TRon

He was at fault for both goals, so no matter what he did right, pretty hard to overlook that.

Agree. We can criticise Isak for missing chances, but strikers will have spells where they miss chances, even Haaland is going through a lean patch by his standards. We need to be less reliant on one player and look across the whole front line for culpability. Not sure Barnes is the answer either unfortunately, he's looking increasingly like a one trick pony.

But that means Kelly is shit so we don't really win either way. Burn might not be the silkiest footballer but he does defend well and is important at set pieces. We shouldn't fall apart in one game where he is out, so it's an indictment of his replacements as much as an endorsement of his abilities.

When you look across the players we are starting with it shouldn't really be that much of a surprise though. Longstaff, Joelinton and Bruno have never been prolific, and neither has Willock since his loan season where everything he touched went in. Gordon was great last season, but Miggy had one great season as well, he needs to prove he's not a one season wonder. Barnes can score goals, but opponents know how he scores them now, they'll just show him outside every time. We really are relying on Isak mostly and it shows. Very risky throwing players forward if we don't have end product, it just gives opponents loads of space to punish us on the counter.

Yep. This is exactly the sort of games we were seeing previously which saw us drop to 12th in the table. Lots of disjointed attacking play, lose the ball and then be left wide open for the counter. It looked like we had put it behind us with the return of Willock and Longstaff to give us some balance, but we were back to the same chasing shadows as prior to the Chelsea cup win. What makes it worse, we had what looked a really strong bench, but every change seemed to make us worse.

The last thing they need is another midfielder who lacks pace tbh.

We don't need a replacement, Longstaff is there and we have fabulous winning stats when he starts remember?

We do try to keep playing a certain way tbf, but some teams know how to counter it, and then we end up looking non-plussed and don't really have any answers.

He did try and play him every week before he got banned tbf. It just hasn't really worked with Bruno has it?

He's not been let down, we've given him more money than we should have if anything, and ended up having to sell players just to stay on the right side of PSR. There's been laws brought in specifically to stop us making signings so I don't think you can say he's been let down. The way PSR works he's going to have to get used to selling players more readily and get used to the idea of buying unproven players with a high ceiling.

The problem is he doesn't look capable of even stand-in material. We've had Lascelles and Krafth come in and do a job when called on, this lad doesn't even look like a centre half. I'm sure he's better than what we've seen so far, but he looks like a deer in headlights at the moment.

Everyone can miss chances. It's the lack of threat otherwise that's the problem. He's hardly giving full backs sleepless nights with his trickery or deliveries from wide.

We've seen it in too many games this season. Push high, lose possession through poor control and get cut to ribbons on the counter.

He just looks too small to stand up to the really powerful CFs in this league. It's not the first time he's been bullied in the air.

It wasn't the loss though, it was the total lack of control in the game. Something we hoped we'd seen the back of after the last couple of wins. We were all over the place, and that is always going to come back on the manager.

Not if he's going to be replaced by Murphy.

Murphy was fucking horrific like.

He's a one trick pony unfortunately. We should sell this summer while we can get our money back.

Might have cost us Europe by then.

Sorry like but that was abysmal. The team was chasing shadows as soon as we went behind.

Can't argue really, they were miles better.

Getting absolutely rinsed by former best mate Paqeta all game.

They did. There's so much for them to talk about with Man City losing so badly, Liverpool flying and Amorin's debut against Ipswich which would have been pencilled in as a debut victory for the new boss....but alas....

That's not making up the shortfall though, that's just trying to do other things better....which all the competition will be trying to do as well. Man U being the only other club having the capacity is fair enough. But would be interesting to see how the other clubs fighting for honours address that. As has been pointed out since, it's not just the capacity on game days, it's all the other commercial revenue the modern arenas offer as well.

If the Premier league was just made up of English players we'd be gold.