stozo

I don't want to knock 99% of his game today, but the difference between the Botman thread and this one is a bit mental. He was largely very good but he's probably the main person at fault for the equaliser - completely messes up the press, gets bypassed which starts their attack and then doesn't get back from there which leads to the back post overload.

I just think that's total complete nonsense. It's a shit show this season because we had a one of the Top 5 strikers in the world who was the focal point in the attack, and the club fundamentally misjudged our ability to keep him. That left us shopping for a new focal point in a very thin market and shopping very late. We've ended up spending more than 50% of our budget on two players who are fundamentally probably panic buys. I'd also adjust your expectations on what a new manager will be able to do. You're looking at a £80m-£100m net spend max this summer. And the people who are going to be attracted to a job at that level of spend are Iraola, Glasner etc. and potentially a bunch and up-and-coming coaches from the continent who have no trophies or pedigree to their name. I think you'd be mad swapping probably our most successful coach in modern times for that kind of choice.

I feel for him today. For 80 mins that's as good as we played against Chelsea. He's not going to fix the attack overnight but we were functional away from home today. Then two moments of foolishness throw it all away. The problem he has now is that people have their knives out for him and there is fundamentally no fix for our biggest problem (our attack) until the summer. So we're going to have a lot of these tight games, and when stuff happens like the last 10 mins today he ends up on the wrong end of a result that has not been a good watch at all.

Same old story in some ways but we've thrown a decent away result away there with two really poor errors. Got our goal, largely controlled the second half and then two massive individual mistakes.

It's a balance. In all likelihood, we're not going to be able to buy players at a rate substantially ahead of sales. To give one example, we're probably not going buy a Tonali replacement in advance of a sale - that means the later in the window it goes, the more challenging inbound recruitment will be. We need to sell at the right price, but also not wait too late that smart recruitment is impossible. I assume our way of working will be very transparent this summer in that everyone is for sale, this is the price, if it's met it gets done and if it doesn't then it doesn't, and that then hopefully avoids another Isak-like fiasco.

Completely agree. If you’re going to completely overhaul the team and management from a popular group, then you have to win promotion or at least very seriously challenge for it. Three people need seriously looking at in the inquest to this season: 1. PIF - they’ve given us a healthy budget but not a ‘blow the league away’ budget. It would have cost probably max. £1m-£2m more to guarantee WSL next season. 2. Grace Williams - aware she only arrived last August but the January business was shockingly poor given our position. Most of the January signings have been bench warming for in recent weeks. 3. Tanya Oxtoby - again only here since late November but the style of play has been shocking in recent weeks and I’ve seen very little so far to suggest she is an upgrade on Becky Langley. In terms of next season I’d keep Tamminen, Nobbs and Sevenius - and then would be open to offloading pretty much everyone else.

This. Given the fixtures next week, it's not beyond the realm of possibility we end next weekend 3 points off a Europa League place if we beat Palace...

They are honestly a joke. All bloody season they've been pretty average for the majority of the game and the minute they throw caution to the wind they look dominant.

Yep it’s very frustrating. If we miss Europe, then we won’t be evaluated by UEFA next season so we wouldn’t face an immediate issue but the UEFA evaluation is multi-year (3 years I believe) so if we qualify for Europe the following season then we’d need to fix the issue (which in reality means a sale or restricting spending).

It's a complete non-starter because of UEFA's rules on what they consider swap deals. Any transfer within a window between two clubs can be considered a swap and the values adjusted accordingly. Villa reportedly had an interest in Osula in summer transfer window but had to back off the deal because they realised purchasing him would result in the profit from the Ramsey deal being erased in the UEFA calculation. I suspect we'd like to do a deal for Trafford but it won't happen because of the Tino situation i.e. we won't be able to buy him from City because that's where Tino wants to go, and we need to sell Tino this summer because he has only two years left on his contract and therefore holds all the cards.

He's 23 and will be a brilliant player over the next decade (potentially not here sadly...). But that's obviously a really bad error today. It's almost worse watching the replays as he's totally in control with Brobbey behind him, he sees Brobbey move in front of him and actually makes some kind of movement to go towards Brobbey but then stops. Total horror show.

As painful as today was, I don't think it really changed a thing about how I view the team. It was just a rinse and repeat of the games we've struggled in this season. Attack was once again middling. Not terrible but not good. And that meant we once again got pulled into a close game. And when you get pulled into a close game, you have to be defensively perfect and we weren't. The thing that surprised me most today was atmosphere. Absolutely buzzing at kick-off and for most of the first half, and then really poor in the second half. Obviously the players have to do their bit but it felt like as soon as Sunderland scored the energy left the stadium, people got frustrated with the players etc. - I was honestly pretty surprised at that given the game was still firmly in the balance. Dare I say our home crowd has got a bit complacent/arrogant? Seems like the expectation is we should just roll over Sunderland and the minute that stopped happening it felt like people were pissed off.

On this topic, I am genuinely excited for what we might bring to the Palace game. First time since Liverpool at home in our second game of the season on 25 August that we'll have had a full week of training before a match.

I'm not going to mind read Eddie Howe - but this is the same Eddie Howe who benched Lewis Hall for most of his first season and did not trust him after paying £30m for him. None of us can know what Eddie thinks but the evidence we have available is pretty clear - Eddie has an extremely demanding system, players frequently take time to adapt to that, during that period they often don't play, but Eddie has an incredible track record of improving them and then them becoming valuable members of the team. If in 12 months, we haven't seen that with Wissa (or Woltemade) then that will be disappointing but I think the people jumping to conclusions about players who who have probably trained for fewer than 100 days with Eddie Howe is pretty foolish based on past evidence.

Time is the solution my friend. We will have years like this one that will have difficult moments, but you have to look at the overall trajectory. I know the club talk about 2030, but I think you're looking at 2030-2032 for us to really compete at the top. Every year we are growing the revenue base, becoming more commercially streetwise and that's going to trickle down over time into having more budget to compete. There are also some things that take a long time to fix. Our academy is a great example where it's been dross for years but we currently have an U15 group that is one of the best in the country. We'll see dividends from things like that no doubt - but a great U15 academy side probably isn't going to give us a first teamer for 2-3 years at least. Anyone feeling gloomy should look back five years. Two days shy of five years ago we were beaten 3-0 by Brighton in a season where we'd go on to finish 12th with a points tally that is only three points higher than the total number of points we have today with 8 games still remaining. We'd been knocked out the FA Cup in the 3rd Round and Brentford put us out the League Cup in the Quarters. We had Steve Bruce as out manager, Callum Wilson or ASM was our best player and only four players got more than 5 goals in all competitions (versus six players who have achieved it this season - with eight games to play). You look at that and the progress has been stunning. If we keep making progress, we'll be in a very good place in five years.

He's done incredible things at this club but tonight was an example of why he's not going to be on the next part of our journey. He was probably never good enough for this level and he's certainly not at 33. I suspect next year he'll become firmly a squad player and will then leave at the end of his contract in 2027 or move into a coaching role.

Totally forgot about the game given everything with the Barca game - but that's a hell of a result and not one I expected. We've been pretty poor this season but are now right back in the promotion mixer. Palace (who are 3rd) on Sunday, so we could get knocked right back out the mix again straight away but equally if we win that then we are absolutely right in the hunt going into the final three games of the season.

I genuinely think the attitude thing is Twitter nonsense. People seemed to be pelting him for leaving the pitch before the Murphy knee slide on Saturday, when he turned to leave approximately 2 seconds before Harvey Barnes, who unsurprisingly did not get any criticism. Fitness I could see as being partly true. We're a highly athletic side, he had no pre-season and then missed three months, so he probably isn't where we want him to be. In virtually all the games I've watched him here, he's had Tindall yelling at him at some point from the sidelines for something to do with getting the press wrong - which could be either not physically there to press enough or not tactically understanding the press triggers well enough, or both.

Honestly, it won't happen. You'd need to find someone to cover his wages + around a £6m loan fee to avoid booking a loss in year. The only team in continental Europe that could afford to do that deal is Bayern. I guess there is a chance they do that with him as Nico Jackson's replacement with a buy option. But Bayern aside the only other place he can go from a financial perspective is probably a PL side - and I can't really see an Everton or Palace doing that in the knowledge that if he does well, he'll return to us (and probably more to the point, I'm not sure he's shown them enough this season for them to want to do it).

Woltemade will come good. I said the same about Wissa recently. And I said the same about Ramsey and Elanga for most of the season. I think both Wissa and Woltemade have been taken out the team because they aren't where we need them to be, and I suspect both will be doing a lot of work on the training pitch. We know that eventually that pays off with Howe. Woltemade will also 100% be here next season because nobody is paying the £60m fee it would take for us to not book a loss on him (and the only club who could/would buy him from a wages POV is Bayern).

This. I think you can throw the baby out with a bath water a bit after a result like that. He was excellent for large parts of the first half and fairly decent rest of the game, apart from that one absolute horror moment.

Have a word with yourself. He was part of the very effective front 3 in the first half and then disappeared from the game in a second half where I think Barca's possession was above 75% for the period when he was on the pitch.

This will be a controversial view around here - but maybe Eddie Howe knows what he is doing? If he can score twice against Barcelona, then I'm very hopeful over time we're going to see a lot more from Elanga.

Proud of the team. Went toe to toe with Barca for 135 mins across two legs, and then it just got away from us and our confidence shattered.

I'd be a bit more cautious about this. Workload has definitely played a part, but the bigger issue this season is the attack is functioning at a mid table team level. I would love if a reduced workload leads to us suddenly finding the rhythm in attack but I think that's probably not going to be the case. Gordon seems to work against teams where we play transition & high press, but unfortunately there are not a lot of those teams left in the fixture lists - it's going to be low block central between now and end of season. When I say chances are higher of us getting 14 points or so from the final 8 if we get knocked out on Weds - I'm talking about going from probably 10% likely to maybe 30% likely? If I was a betting man I wouldn't be putting money on us. Nothing on Howe, I just think fixing the attack is probably realistically a job where we might see a bit of progress in the next few months but probably won't see real change until next season.