Shak

Absolutely brilliant from Almiron. Longstaff man, such a clogger.

Is Moukoko an out and out striker or could he play wide in a front three? Would love a left footer who can play either as a striker or on the right.

If we do make a big name signing out of the blue I'd expect it'll be someone that we've been linked with in the past. Isak and Botman had both been linked before so we do seem to have long term targets in mind and then make our move when the opportunity arises. Diaby or Maddison would certainly fit that description and either would be a massive addition. I suspect the discussion right now is around potentially moving forward some of the money earmarked for summer recruitment and trying to get them in now and spending more modestly in summer if necessary. Yesterday must have been a pretty stark illustration of how bad our squad is beyond the first dozen or so players. I obviously hope we do move that money forward and sign a couple of quality players but I suspect they'll only do so if it's one of their primary targets and if the price is one they feel comfortable with.

Me too? Have said for a while my ideal signing would be a left footed right winger who is comfortable playing as a striker too. Not sure who though.

Think one midfielder and someone like João Pedro and I'd be happy. Some youngsters signed with an eye on the future would be great too but in terms of players who are going to play a lot we need two or else we're going to have to be incredibly lucky with injuries. I'd prefer Maddison and leave Bruno as a 6 but I'd be happy with Tielemans too. Pedro is actually an excellent shout because I believe he can play as a striker or out wide? Would reduce the chances of seeing Wood play significant minutes. Bruno, Joelinton, Tielemans/Maddison as the three first choice midfielders. Willock and Longstaff backups. Five players for three spots. ASM - Wilson - Miggy front three with Isak and Pedro in contention too. Again, five players for three spots. In reality, Isak will almost certainly be first choice sooner rather than later but there'll be more than enough game time for all five of those when you consider the injury history of some of that group and how physically demanding these roles are with the way we play.

Fairly confident Joelinton at LW is not going to be the plan. Maybe the odd away game against really strong teams where we want to set up more defensively but that'll be it IMO. He's only getting games there because ASM and has been injured and we've had no other options with Isak injured and Murphy being awful when he gets on the pitch IMO. That paired with Longstaff emerging as someone who can do a decent job in CM has meant that Joe on the left made some sense. We missed him a lot in CM against Arsenal IMO. He was a huge part of why we were able to go blow for blow with Man City earlier in the season IMO, just a relentless presence in the middle of the park. If I had to guess I'd say the plan was possibly for ASM on the left and Ritchie in CM yesterday before Maxi came down I'll. Although if there's anything to the rumours that ASM was angry that he wasn't starting then maybe not.

If we could get a couple of CM options in I'd love to see him used more as a winger, at least in the short term to move Murphy down the pecking order.

Just noticed that if we do win and make the semi final we won't have a game between the two legs. Semi final would be January 25th and February 1st. The weekend between those two fixtures is FA Cup 4th round. Would be huge to have the week to prepare and make sure everyone is fresh.

He'll carve out a nice career for himself if he avoids injury but I'll be amazed if he ever plays much for us given where we're expected to operate in the coming years. We're all excited because he looked good in the fourth tier of English football last year. A product of our fanbase as a whole being absolutely starved of quality coming from our academy for so long. There's way too much expectation on him when in reality I don't think he should be seen as quite an exciting a prospect as he is. He's not even that young.

Spent all evening thinking about this post. Wood and Murphy are absolute garbage and if they play significant minutes in the run-in we'll not finish top four IMO.

Wood's shot just landed in my back garden and broke my glass table FFS.

Looks like he'd add absolutely nothing to Sheffield Wednesday's team.

Was mostly just a roundabout way to call Mike a cunt.

All people named Murphy are cunts, we can all agree.

Just jogged along waiting to lose it. He'd not good enough to even be a squad player.

Quite a lot of smoke around this tbh, really hope it's a mix-up. I've felt for a while he'll be gone in the summer anyway but it would be a bit of a blow in the second half of the season.

Torn to pieces and 20 minutes are both an overstatement IMO. Could easily have gone behind early but Howe changed it quickly and then it settled down and was pretty even after that I thought. Point is that no team has come out and dominated us, we generally give as good as we get until we have to start making subs.

Absolutely, I'll be quite disappointed if we don't get a couple who'll improve the first team. I'd love to see us go back in for Diaby, personally. Seems he's a long term target but it's been quiet. Leverkusen look mid table bound so might be willing to let him go now? I guess the theory is that Almiron has likely played himself into being a starter but our depth up front is shocking and Almiron being the only left footed winger isn't ideal IMO. Think it would impact Trippier a lot of he went out, we get great balance on that side from someone with a dangerous left foot cutting inside and Trippier overlapping. We know Howe likes to bed players in slowly and with Miggy in such great form it'd be an ideal time to bring Diaby in if he is a long term target. Even with a fully fit squad we basically have ASM, Almiron, Isak and Wilson for three spots on the field and then a massive drop off in quality. Joelinton I'm actually comfortable with starting on the left in some games but he's better in CM IMO. We need another attacking player that can actually do something rather than just be hard working warm bodies in Murphy and Wood. The Arsenal game was the latest in a number of games against the better sides in the league that have followed the same pattern. We've basically matched or been better than everybody we've played this season for the first hour or so. However, our style of play means our lads wear down and fresh legs are needed. This is especially true against good teams where we don't have as much of the ball. The Man City home game, the Man U away game, Liverpool away game and Arsenal away game all followed more or less the exact same pattern. Evenly matched game for an hour with the other team finishing strong and looking the far more likely to score. The Liverpool game they got through. Man U should have but for an awful miss by Rashford, they had other chances too. We were hanging on against Arsenal too. All of those games we had Wood and Murphy on for the closing stages and in all of them once those two were on teams basically didn't have to worry about us as an attacking force and really took the game to us. The only exception was the Man City game that I thought we could have won and the key difference there was ASM was still on the pitch. Anyway, where was I? Yeah, buy a winger. We're frightfully light up there and it'll end up costing us. Diaby would be ideal but if that's not realistic at least get someone who we won't all be collectively heartbroken to see coming on with twenty minutes left. A starting CM to partner Bruno and Joelinton with Willock and Longstaff as cover.

I expect that's what the plan is long term, for sure. However the idea of such a philosophy is that you'll always have a player or two that was signed a year or two previously that's ready to break into the first team and hopefully improve you or replace a player who needs to move on for one reason or another. Problem is that it's a new philosophy for us so we don't currently have signings from a couple of years ago that are taking that leap forward right now. If we want to improve the team in the short term, we'll need to sign players who are much more ready. You of course sign the youngsters yoo. We've added Kuol so far and I'd guess we'll add a couple more teenagers in the coming weeks but I doubt we're looking at this kid Varela as somebody that's going to give us another gear this year in our attempts to finish top four. They're long term investments that we should be bringing in two or three of every window and hoping develop into PL quality options. Combine that with being willing to sign more established and pricier players to fill the biggest holes in our squad when necessary and I think we'll build a very good team.

Can definitely see why we were after Gallagher, the little press mentalist.

To be fair to ASM you can very much see he's trying to become the player Howe wants him to be. Really trying to play with his head up more, make the pass when it's the right move. Would give me a lot of hope that he can learn the other things that we'll need from him to be someone who can play every game. He's obviously got the athleticism to press effectively and he's a strong lad so there's no reason he can't become an effective presser if the mentality is right and there are signs that it might just be. Will be very interesting to see if he starts the Fulham game if he comes through the next two games unscathed. I certainly hope he does.

18 months with the way your cardigan game is coming together.

Seems a great time for Isak to be coming back, by the way. Some very obvious situations to give him short run outs off the bench and be ready for the Fulham game. He'll probably still be on the bench for that Fulham game but hopefully ready to really contribute.

Gonna be an interesting one, this. Don't really want us to go too weak, I'd like to have two irons in the fire in terms of winning a cup this year. Really, really would be great if we got a couple of signings in this week, would fe much more confident in our ability to compete on multiple fronts.

Our 8 draws do stand out like. More than Arsenal, City and Man U have combined. Suppose the positive way to view it is that they're games other teams are losing. Good round of fixtures for us, though. Liverpool losing while we get a point at Arsenal is great. Man U have some really tough fixtures coming up, while our next four are favourable. God I hope we bring in a couple of really good additions this window. The drop off from our 11th best player to our 15th best player is fucking immense. I've no fear of any team. We'll probably lose games before the end of the year but we'll show up and give anyone a game with Howe in charge. I just hope we have the quality to get as much from our play as a team as we can.