Shak

In the current squad I'd probably agree with you. If Bruno is back on Sunday I'd like to see him, Joe and Longstaff as the midfield three with Longstaff sitting. Long term, nobody is suggesting him being the "destroyer" though, looking at the DM as simply a midfielder who defends is a bit antiquated. Were players like Pirlo and Modric wasted playing from deep? Not to say he can reach that level but having a player who's always ready to receive the ball and can pick a pass at will to get the ball to our attackers in good position is massively beneficial to a team, and certainly the way Howe wants us to play. Having a beast like Joelinton allows us to have a player like that without being weak in terms of ball winning in the centre of the park. Again, in the short term I'd like us to see Bruno play more advanced. We need him there with the current squad. But say by this time next year we'd signed an attack minded midfielder like Maddison and a RW like Diaby, the thought of Bruno from deep feeding an ASM, Isak and Diaby front three sounds immense to me.

Joelinton has a chance to stay in the team for a long time IMO. He's not a classic holding midfielder obviously but he's the kind of physical presence and ball winner you need in a midfield. The thing will be to have him in there with two absolutely quality footballers who we can play through. My current inclination is to leave Bruno as the sitting midfielder just running the game from deep while we get a quality AM in there in Willock's place. You could also move Bruno to the more advanced role and bring in a new DM but the key is that whoever you bring in is more of a deep sitting playmaker, not a destroyer. Joe is going to look limited when we need more of him in attack as we have the last few games with Bruno out. However, you saw him against City where he was an absolute monster. I can't see a player like that not being very useful for us for a very long time. Hoping the home game against Bournemouth we get Bruno, Joe and Anderson in midfield.

Fucking zeebs

I mean, even with a fully fit squad our three best options of the bench would probably be Almiron, Fraser and Anderson... Not exactly inspiring.

Seeing the issue with our squad depth here. Our lads are tired and barring Anderson the guys on the bench are so shite that they're a net subtraction even with fresh legs.

Tiocfaidh ár Eitleán

There's no way he wouldn't still be a better impact sub than Murphy. Just sayin

Really fucking impatient to see Bruno, ASM and Isak play together

I mean if we have five points after the next match I'll have some serious questions myself, frankly.

Think given our business in summer it's a safe bet that Isak will play off Wilson quite a bit this season. Could see it being the go to strategy against teams we're expecting to dominate and maybe having Almiron off Isak against tougher opposition... in theory, at least. I'd imagine much will depend on who's available game to game. What do you think his long term best position is though? Do you think long term we'll be looking to buy someone like Diaby to play off Isak or a top CF for Isak to play off?

Fair point/question and truthfully I have no good answer. A decade of ignoring football means I've no idea who plays for half the teams in the league I do however think it was plain as day entering the window that we had a real lack of quality attacking players and to only come away with one attacker is a bit of a disappointment and we're gonna be short because of it. Of course, that's certainly mitigated by that one player being a huge prospect like Isak. The fact that Almiron doesn't look completely hopeless this year is a real bonus, too. I do think quality over quantity is the way to go and the good news is that if we can add a couple of Botman/Isak level talents every window (like we also did with Trips and Bruno the previous window) while picking up solid players for good deals like we did Targett and Pope we'll have a pretty formidable team and squad by this time next year.

Feel the same as this. ASM, Wilson and Isak is an exciting front three but the drop off in quality to Almiron/Fraser is massive and the drop after them to Wood/Murphy is just as big again. Suspect we'll see a few games this season where we drop points just because we won't have the option to really change it up from the bench and that'll be frustrating. Still, quality over quantity is excellent to see.

Think he means we signed Isak. Not sure his timeline is quite right, mind.

Feel bad for being pissed about being included given all the actual Americans that were left out

Suck my peacock.

No nowt about him but seems like a good understudy for Tripps.

I mean, I'm intrigued From what I've seen Ando has some minor ITK that he doesn't overuse. So he's either hearing some things or is happy enough to go out with a bit of trolling.

Kid Idiot more like. Am I right, folks? Am I right?

Feel like he needs to fill out a bit and become a bit more physically imposing if he wants to become a good PL midfielder. At the moment, I'd say he's a decent one. Don't think he's technically gifted enough to ever be someone you play through in attack but with his finishing ability I could see him turning into a good all-action midfielder who chips in with half a dozen goals a year from CM. He'll probably get a fair bit of stick in the coming months as he's going to be playing a lot of football and will be a weak link in the team, simply because we've added some really good players and the gulf in quality between our top players and the next tier is quite wide. Ideally, Willock would be like the 5th choice CM but we're not there with the squad yet.

Yeah but the disallowed goal comes from him being a CF working the channels off the shoulder of the last man rather than being out wide, doesn't it? I guess it depends on how tomorrow goes. I suspect Isak wide and Wilson up top would be better than Isak up top and Almiron out wide so we could see it and I'm sure they'd be fun to watch. I don't doubt that he could be effective playing off Wilson, but he just looked every bit to me like an absolute top class CF in the making and I'd prioritize nurturing that that over getting Wilson into the team I guess.

If he looks this good leading the line the next few weeks I'd be very hesitant to shift him out wide to bring Wilson in. Really, really hope we sign a top class RW tomorrow.

We simply have to get some better options in tomorrow, the drop off in quality when this lad comes on is just shocking. Fraser is so far ahead of him.

Yeah it hurts now, course it does. In retrospect, I wish he had gone for the corner. Still, next time we're in that spot I'd want to go for the winner again. Process made sense to me, even though the result sucked. Risk a point to try to gain two, think it's the right call.