Andy

Personally think Pope has been quite flappy this season tbh, his decision making around crosses has been poor in particular. His shot stopping is generally good but I don't think he made any amazing saves last night, most of their efforts were straight at him.

There are definitely question marks over Ramsdale, but Pope is consistently making the exact kind of mistakes that those question marks cover anyway and hasn't exactly been setting the world alight with amazing performances in between those errors either. It's hard to see how Ramsdale wouldn't be at least an equivalent swap at the moment even purely from a goalkeeping perspective, with the added benefit of bringing a lot more composure on the ball.

Maybe I'm remembering but I don't remember him looking anywhere near as uncomfortable on the pitch as Elanga personally.

It's almost hard to believe how "in the middle of nowhere" he actually is.

Gordon in his early days was excellent for us though. Elanga is struggling to control a ball and make simple 5 yard passes.

Aye he was definitely a positive. Hopefully he can start to rebuild himself here, this was the sharpest he's looked in two years.

One thing I don't really get is that people continue to say he "knows the position" as an argument for playing him there instead of trying literally anything else. I know the position too but I'd be shite playing there at this level. I'm not convinced it's even an accurate statement to begin with tbh. He knows the position in roughly the same way that Jacob Murphy knows how to play right back.

It's not exactly the first time we've lined up with five at the back though, it's been a semi-consistent feature away from home this season and hasn't worked once over 90 minutes. It's only really ever worked for us against a toothless Arsenal side last season in the cup. Don't think we'd have lost much tonight by Thiaw shuffling to right back and Murphy playing his natural position tbh. He's pretty terrible at wing back anyway and gives the ball away relentlessly in that position. I just have no faith in us seeing the full game out when I see that system at all, regardless of whether I can see the general reason for doing it.

Hard to say how he fixes the away form as we are clearly a different team mentally, but the first step for me is to ditch the five at the back idea. Line up and approach the games as we do at home until it works. Having half of the outfield positions occupied by defenders just naturally encourages us to sit back and try to protect. Then when it inevitably goes wrong, it's hard to get momentum again. Our centre halves are all good defenders. We don't need three of them on the pitch.

The frustration isn't in response to this one game or performance tbf Blimp, the away form in general warrants criticism. We are one of the most Jekyll and Hyde teams I've ever seen. We were decent tonight in patches but can't keep parking the bus then melting down once we concede a goal on the road. It's the same game over and over again, it's hard not to voice frustrations when you know we can play as well as we did on Saturday.

Rules should allow him one free uppercut on Nick Pope after that error. He had the situation entirely under control. Played another 10/10 game.

If we don't have the confidence to play Ramsdale ahead of the current version of Pope, why the hell did we sign him? It's not like he's a Karius type signing where you're hoping he never has to play.

They are wide open and we can still get something here, but it's so frustrating that we've ended up in this position after doing so much good work in the first half. We haven't been shit but we've definitely crumbled mentally again and look all over the place. As soon as we conceded away from home we just seem to go into full blown panic mode.

I mean it was a joke, he isn't actually playing left wing back FYI.

Should we just do the RAWK thing and censor all negative thoughts?

Big Nick coming on at left wing back

Tonali would do a better job filling in at right back than Miley you'd imagine. He couldn't be less suited to playing there.

We need to bin off the back five away from home like, it just sets the wrong mentality. Even if we score first, we immediately try to park the bus because it's natural to do so when your team is full of defenders. Out centre halves are good enough to play two of them, it's just a waste of a body and ends up with no one knowing who they're marking. I think it's only really worked twice, both against Arsenal.

So frustrating that such a braindead error has turned the game around like this. The more you watch it the worse it looks, Thiaw has it covered all day long.

City game aside, they've looked a better team with Ekitike starting though. They are abysmal when Isak's up top.

No. There was one where the ball broke towards the keeper and he just stopped chasing it when it was there to be chased, which is what the post I quoted referred to quite plainly.

Aye I thought that was poor too. When you're struggling for form, chasing down those lost causes is at least a way to get the crowd on your side.

Despite the misses, I was much happier with that game from him today than some of the ones where he was scoring from nothing. Actually looked a threat.

Much more balanced team today, we're much better with dynamic fullbacks.

How can anyone like VAR man, such a shit addition to the game.