Yorkie

A better keeper probably goes a long way to mitigate the impacts of the huge fall in striker quality.

Who knows what's true and what isn't when it comes to transfer speculation, but my recollection of the situation is that Pedro was keen to come here before Chelsea swooped in. The point about PSR is: whatever Chelsea's appeal is - they're not at the table if the rules don't accommodate their ability to just buy and buy and buy.

Enjoyed Howe prickling at the question. The guy believes in his preferred system so much and is obviously very satisfied at watching it working again. 4-3-fucking-3.

Chelsea already had like four strikers on their books by the time they got Pedro, including Delap who they'd also just signed. If the financial regulations were applied less anti-competitively, there's no way they could go straight back into the market for another extremely coveted attacker. See ManU with Mbeumo and Cunha and Sesko / Liverpool with Wirtz and Ekitike and Isak. PSR funnels the most coveted players to those clubs, basically

I think the Conference League is great providing the PL entrant is fucking it up for themselves, like Palace are doing this season. Theoretically I think it's pretty competitive immediately beneath that one outlier. Last season, the eventual victor was totally inevitable and so it was degrading from that point of view, but it was pretty cool that a team like Djurgarden got to the semis, and if you look at the knockout bracket, the vast majority of ties were really competitive (can remember really enjoying rooting for Shamrock who were narrowly knocked out by Molde on pens, for eg).

I believe Pedro was our first choice and if we'd managed to get him, the whole season looks quite different, in part because I think the summer looks a lot different too. But Chelsea got him cos PSR. Delap was first in line but I think that's just because of the opportunistic nature of it. He was available at a really good price so we might as well have staked a claim. But Chelsea got him cos PSR. Ekitike came after Pedro and was clearly seen as a like-for-like Isak replacement. But Liverpool got him cos PSR. Sesko was next but Man Utd got him cos PSR. Then we're scrambling a bit but thankfully the cartel had already shot their load, giving us a free run at Woltemade. We still needed PL-proven quality though and I think Strand Larsen would have been the one if he was available at a decent price, but he wasn't. I think he would have done pretty well for us tbh. That brings us to Wissa, who - for me - was always the 'if all else fails' option. I never felt he was identified as a Wilson replacement; that just felt like conjecture because he was a bit older and his FIFA number is probably closer to Wilson's than to Isak's. He's nothing like Wilson really, who was much more of an all-rounder and physical presence. Notwithstanding his disastrous start, we were lucky Wissa fancied us so much.

If their previous results are anything to go by, you'd assume Qarabag would make a pretty decent fist of the Conference League, which shows what a non-achievement it would be for us to go deep in that competition. In CL qualifying they comfortably beat Shelbourne (34th in the Conference) and Shkendija (22nd) and then knocked out Ferencvaros (12th in the Europa League) in the play-offs. Laughable that Palace have given themselves an extra hurdle in that competition. Hopefully Zrinjski just knock em out.

It's garbage but we probably have the least right to be there out of everyone having benefited from the ridiculous 5th place offering.

Good that Tripps and Gordon did that interview together and immediately put to bed any daft speculation. Murph as charming as ever too.

Bodo look so effective on the counter.

Yeah I thought Woltemade looked closer to a 10 than an 8 against Villa, but he was much more obviously an out-and-out midfielder tonight. Had another really good game. It's quite funny if the solution to him is literally just the same as Joelinton's, and he's just being fed through an identical reforging process. Heck of a move from Howe as well, if he's figured out that the way to get us going this season was, all along, to put Gordon up top.

3!

There's nothing irrational about it. The logical explanation is that the combination of: having no pre-season, a really bad injury (the first in his career), and entering a pretty dysfunctional team - has knackered any prospect of him coming flying out the traps. More logical than he's simply become a bad player overnight.

My guess is that he's been sat down and is being discreetly hammered with an intense regimen to get him up to speed fitness wise. Knock in training when we're not training sounds a bit dubious.

That was great. Fair play to them for deciding to get the job done in the first leg and executing it with serious conviction. Horrible opponent but we didn't have to blow em to bits.

Yusss lead restored

@TRC I owe you an apology.

Looking at their previous few years' European campaigns, it seems a hell of an achievement for them to have progressed this far in the CL. They finished rock bottom of the monster table in last season's Europa League, though the year prior to that they were narrowly defeated in the Last 16 to Leverkusen. Difficult to get a handle on what sort of threat they're going to pose but for them to take points off Chelsea should at least certify that they're not total mugs.

Paully's mug has been doing the rounds on socials. It's pretty much what you'd expect.

Would take a hell of a flick to get any air on those bad boys.

They’ll be better than that Aye I reckon, like. Would be interesting to see how Barnsley, Stockport and Northampton would get on in the Champions League, mind.

One of the great NUFC mysteries: why did they call it "Beyewatch.com" but then butcher the pronunciation of his name, thereby undermining a perfectly serviceable pun?