Yorkie

Wish people wouldn't post horseshit from random NPCs on twitter. There's enough of it on here already without leakage from the cesspit.

Sunderland, Brentford and West Ham were appalling but the other night was alright and worlds away from the mackem game especially. But you're right, if the ingrained issues on the road don't change then we'll obviously just stay where we are.

That's encouraging tbf and proves the (groundbreaking) theory that we're just not scoring enough. Think of the missed chances against say Chelsea and Villa and that's all you need for the four points which would have us matching our position on that table. You can pick from a small handful of other fixtures too. I know we're PATHETIC and everything is terrible but it's all coming down to very fine margins so far. Feels like we don't need to improve that much to start climbing.

That is absolute nonsense, like. He was having a good season prior to his injury and we've missed him. Clearly not one for the future but he was extremely dependable backup. Literally only need to read back two or three pages in this thread to see folks singing his praises.

I totally get that and I was massively sympathetic to the logic of buying PL players, and it's disappointing that the reality hasn't matched the theory. But it's all the more reason to assume they'll come good in the end. If you add all Elanga's minutes together so far he's played just shy of 11 full matches; for Ramsey it's 8. It's not much of a sample size to confidently declare them shit and wastes of money, particularly when the whole team is off it. The 'obsession' with buying from the PL is totally over-egged as well. We're no different to literally every other team with hefty budgets where this is concerned. The mid-table and lower teams were absolutely ravaged by the higher/CL-hopeful teams this summer.

Find it really depressing that players are just being written off so flippantly. The whole team isn't really performing and there are systemic tactical and mental issues. Can we not afford the new lads a bit of grace on the basis that it's all just a bit dysfunctional atm?

We lost our golden ticket to guaranteeing that, if such a thing can be guaranteed (it can't).

They're having a brilliant season and fair play to them. The neutral in me is pleased to see them doing well despite the financial restrictions put upon them (or rather, the lack of financial restrictions put upon their competitors). But it's no stick to beat Howe with because despite us sharing that place in the hierarchy, each club's situations are different.

Villa's incredible season doesn't mean every mitigating factor which applies to us isn't true. Equally, all of those mitigating factors aren't the sole reason for why we're as low as 13th. Villa and Emery are third therefore Newcastle and Howe should be third is a bit of a stupid take really.

The lack of a DoF wasn't the principal reason for why we stumbled in the summer. You know my view on what is number one and all the executives in the world wouldn't remedy that.

... No? But if we win a trophy it would be magnificent. I'm here for trophies, like.

If, for the first time since the 1950s, we defended a trophy - you'd probably accept a league campaign where we didn't pull up any trees but were competitive and comfortable? Sounds like your expectations are very grounded.

Agreed. I wish we'd capitalised on one of the several good opportunities we'd made for ourselves after those subs.

This isn't what is being argued at all as far as I can see. It's not "who is to blame, Howe or the summer?" It's an observation of the whole. Howe isn't getting us going this season for various reasons, but factoring-in the mitigating factors of the summer and injuries, you can afford some leeway. Even regardless of 'credit in the bank.'

Eh? Pathetic? Woltemade was absolutely rubbish last night. Spent the game observing balls fly across him, punctuated with the ball occasionally bouncing off him. There wasn't a thing wrong with the service to him. For all the criticism of the subs, we continued to play the game in their first third and all the best chances happened once they'd been made. Wissa scores if Barnes doesn't inexplicably pull it back for Gordon.

Mitigating circumstances effect everything because they take away time and resources from your ability to do or prepare your own job properly. I think it's something a lot of us will have experienced in our own jobs. If you don't think a huge squad turnover, selling the focal point of your attack, having no CEO, no DoF, and being told to sort out the transfer window isn't going to have an impact on the time, thought, and effort you can put into your own job, then I have a bridge to sell you. There's definitely a bit of a chain reaction too. I'll remove last night as the final link because we were alright and worth a point imo, but it's a fair point that we shouldn't have been as awful as we were against Sunderland, regardless of mitigation. However, the executive upheaval, the PSR limitations and then the Isak saga impacted our ability to reshape the squad as intended, which is a fundamental 'why' in terms of our league struggles. Even getting all the same players - but much earlier in the summer - would have helped and made us far less dysfunctional. The other mitigation you haven't mentioned is injuries. We've been hammered again injuries-wise; Tino, Hall and especially Wissa all sharing the treatment room at the same time has been a nightmare for us, and we still can't get all of them on the pitch together. It doesn't excuse everything, like I say, but there's definitely mitigation. I don't believe it would happen but if, say, we lost at Burnley and we pulled the trigger, it would be desperately harsh.

Just a load of guesswork and conjecture, basically. We'll see in time if Wissa represents value for money. Ramsey hasn't looked woeful either, though he had a bad half an hour last night.

Oh good, televised. If we play like we did for most of the game against Man Utd we'll probably get a result but there's just no guarantee we'll play anything close to decent. The manager will probably be in hot water if we lose again, so the pressure is definitely on.

The comments about him being lively, okay, etc are totally fair imo - as were Howe's comments about him being one of our better players, at least in build-up play. People just have Gordon in their crosshairs and have done all season, because of this perception that he thinks he's better than he is or doesn't try hard, or is cowardly, however it's put. I don't really see the evidence of that sort of thing, just a player who cannot find any consistency at all. Certainly didn't see a lack of application from him last night, he was trying to make things happen all game. For eg he was LW but the chances which fell to him were both from the right of the box. It's not like he's hiding out on the wing. Said it before but if he didn't have floppy hair and wasn't a Scouser I think he'd cop about 50% of the flack he does.

With hindsight I don't even think the idea of a one-year extension for Wilson was that mental. Not going to pretend he didn't look finished last season but those rumours were before we knew anything about Isak. Clearly we knew the prospect of him going was a real one and there were also potential suitors for Osula. Retaining Wilson was clearly just a contingency plan in the event things went south, rather than a demonstration of ludicrous amounts of loyalty imo.

I swear you can't have been following the summer at all; I think we had a crack at just about every striker on the market. It was obviously a priority and we tried to sign one as early as possible but couldn't; first because PSR meant Delap, Pedro, Ekitike and Sesko all went elsewhere, and later because the Isak saga gave us absolutely zero leverage until the situation was resolved. I'm not even sure what counterpoint you're making re Pedro; all I'm saying is, if we'd signed him, things would've been different. Your initial take was that we waited forever to make a signing; that's just complete nonsense. Save for targeting much less coveted players, we were as proactive as we could possibly be when it came to signing a striker.

Why is Wissa getting bundled in? He couldn't get into it tonight but beyond that he's looked sharp and scored.

In what world did we 'sit and wait' for anyone, let alone Wissa (who we were putting bids in for well over a month before he actually signed, btw)? Said it a bunch of times but the turning point was Pedro. He was coming here in the middle of June and then Chelsea blew us out the water with the wages offer. With that one secured out whole transfer window looks completely different.

what a load of rubbish, man. We were in the market for strikers from the word go and when we lost the first targets, the Isak situation totally castrated us until Liverpool finally made a fair offer. The stuff about his international duties is a ridiculous criticism and always has been.

I'm certainly not defending our away performances or the fact we're as low in the table as we are, but surely there's a pretty massive asterisk against this, given what we lost? We'd only invested a relatively small amount (Elanga) before our recruitment became about just trying to stay in the mix, as opposed to building on our position.