Ashley17

No Mac Allister for them

It’s true and is why if we make the top 4 this or any season people need to cheer the fuck up and enjoy it. It can disappear very quickly and who knows what could happen in the future

Don’t want to sound like Klopp but how slow was the pitch? Felt like our passes were getting stuck and making everything very stodgy

You can enjoy Pixar John Anderson. Just 18 months since Murphy missed the “JUST PUT IT IN THE NET” chance at Watford to laughing along to his every goal.

I think it’s got cagey 0-0 written all over it. Neither team are great but decent defensively

It’s a perfect storm really. Teams working us out, probably a bit of fatigue, one eye on the cup final…I guess you could add Bruno’s absence to that but he was in the team for some of this lacklustre run. The thing is we haven’t been an irresistible attacking force in many games, we are usually good front runners where if we get ahead and teams keep attacking (Villa, Brentford) then we’ll pick them off. Obviously it’s all built on a solid defence and keeper. Teams seem to have realised our left channel is a bit slow and teams can turn us around by playing over the top into that area. Burn is a tremendous defender but during this time without Bruno we need all the outlets we can get and he’s looked every bit a centre half playing full back. It’s something else that contributes to us being quite easy to stop. It’s easy with hindsight but I think we’ve had a bad January window. We are short in central midfield and up front although I do understand why Shelvey and Wood left, neither have really been replaced. Gordon looks decent and I think we needed a new wide option regardless but with Wilson’s injury record it’s a huge risk to only have him and Isak. It was evident tonight how much better Wilson’s all round game is than Isak’s, his hold up play in particular was missed tonight. Isak is obviously very talented though but needs time to adapt fully. We’ll see how bad the injuries are from tonight but I had been very confident of beating Liverpool to now not being sure at all. They won’t sit back which should suit us but we are going to have more than one eye on the final I’m sure

The guy on Twitter who gets the Leicester team news says Maddison not starting. Praet in instead.

Just ignore the one he missed at Newport! The highlights are so desperate they even included Burn’s header…the offside flag was up so it was totally irrelevant

Relieved to get through, that really wasn’t a good watch. We still struggle against teams who come for a draw but thankfully not many teams are well organised enough to do it. Too many rusty players tonight and basically zero cohesion. Obviously got better when the subs came on. We got through and that’s all that matters. I’m off to dream about us bobbling passes about in the midfield

Willock is there. Surely if he was ill he wouldn’t be?

Read interviews/books from anybody who Gullit managed with us and they all say the same thing. He was arrogant and nowhere near as good as he thought he was. At least with hindsight he has realised the error of his ways. Dalglish I have a degree of sympathy, behind the scenes the club was a bit of a state. The books needed balancing and he was obviously very unlucky with the Shearer/Ferdinand timing. Keegan had abolished the reserves so that was less than ideal too. Tomasson went on to have a fantastic career but again suffered from the lack of Shearer (or Les). I wish he hadn’t disbanded the entertainers but I can at least see what he was trying to do.

Problem with dropping Longstaff is it means Bruno plays that position. I think we are better off with him further forward. Two games in 3 days probably gives us license to rotate a few anyway

Seen it a few times now that after an International break Howe picks players he’s been working with for the 2 weeks. Not exclusively obviously but with Almiron and Fraser having been away it would make sense to see Anderson play.

Fairly sure Lamptey now represents Ghana...

I’m fairly certain Pearson is just a character someone has created. He can’t be a real person.

Not quite the same for Maupay. New players have to be registered by 12pm the working day before the first game of the round of fixtures. Maupay signed Friday 4pm, no working days since so signed too late

Be interesting to see if big teams rest players in this round given there's only one league game after this then the World Cup break. I'd imagine the non-World Cup goers will be desperate for as many minutes as possible before kicking their heels for a month.

They’ve played some pretty average sides so far. Coventry are reasonable but about 9th-12th kind of range, Bristol City have had struggles at home for a few years now and QPR are in flux after an awful second half of last season. They’ve won one of those games and I can guarantee if you look on Twitter or RTG when they were 2-0 up there’ll have been some of their great “banter not banter” like the HMS piss the league when they won a couple of games at the start of last season

Good chance for the Thursday with us playing Sunday both before and after

Maddison quite often played on the right of a front 3 for Leicester, albeit in a 5-2-3. Would still work in our set up with Trippier providing the width, which is more or less how we played in the first half against Benfica. I think he'd be a tremendous statement signing.

Gillespie has had offers from Scotland but has been told he will be the third choice this season so club have rejected, so fully expect one of Dubs/Darlow will leave. Not overly surprising of course.

He has been offered a role but he wants to actually do something meaningful and not just be wheeled out for events. He’s left it to the owners to offer him something worthwhile.

I did wonder if it was this, Peter Kenyon looking to be involved as well

He was on the bench in the last 4 matches, came on for 30 minutes against Wolves?