Ashley17

Is he actually good again or have we just played a load of shite? Good with his feet but barely tested in 4 games now. Massively helped by the new "Tonali system" and us not conceding 20 shots a game like we did in his last run in the team. Mind you, him keeping possession for us is also a big help.

Guess Kelly will know Solanke from Bournemouth? Not sure how much that will help. With Spurs it's not that they can't defend they just don't even try to half the time, obviously they are missing centre halves now but they seem to just play 5 up front and our new "controlled" style will need to be very good here. I wonder if they've looked at playing Tino at centre back? Schar has been on 4 yellows for ages and Krafth has been buggered for a fair while now so they must have discussed backup plans. Eddie likes a right foot/left foot combination in there, though it would be a bit of a kick in the dick for Kelly.

Yeah I guess to the casual fan it's probably quite enticing but it's all very cyclical. If you win three games in a row you're a playoff contender.

I used to find the Championship quite fun to watch but I don't know what it is this season, it just feels crap. Maybe I'm just watching bad games, usually Sky's Friday night pick but most games seem to be played out in half empty stadiums with minimal quality on display. Leeds should piss it but the second automatic promotion spot is up for grabs. Sheff Utd don't seem to have the squad for it but are very good when most are available. Burnley are dull. Boro are inconsistent. Norwich have took a punt on a Danish gaffer and every game is full of goals. WBA draw nearly every week and that was enough for Valencia to poach Corberan. The mackems would have to be spectacularly shit in the second half of the season to not make the playoffs because, as has been pointed out, there's no consistency whatsoever and the odds of 2 or 3 teams putting the results together to push them down the table seem slim to none. Teams who were incredibly shit inevitably sack their manager and whoever comes in does slightly better, see Cardiff, Hull, currently Oxford - all of which means about 18 teams can all beat each other, plus a couple of really shit teams and a couple of really good teams.

He is with the squad, whatever that means

I happened to be in Hong Kong today so was able to watch. We are absolutely infuriating, some of our top players just seem confused and indecisive. We do reasonably well until we get about 30 yards from goal and then it’s just a mess. Runs in behind are ignored or seen too late, we never just have a shot, we desperately try to get to the byline for there to be at best 2 players in the middle. All of that said I thought our game management in the last 10 minutes was very good for once. The ball was at their end for most of it and I thought we had seen Palace off after their decent spell after our goal. Obviously I was wrong. It’s all a mess and quite amateurish at the moment. No idea what our best 11 is and I don’t think Howe knows either. We don’t really press any more for some awful reason but when we did it usually caused Palace to give it away. One of our better performances this season was the Chelsea cup game where we did a lot of that, helped by them of course, but that’s what we should be aiming for.

I think that would be a logistical nightmare. I can’t be bothered to explain further but get a pen and paper and put Team A playing on Thursday and Team B playing Wednesday 6 days later and try and fit in a league game and a league cup game in between without breaking minimum rest rules.

The issue isn’t necessarily two CL clubs drawing each other. It would be if a Europa League team drew a CL team as they are scheduled on opposite weeks this season. So yes, you could ask UEFA to do us a solid and move a Europa game for example but I imagine there would be rights issues and they aren’t going to do it for the fucking Carabao Cup.

Worked hard and pressed well. Thought they were worse for him going off but didn’t really have an impact going forward

I think you know as well as I do that isn’t going to happen. Your second sentence makes no sense, it is drawing each other in the League Cup that would be the problem. Most countries don’t have two domestic cup competitions, obviously the new CL format is stupid and the cause of this nonsense.

It’s every fucking week mate, it’s CL then Europa (plus an International break) for about 6 straight weeks. There would be no week to play it if they drew each other

The CL and Europa League take place in opposite weeks this season so if they drew each other there would be no week to play the game.

This game last season was an absolute decimation. We were lucky to get nil. Granted there were injuries in the extreme but I hope Eddie and pals have learned from it. Hopefully a decent time to play them whilst they adapt to life without Solanke

No doubt it’s frustrating but I think it’s worth remembering we cannot flog most of the shite we have accumulated, I don’t think it’s for lack of trying. With PSR obviously being tight we can’t afford to stockpile anymore players wages

Scored a ridiculous volley in Brugge. My memory is basically every game Pardew having to swap him to right back and putting Perch in centre midfield so we had some physicality in there

This would be an excellent signing, the cost is basically double Thiaw though which makes it odd we're going for it with our alleged budget. The Gordon to Liverpool stuff won't go away and it worries me a little. What if we're now willing to spend more on a centre back because we're going to have a much bigger budget? Hypothetically, if Gordon leaves you've got Barnes with Osula (plus Joelinton/Willock) as back up and then you can focus all attention on the right sided player.

I remember that stat during Covidball he had made something like 8 mistakes leading to goals, that was after throwing in an equaliser for Villa at SJP. He needed replacing then, Howe figured it out fairly quickly.

New contract for this lad is a great start to the summer.

Big club maybe but nowhere near the level of Bayern or Liverpool in my opinion

De Zerbi has taken Brighton from 6th to 12th all because they played 8 European matches and went out in the first knockout round. His style of play can be fantastic to watch but his CV makes interesting reading. Sacked after 3 months Relegated from Serie A 8th twice Admittedly, a promising start at Shakhtar curtailed by the war. Brighton 6th then down to 12th. There is no way one of the elite European clubs were going to take a punt on him just because he plays nice football.

They are a bit of an enigma, feel like they have most parts of the puzzle but have spent all season trying to get them in the right order. I don’t really get Enzo and think they look loads better without him

Neither team were good, but it was fairly obvious we were trying to draw them on to us so we could counter. MOTD didn’t show a pretty good Gordon chance where he shimmied past two of them and dragged a shot wide. There was also a couple of Isak miscontrols aftee being played in

Always thought of him as just a harmless enthusiast but now he just seems like a fully grown daft cunt

It's simple for me really. Do we have the 4th best squad in the league? 6th? 8th? Emphasis on the word squad there too. We are about where we should be given what we have, where we've been and what we've had to deal with. When Howe had one game a week and more or less a full squad he could drill the tactics into the players and made some of the less talented ones look a lot better than they are. Obviously we've had many weeks this year where we've probably trained once or twice in between games and it shows. Then remove key pieces of the team such as Pope, Joelinton, a fully fit striker for many weeks, so on and so forth, I think 6th-8th is about right for this group of players. If you look at Spurs in their current guise, it'll be interesting to see how they perform next season if they make the Champions League. Similar high intensity (to us last season) and they'll play something ridiculous like 41 games all of this season. We've already played that many. He's more than earned the right to have another go at things next season. Obviously there are some things I hope he has learned from but he's got his way of playing and would rather the players get adjusted to that rather than changing for their sake. He's been that way since the day he arrived, we took some hidings (Leicester, Man City and Spurs away in his first season spring to mind) but he never changed his philosophy.

Isn't that the point though? Nobody stopped us spending, we chose not to so as not to breach the rules. Everton thought they could get around it with some window dressing.