Yorkie

I know it leaves us vulnerable to losing our most prized assets, but just being consistently in the mix for any form of European football (and domestic cup honours) should make for a worthwhile existence as a football club. The league title is basically impossible and routine qualification for the Champions League can't be expected. Assuming we stabilise and improve, there's nothing to stop us gunning for those positions, and if 6th/7th becomes the highest possible finishing position, we need to be okay with that fact, and equally okay if we miss out somewhat narrowly. If we're miles off then we can probably look at the situation more sternly. The league is really competitive; even clubs like Brighton and Brentford - who couldn't give a shiny shite about anything other than existing on the gravy train - obstruct straightforward passage to European places.

I thought last season was one of our most successful on the road ever, or something?

Gordon looked an unbelievable upgrade when he took his number in 23/24. Far better suited and far better output.

Our home from has generally been the bedrock of our league campaigns and I don't see much evidence of that changing. I'm not going to predict each result because that's a fools errand imo; anything could happen between each game which affects the most likely outcome. You're either confident we'll pick ourselves up or worried that our problems are going to continue or worsen. History suggests the former so I'll go with that. Can't be arsed with incendiary cryarsing like the post I quoted.

Man City (h), Everton (a), Spurs (h), Burnley (h), Sunderland (a), Chelsea (h). Those are the fixtures so points will come from one or more of those games. Hope that helps!

Yeah this always feels quite depressing. Words like disgrace, embarrassment and - depending on the context - 'unacceptable' being used because the team have had the audacity to play badly and lose. The reality is that you don't have to drop your levels very far to get punished in this division. It shows how brilliantly we've done if anything.

The way some go on in bad moments properly kicks you when you're down like. It's understandable in the heat of the moment but when it's in the hours, days or weeks afterwards it's absolutely miserable to read. Just the nature of the beast I guess.

I agree with bits and disagree with bits here but - on Ramsey - the guy needs to be in there from the friggin start for us to give any sort of fair assessment. He started at Leeds and was one of our better players and looked useful against Benfica as well. He's the dictionary definition of too early to judge.

'Slow and tardy' I won't argue too hard against - we had gaps in the corporate structure which seemingly impacted our ability to move quickly, which is regrettable and on us. I think it was overstated a lot at the time but clearly it wasn't the ideal set-up going into an important summer. 'Poor targeting' has always felt grossly unfair to me. We targeted the best players on the market who would otherwise have been attainable if the financial rules didn't function massively in the interests of the ESL clubs. I find it continually maddening how our fans will sooner give disproportionate criticism to the club about our shortlists than that patently obvious structural unfairness. Proper damned if you do/damned if you don't stuff.

I won't argue with that but "we left it late" is a really loaded way of describing what happened which ignores all context. In any case, his injury is fair sized mitigation for our poor-to-average first third of the season. People liked to call him the Wilson replacement because he wasn't a particularly fashionable name and much less exciting than Isak, but he was the one coming here to be first choice. Him getting injured was an absolute Yoan Pissa.

Eh? We were chasing him for weeks. Hope first linked us to him in early July. Everything was just stuck because of the Isak thing.

Of course we're not. There's 27 games still to play. Worst case scenario we finish towards the top of the bottom half imo.

If you go into the how then you've got to go into the why, and that's where I apply a more forgiving outlook towards the club, as you know.

I don't think I have, but apologies if it seems I've targeted you, not intentional! I just don't agree that you can make a judgement about a summer transfer window barely a third into a season, and never will. Elanga seems like a bad fit is as much as I'll stretch to. Arguably Woltemade too but as we've said, he was way down the shortlist.

Pinning our current troubles on the summer recruitment is just a lazy critique imo. In fact it's almost a cliche at this point because we've heard it all before. It's too early to make a judgement, it's as simple as that. There's also mitigation, particularly in the case of the strikers, because of the Isak saga, the fact Wissa got injured, and the fact that we essentially resorted to Woltemade after PSR dictated our top targets (and our own fucking player) were destined for someone else. The whole unit is dysfunctional. That doesn't just come down to who we placed on our summer shortlist.

I did that instead of the game. Would recommend.

Don't think there's any need to get sucked into this. Still too early to tell.

Seems that the scale of the away from is pretty indefensible at this point. I've always stood up for Burn at LB but sounds like today a totally brainless decision was made to keep him on and we paid for it. Absolutely hate to see us like this; it's easily the stickiest position he's been in so he's gonna have to work very hard to turn it around. History suggests he will so I'm more than happy to keep the faith at this point. I always envisaged a ropey season and it's seemingly coming to pass.

Not followed it, just checked the score. Incredibly painful. Looks like this year just ain't gonna be our year.

@54 @Mike @Nobody can one of yous look after match thread today? x

A point on the road is good at most grounds tbh. Would snap your hand off for that tbh. Not particularly confident and think I'm gonna avoid watching it to give my family a reprieve from my awful mood.

Chriiiiiist.

Hopefully he's as safe as houses whatever happens this season. This campaign was always unlikely to be straightforward as we navigated the first big sale and experienced a transition, whilst the likes of Man Utd and Spurs inevitably caught up a bit. We could have a choppy season and I would remain utterly convinced that he was still the ideal person to take us forward, and I don't believe there's a significant upgrade out there. There's so much short-termism when it comes to managers these days, we need to stick by him because he's a diamond.

Well yeah that's why I said if Hall is fit...

We (and that formation) is a work in progress; Bournemouth was only Wolt's second start for us. We weren't effective attacking forces in either if those games but theoretically the formation shouldn't obstruct us from being a coherent unit going forward. If we can keep a clean sheet then it only takes one big chance to score.