TRon

Seems like they've given up on any ambition following Moshiri's disastrous attempt to crash the big boy party and are now happy to pipe down and just take whatever cash is available.

This feels like a better direction than the garden jokes but why restrict to a haiku? Dan Dan he was the Man Ratcliffe poached him for his plan thought he was well worth the punt turned out he was just a useless cunt

I feel it's a bit generous to be giving Hall top 4 given he is still quite raw when it comes to defensive work. Mbuemo gave him a really hard game yesterday and it didn't look like Hall had any answers. I think there's more of a case for Bruno, Tonali or Gordon being there.

It was his job though, he was very much controlling who came in and out under Staveley. That's partly the reason she has left as far as I can read it, we have held onto ageing players, giving out new contracts to many of them, then ended up selling younger talents to satisfy PSR. Ashworth said something about having less say on transfers than he expected, and Mitchell said that this summer was also going after signings that had already been identified by the previous set up. From this January onwards you would expect Mitchell to take charge and Howe to be more accommodating of players coming and going.

Yep, I definitely think he needs to be allowed to turn it around, there's still plenty of season left to do it. I'm just far less confident he'll do it because we don't seem to have any coherent team ethos this season. The players themselves don't seem to by buying into whatever it is we are trying to do.

I'm not even convinced Ratcliffe wants to put money into them. Not his own anyway.

Well like I said, I don't really have any issues if we finish 7th or 8th. But now I am starting to get concerned we might finish below other teams like Brentford or Fulham because we don't particularly look any better than them this season.

I know it was a bad miss, but with players of that type you will get those. There's a school of thought which is strikers should just hit the target which works for those who can hit the ball like a rocket. But there's another level of striker who passes it into the net and beats the keeper through precision or making the keeper go the wrong way. Isak is more that type. Although he can hit them 70mph when he needs to as we saw on Wednesday.

There's not a striker in the world who won't miss chances. Point is, he's still scoring goals, and even despite missing a glorious chance yesterday through trying to be too precise, he was still one of our best performers yesterday. We didn't get humped because of him.

The possession thing is genuinely worrying. It means either we have spent a lot of money on players who are technically limited, or we aren't setting up in a way where there are enough options available.

Both are in Europe with all the demands that brings on a squad. It was used as an excuse for our patchy form last season so we have to give them the same leeway. Even then, Spurs are becoming a bit of a joke and their manager is under real pressure. But my point was that it's not even them I'm worried about now, it's not that clear we are better than teams like Brentford or Fulham and the rest who are currently above us.

Seems like he maybe got all the credit for Bloom's innovations at Brighton. In reality he was just good at organising stuff like U-14 competitions and Xmas parties.

I imagine there will be more bad luck stories about missed chances and shock lapses in defending. But for that we'd have won comfortably etc. The reality is, that is the norm this season, and the good performances are the exception. We rarely put in a good 90 mins.

Kind of galling to watch players like Madueke and Mbuemo come from relative obscurity and look so much better in the last couple of years. Meanwhile he seems to have been around forever and we'd probably have to give him away now.

It's Eddie's squad for better or worse. We've made some great signings under his watch, so not sure why anyone would dispute it. But it's not right to criticise those above him for backing or lack of. We've ended up almost getting points deducted for pushing PSR limits, so to say we haven't backed him is ludicrous.

He was pretty competitive I thought. Looked up for the scrap from the first minute to the last where a lot of our players seemed to wilt after the first half.

Looking at their line up before the game, Mbuemo and Wissa looked like they would cause the most problems. I was surprised that we didn't seem to have any plans to counter Mbuemo in particular. He had a field day against Hall, who got left 1 v 1 too often for my liking. I thought we might have doubled up on Mbuemo considering he was such a key player for them.

" I telt yers all alaang but no won wanted ta listen!"

Howe's not going to get sacked this season, and I have said enough times that shouldn't happen. Even the CL spots are still up for grabs at this stage so in theory it can still all turn around. But in my opinion with every shit team we drop points to, it becomes harder and harder to make Europe. We had a relatively easy start to the season, but we've performed badly. I expected us to be competing with Villa and Spurs for those European places, at this moment it looks like we are competing with Brentford, Bournemouth, Fulham and Brighton as well. Then to make matters worse, when we play them we don't look better either.

I'm not sure we are finishing 7th/8th though, that's the problem. A month ago I would have thought that finishing in those positions was a pessimistic take, now I watch us being outplayed by Fulhams and Brentfords and I'm not convinced we are significantly better.

When you say you are concerned, what is the point of that? If you don't like a player, you replace that player. If you don't like a manager, you replace that manager. I suppose if you don't like the leadership then...you guess where this is going. Who would you want instead?

Might also be that we picked up 2 points from the last four games and only Liverpool was against a fancied side.

There's definitely been more bad performances than good ones. The league table tells it's own story.

Howe will see the season out, and that's for the best. There's still enough points to play for to get into Europe with everyone beating everyone, but that's also part of the problem. We don't look any better than two thirds of the sides in the PL. I thought we were nailed on to finish 7/8th at worst, now I'm thinking 10th might be an achievement.

I think the scary think is that I'm not even sure what a midtable side looks like any more. We got outplayed by Brentford today, Howe got outmanaged by Frank. Eddie doesn't look that special in this company, not sure he's any better than the Bournemouth or Fulham manager either.