stozo

With respect, I think it's crazy to be talking about us blowing £220m at this stage. We bought two 23 year olds and two 24 year olds. These are players who have a lot of a room for growth and only one of them got a full pre-season with us before getting thrown in to two games per week football. It also doesn't take into account that we've been here before with Eddie Howe - there is a steep learning cover to his system and players can take 6-12 months before we start to see the best from them. It probably won't be until this next year until we truly can judge this past transfer window.

They’ll be a lot of dramatic reactions but we were OK today. Not good, but OK. At the end of the day we missed our chances (some cracking Martinez saves) whereas Villa scored a screamer from outside the box. And crucially, given our attacking issues, that early first goal allowed them to sit back, be defensively robust and force us to try and break them down, which we’ve been terrible at this season.

I get it would be huge by women’s football standards but the women’s game is one arena in which PIF could flex their financial muscles with there being no PSR restrictions. There is literally no reason theoretically why we should not be competing for the WSL and Women’s Champions League in the next 3 seasons. The only limitation is PIF’s ambition, which I have to say, having watched the last year or so unfold, does seem to be lacking.

To the point about going for it, can't understand why we don't try to a deal like this - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c0jvv7w6ewvo. Pay the release clause, give her a 6 month contract, part as friends when she gets us promoted to the WSL and then leaves for PSG. Win/win all round.

Found myself wondering tonight whether our lack of pressing this season is not just workload related but also potentially Howe not being keen to press as much with new players who don't yet full understand all the trigger points and tactical nuances. In the second half there were occasions with both Wissa and Woltemade where they messed up the press and PSV were up on the edge of our box in no time with the pressers struggling to get back in shape. Came to nothing largely due to PSV being pretty toothless but made me wonder whether there is a concern that should situations like that emerge in the PL, those teams may be far better placed to punish us. Seem to also remember a situation last week against City where Howe was shouting at Wissa and Ramsey for messing up the press.

This touches on a point I don't think most people get. Elanga is 23. He's been pretty average to poor so far. But if you can get him back performing close to his Forest level, you're looking at a situation in two and half years where his accounting value will be £22m and you should be able to sell him for significantly more than that as a player who will be 26 and hitting his prime. I know the frustration people feel about him not hitting the ground running, but it's a deal that offers us a lot of long-term potential. For those writing him off, it was 18 months ago that Lewis Hall was so poor that Eddie Howe wouldn't play him. Now look at him. I'm quietly confident Elanga will come good, it's just frustrating to watch us struggling and him not able to make an impact.

I don’t really understand the fuss about it being disallowed. He’s offside and literally pushing Thiaw the opposite direction of the way the ball goes. Don’t think it is controversial that offside players should interfere with defenders.

Yeah no PSR restrictions, so absolutely no reason we shouldn’t be doing serious business. As @NSG said, we should be blowing teams out the water. Pay above the market rate, get promoted and then we can normalise spend once we are WSL established.

To be fair, given we’ve done no business so far, the postponement may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Totally baffles me though that our first two games after the break were huge ones against Birmingham and Charlton and yet we don’t seem to have lined up any new signings to be ready for those games. A bit insane when you consider how desperately we need a couple of players.

Someone will no doubt correct me if I’m wrong but I think Eddie Howe just led us to the first season in our history where we’ve still been in four competitions following the FA Cup Third Round weekend?

In the sort of form where if I was Mr Tuchel I may want to give him a tryout in the March friendlies ahead of the World Cup.

He's a very physical player and it felt to me that early booking slightly rattled him.

He may not have been great but makes such a difference that when the ball goes wide he is crashing the box. Makes us so much more dangerous.

What a fucking sensationally beautiful crazy mental performance that was. God I love this team sometimes.

Absolute club legend. I deeply, deeply hope that is not the end.

If money wasn't a consideration, this is the move he should make. He's still more than good enough for a Championship title chasing team and with a young Coventry team having a bit of a wobble, he could be ideal for them. I suspect he'll wind up in the MLS or something though.

Lovely cameo today. Great cross for the Bruno goal.

Been really impressed by him so far. For me, he has to start against Leeds. Know that'll be 3 starts in 8 days, and I can imagine him being rested for that reason, but we are so much more threatening with him on the pitch. He makes the types of runs that Woltemade just doesn't.

I thought he was pretty good today. Still not at his very best but a lot better than he has been and he was involved in a lot of our good moments while he was on the pitch.

I think we are a long way off talking about no Europe yet - four points off seventh, six off fifth and in the League Cup, FA Cup and Champions League, which all theoretically (and I emphasise theoretically in the case of the last of those) offer a route to Europe. I also think this is partly where the penny needs to drop with fans after last summer's events - some of those players will need to be sold regardless. Tino I highly suspect will go - City want him, will offer massive wages which we can't match and we'll cash in if we can get £50m+. Tonali it's all about how aggy he gets for a new deal - it's clear from various briefings out there that his agent is on manoeuvres so will presumably depend on (a) interest in him and (b) if we can agree financials on a new deal. But regardless, the model moving forward probably needs to be one big sale per summer, re-invest and keep building the squad.

I think he'll try Woltemade and Wissa at some point together, probably by playing Wissa on the left, but equally I think a bunch of our struggles is inconsistent individual performances mixed with us just having less quality at the top of the pitch than last year. I think calls for 'change the system' is sometimes just frustration that we are, very simply, less good on the personnel front than last year. Strikers are the most expensive position for a reason and we significantly downgraded over the summer. I think any manager struggles to counteract that.

I think this is where people have lost a sense of where the market is at. You don’t get the finished product at Elanga and Ramsey’s prices anymore. And by prices I mean fee and wages. What we offer players financially is significantly below Arsenal/City/Man U/Chelsea/Liverpool. That’s why Mbuemo is not playing on our right wing. We have bought a bunch of players who fit into the category of ‘had a couple of good seasons in Big Five leagues but haven’t shown consistent elite form yet’. I also think the Isak example is massively cherry picking. You are never going to have every player bed in seamlessly. Thiaw has, Elanga hasn’t. Isak did, Hall didn’t. We’ll get a mix and that’s exactly what we’ve had this year.

The proposed 4-4-2 is a bit like when people suggested dropping Pope for Ramsdale - sounds great on paper but less good when it actually happens. There is a reason nobody plays 4-4-2 anymore, which is that managers realised 3 central midfielders deployed well generally allows you to overrun the 2 central midfielders in the middle of the pitch, which is the most important area for control of the game. The exact same thing would happen to us.

City and Benfica at home, and Everton and USG away have been pretty much complete performances. We’ve also shown in phases (e.g Chelsea at home) that we are capable of playing well. In virtually all of the games you’ve highlighted, the other team set up in a low or mid block with a view to playing defensively and forcing us to break them down. It’s just the reality, and not really on the manager, that the focal point of our attack is not as strong as last season. We’re having to find new ways to attack and win, and that’s having mixed results in the short term. Ultimately, the bar against you think we are underperforming is when our attack was led by one of the best strikers in world. It isn’t now and there was always going to be an adjustment.

I find it a struggle to put any criticism at Howe's door at the moment. First, you look at the achievements. Our first domestic trophy in 70 years, Champions League qualification in two out of the past three seasons, another cup final and a top 7 finish in the only other full non-CL qualification season. That's a hell of a record. And this year, he's got us into (at least) another League Cup semi-final. I don't think we could dream for much more than that. Then you look at this season. Have we been consistently bad? No. Have we been regularly inconsistent? Yes. Some great performances and some bad performances. But I think if you look at the overall picture we're much better than our points tally. We've had some bad performances where frankly we could have very easily earned a point (West Ham & Sunderland - neither side deserved to beat us and both games decided by fluke own goals), inconsistent performances where we could have got more (Man U and Chelsea) and good performances where we could have picked up more points (Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal). We've had issues but we've also had terrible luck. The tragedy is that we're probably drifting away from CL qualification now, but if just a few of those had gone our way we'd be right in the mixer. Then you look at why we've had issues this season. The number one reason is the attack isn't functioning as well as it has been. That is very, very clearly down to us losing one of the best strikers in the world and ultimately having to scramble to replace him. The scramble to replace left us with two players who are very different to Isak and that's left Howe trying to figure out how to make us as effective as possible with one player in particular (Woltemade) who is a very different focal point of the attack. Is it in any way strange that this is taking time? No. It was always going to and ultimately it's down to the constraints on the club, not Howe. And by constraints on the club, I mean specifically that we weren't able to line up an Isak successor or second striker a season or two before because of financial restrictions. Which brings us on nicely to another issue this season, which is perceived lack of contribution of new signings. We all know that Howe has the potential to work wonders on players but that tends to take 6-18 months. Our new signings were always going to take time to bed in to Howe's system, especially when we continue to not be able to shop for truly elite players - Elanga, Ramsey, Thiaw and Woltemade all fit into the 'rough diamonds we are trying to polish up into elite players' category. The problem rests on the fact that we made no first-team signings in the 24/25 season, which means we have nobody really emerging this year to pick up some of the slack from the new group - all the expectation to deliver is on that new group right away. I firmly believe we'll look back in a year and all of the five signings will be viewed much more favourably than they are today. So to sum up, it's frustrating where we are this season but ultimately I have every confidence Howe will lead us through it and that we'll continue to benefit from his excellent work.