Andy

Rashford seems to have found some form at Villa, to be fair.

It isn't controversial, but relentlessly blaming the manager just completely lacks nuance. You're ignoring literally every other factor that can affect the performances of a football team.

It doesn't. However, it is obvious that there are reasons for it that extend beyond the manager, the primary of which is key players getting older and the squad as a whole going stale due to a few windows without investment. I've been critical of us this season but your anti-Howe schtick is completely unbalanced and boring tbh.

Who got us playing that football?

At least Womble was unintentionally funny sometimes

Hopefully this is a wind up, otherwise it might actually be the worst post in the history of the forum

Honestly he's probably a C, but I'm voting D because him having the ball at his feet might actually kill me early

Best case tonight is extra time followed by a late hard fought Liverpool win, I think. Tire them but keep more eggs in their basket.

He's definitely a C at the moment, but absolutely not "one of the best in his position" based on this season, so nowhere near a B yet for me. Defensively he's generally solid but he is really poor on the ball at times, on both sides, and seems to get caught on it in dangerous positions at least once a game. I think he has the potential to kick on to a B next season though.

Aye I wasn't being literal.

Massive three points. Genuinely one of the worst games of football I've ever watched.

Can't believe I only started watching this two hours ago

Didn't we win something like one league game between the end of December and the second week of March?

We have regressed on the whole, but at the same time, we were equally poor in the run up to the cup final that year. If not worse tbh.

I'm worried I'll be able to sleep after this, adrenaline is absolutely through the roof

Abysmal by Schar that.

Important game, but also the epitome of a game we won't show up for.

D seems fair. He's a reliable squad player, I rate him higher than most of our other backups, but he always seems to get found out when he starts a run of games.

If you're going by the metric of the thread, A is "World Class, could play for any team in the world", not "once in a generation elite talent". Isak definitely fits the former description. So does Mbappe.

There isn't a single team in world football who wouldn't take Isak right now if they had the money to sign him. Easy A.

This is a flagrant breach of the forum's rules against duplicate accounts @Rich please IP ban yourself

D. If he left us I could only really see him going to a relegation threatened team. So he is squad filler for the majority of the league at best.

It's going to be a long road back for him if this is true. Assuming he next plays again in August, you're talking 18 months or so with basically no competitive football, having already looked pretty fucked at the start of 2024 from his previous injury. That is going to be difficult for any player to make a complete recovery from, not just physically but mentally.

At least next season's going to be great when we have no Europe to worry about, Botman is back, and the whole squad can stay relatively injury free

This feels like a huge blow. Tino will cover adequately defensively, but it will leave us looking blunt on both sides of the pitch with Gordon out too.