stozo

Great news. Puts an end to all speculation. Hopefully Howe rewards us with a cracking 26/27 season.

I doubt we will, in the sense that we haven’t really been able to play our style this season because our attack hasn’t functioned. But you look at our good seasons and regular features have been things like fast transitions and headers from crosses. Woltemade is neither fast nor particularly good in the air. I think our attack will be better next year but I can’t see it being one particularly well suited to Woltemade.

Brilliant again today. I think he's quite possibly now our starting striker for next season. Not least because he's utterly impossible to value - too little evidence to justify a £50m fee, but too much potential for us to really sell for anything shy of that.

Today sums up the conundrum for me with him - where do you play him? He's not a target man or a counter attack threat - so he doesn't get on as a striker. And his midfield performances are not at the level of the natural midfielders. So he ends up getting no minutes. My suspicion is he leaves on loan for Bayern in the summer and then smashes in 20+ goals next season for them. I think he'd be wonderful in a team that commands 70%+ possession regularly and creates several chances per match in the box. But is that really going to be our style next season?

What do you even make of today? Dismal miss but got an assist, seemed to press better than he has done in a while and was constantly making decent runs on the line. I thought it was notable everyone went to him after the Barnes goal - I think team senses his confidence is on the floor and went out the way to appreciate him setting up Barnes (while he only just about got that pass off, I do think he deserves some praise for not just taking a shot he had very little chance of scoring).

The weird thing about today is he was very poor but equally I left the game thinking he was our best keeper. Cost us one goal, narrowly avoided disaster on another but then made two or three incredible saves that I'm not sure Ramsdale makes. No way he's #1 next season but I think he's the best of a bad bunch for the rest of the season.

First off, the only job to do today was win, and we did it. In my view, the difference maker here was two things we've had very few of this season. 1. An early goal. 2. A second goal. The performance was not great overall but getting a two-goal cushion in the first half gave us something to defend. Today felt like the first time this season we've accepted we're an average team in a league of very average teams. We worked really hard, rode our luck at times but in the end ground out a really important win. I think we were a bit more streetwise than we have been at home recently and that made a difference. But equally, I don't think the actual quality of our game was much different to what we've delivered in recent home games. We just got a bit more lucky and then weren't as naïve as we've sometimes been in recent weeks.

We’ve been incredibly fragile defensively for months, so I imagine the thinking is play a full back who largely stays in his own half and will be the biggest player on the pitch at set pieces. It’s tough on Hall who is not the reason for our problems, but today is batten down the hatches and get a result stuff. Nice football is over until next season post-rebuild.

No problem with the lineup. The only job today is don’t get beat and we’ve clearly gone with an XI that is very defensive while offering a bit of pace on the counterattack.

Big interview here. Main news out of it seems to be he feels like he came back too soon from his knee injury and that has hampered him this season - but he's committed to the club and wants to improve next season.

The bizarre thing about yesterday was I thought we looked miles better with him in goal but then he drops an absolute clanger. Sadly I think that’s the story of this season for him - generally good but too many big mistakes. It kind of worked in previous seasons where we only had one or two bad errors per season but we are on four or five now this year.

It’s very easy to say that but he’d have had to guide it on the volley still which is an objectively harder technique than going for power. I also don’t think guiding the ball improves the chances of scoring much - if you look at where the ball lands and where Raya is stood, the only place to really guide it is the very left of the goal which is a tough shot (because the ball is moving left and the way he has had to open his body to sight the ball, pretty much the entire right side of the goal is impossible).

I think it’s easy to have that take watching it live but having watched it a few times now, Raya is two yards in front of him when he volleys and is coming out of his goal. He volleys it at two or three foot in the air, so if he waits for it to bounce the chance is gone completely. The other thing I noticed watching it back is Woltemade’s ball is moving to the left all the time. So not only is it a dropping volley over his shoulder but it’s also forcing him to move laterally and the further left the ball travels, the tougher the angle becomes on his stronger foot. I think it’s probably a chance a Premier League striker only scores 20%-30% of the time max.

Thought he did well today. Caused one of the best CB’s in the league problems. Big year coming for him next season (assuming we don’t flog him for £40m to fund the rebuild).

I’m not sure I agree with the miss being inexcusable. He’s having to volley the ball that’s coming over his shoulder. Isak misses that last season and I think our view would be ‘Annoying but he’ll score the next one’. Problem for Wissa is that comes after four months of nothingness. I actually thought he looked fairly decent, and the run for the chance (peeling off the shoulder of the defender, right on the edge of the line) is exactly what we need more of.

Feels like I'm in a different universe having watched the match without looking on here and social media. Thought we played well, come on here to see people saying 'utter shite' and stuff like that! Not a great performance by any means but we were the better side against the team that is going to win the league or finish runner-up. Looked at the xG to see if I've somehow completely miswatched the game, but no, we won that 0.9 to 0.6. Loads to work on still but that was an acceptable performance for me.

This is kind of what frustrates me about the managerial options discussion - neither of them would come here and even if they would, they'd be the wrong choice. Both are fundamentally unobtainable (for various reasons) but why on earth would we appoint either of the two people who will be the number 1 choices for the Liverpool, Arsenal and Barcelona jobs respectively? You could literally appoint Fabregas, he has a wonderful season where we finish 3rd and get CL again, and then Flick retires from Barcelona and he's on his way and we're back to square one. One of the many things I love about Eddie Howe is he has shown absolutely no sign of betraying us - at various points he could have had his agent out there talking him up for the Chelsea, Man U etc. jobs and there has never even been a hint of that.

Can we just please draw a game? Five league games in the past 2 months (Everton, Brentford, Sunderland, Palace and today) where we've gone all in for a winner and ended up losing the game. I just feel like we're chasing something that isn't there in these games and end up leaving ourselves exposed. After all the pressure Howe has been under, I'd have bitten your hand off for 1-1 today - but the minute we equalised the only thing any player seemed to think about was how we could get a winner. And because we don't have much craft, that chasing the winner ends up just being us being overly aggressive in the press, playing too high up the pitch and making risky decisions with the ball. It's a mentality that has delivered some great stuff for us in recent years, by my god it's killing us at the moment.

You are completely right, technically. But let's review PIF's appointments. In five years, we've had three Directors of Football and three CEOs (if you count Staveley as effectively operating as the CEO). If you look at other roles - U21 Manager/Lead Coach, for example - we've been through six managers in five years. If you look at the PIF appointments as a whole, Howe is about the only one one where you'd say 'Yeah, they've got that bang on'. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence. You also have the problem that the 'football man' leading the appointment will likely be Wilson, who is widely reported to have got the job because of his relationship with Howe and beyond that has a pretty chequered record.

Surely not viable given he won't give us a 'Yes' until post-WC? Which presumably means you are looking at no new manager until a month into the transfer window?

Doesn't meet the realistic criteria though, presumably? He's the heir apparent to both the Barca and Arsenal jobs, so why would he come here?

Maresca is widely tipped for the City job at the end of the season, so I am assuming not realistic.

To start with, I firmly believe Howe should be the manager next season. He deserves, after all he has achieved, a summer to reset and get it right in my view. BUT there is clearly an appetite for some fans for change, so who are people realistically thinking we should go after? My absolute loyalty to Howe aside, I would assume Iraola is the best realistic candidate?

I think in a normal season, or even in a match we didn’t lose, people would be a bit more level headed about Botman today. Largely very good and then had 1 second of madness. He’s very clear got hold of him because he’s expecting the attacker to back into him and doesn’t realise quickly enough the attacker is going short. Massive mistake but he’s still a very good centre back for us and will be for long time.

To be fair, I think this is where you need to read between the lines with Howe. The truth is the attack doesn’t work with the players we have, but he can’t exactly throw the team under the bus by saying that with six to play. Every interview, he takes the blame and never puts players in the firing line. I’m sure he wants to say, like many of us, ‘Fuck me, we badly need the summer transfer window’ but he’s a professional. The truth is the final six, as has been the case for the most of the season, will be ‘grind them out’ games decided by a single goal. There is probably nothing Howe can do with the players he has to change that.