least one more good player and they sold him to Aston Villa in the last couple of days directly on the instruction of Rafa. His own former captain doesn't seem to rate his judgement that much it seems.

He gets yellows because he's too slow to catch opponents fairly. I don't actually have any problem with his coverage of ground, he does get up and down the pitch, just very slowly so he's usually just behind the action. If you could design a skill set opposite of N'golo Kante, Shelvey would be it.

I remember the Swansea poster @Groo calling him out as lazy when we bought him. He wasn't good enough for them and that was more than 5 years ago. I think that says it all about this squad, and more particularly about Shelvey.

Got to admit, the three little mice emojis made me laugh.

New sign up wanker.

Yeah. One thing I am confident about is that this ownership will act, they won't let January go without bringing in as many players as we can legally do so. It would have been nice if we could have done it before yesterday, but this isn't Football Manager. Pretty sure you will hear the same moaning from fans at every club. We'll get the players, one way or another, then it's on Howe to get results from them.

This. He has to recognise that's a massive problem, especially playing his style of football.

Yep. He came as close as he's done to criticising the players yesterday, he said he was disappointed we dropped back to defend the lead rather than go for the jugular. I think he needs to show this side more, people are starting to wonder if he's too nice to be an effective manager. My main gripe is his choice of players to implement his way of playing, we are running out of games for him to learn as he's going along.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. If Lascelles gets replaced tomorrow I'll be as happy as most here, but I don't see why he should take the blame for others on that goal.

Howe was criticising his players for sitting back on a goal lead, he actually said that we should have gone for the killer second which I agree with. The players are still stuck in Bruce mode which is a problem.

That's a still image doesn't show Jamal checking the player who left Longstaff for dead, neither does it show that he was caught flat footed by Trippier letting the lad go after that. If you went to all that bother to trawl up an image to put the blame on Lascelles then I don't think you are looking at it objectively. Schar was watching I see, so he got a good view of it.

Also I'm not sure he'd be welcomed back by a lot of these players. Some of the worse ones who's failings got covered by defending in numbers maybe, but most of them I would guess didn't really enjoy his management style. Would they really pull their fingers out at this stage of the season?

You didn't answer the question, where was Schar? Lascelles got outjumped after checking his own man then running backwards trying to challenge the other one. Not that easy if you understand momentum.

Did you actually watch the goal back that we conceded? Where was Schar exactly? Lascelles was challenging two players, I know that because I did watch it back.

Yep, that's exactly how I see it.

At least Lascelles tried to stop that goal yesterday.

Not sure what his role was yesterday. The crossing was all coming in from Trippier, so I assume his job was to support Wood and get into the penalty area. If he did, I must have missed it.