Andy

Aye I think they'll struggle in the league next season too, you'd imagine there'll be quite a lot of interest in their players over the summer and it could quickly become disruptive for them. Scary thing is though, if they get ECL I wouldn't put it past them to win it even if that happens.

I think the "hate" comes from the fact that he appears to be going about it the wrong way as he did at Everton; I think that's backed up by Howe not even giving him 5 minutes yesterday to get some kind of reception. Seems fairly obvious to me that something has gone on behind the scenes there, beyond him edging for a transfer. Everyone expects Tonali to leave too but he appears to be going about it the right way. Still running through a brick wall on the pitch, something you couldn't really say about Gordon for the best part of the last two seasons where he's often gone through the motions for the majority of his appearances (apart from in big games). Find him a pretty dislikeable character tbh, nowhere near Isak level at the moment but still not one that I'd wish well.

I thought he was good yesterday (first half mainly) and I'm glad to see him backing up those performances when Bruno was out. I'd still like to see him do it over 90 minutes and on a consistent basis, but you could level that at any of our players. Good to see him adding some end product to his game in the last few weeks too.

Bowen is good for the odd worldie but his decision making is often poor, perfect example yesterday with that one he hit straight at Pope when he had a man over.

Thought he was a better yesterday, along with a few others. We were playing the third worst team in the league though, so it's probably best to be cautiously optimistic rather than getting carried away.

Goal of the season contender and people are slating our players you can't anticipate him hitting that man

I think we were just desperately bidding on anyone who had scored goals last season, tbh. Not convinced their profile was given too much thought.

Chelsea have improved a bit since Rosenior left like. Better team against Rat FC last week.

I mean for your last sentence, we have been one of those clubs under Howe. Outside of the "big six", there's only Villa that have matched our ability to outperform our wage bill.

The more his performances have declined, the more his stock has risen. Very odd.

I find it funny that people think we need to throw the game in order to lose. Just a pick a team and try to win, the defeat will take care of itself.

Finishing a couple of points above them isn't really any better though tbf. They still have the bragging rights this season considering the respective expectations and our complete no-shows in the derbies.

Don't want us to lose any game, this included, but also don't really care too much about finishing above Sunderland. If we finish 11th and they finish 12th the season is still shite. I'd rather Spurs got relegated if I had to choose between the two scenarios, feel it benefits us more next season than the alternative.

Ours has felt longer than that I reckon

Tbf the main injury he's had was a broken leg from a tackle, I'm not sure they've actually gotten worse. In all likelihood we would've got 30 games out of him as in previous seasons, barring a similar impact injury.

Depends if you're judging on what he's done for Liverpool so far or what he would have done for us if he'd stayed. If he was still here I have little doubt we'd be in the top 5 at this moment. It looks a waste of money from Liverpool's perspective at the moment, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good sale for us.

Aye it's been a disappointing season but the players have given us a respectable Champions League campaign, a cup semi final, and played more games than most teams in Europe, with a much weaker squad than the other names in the same ballpark. We've fallen short on ability and results in the league, but it's been far from half arsed unlike other teams in the past.

I imagine the reason is that left footed players are generally much worse with their weaker foot for whatever reason

This is actually my biggest concern with Howe moving forward, his setup is almost entirely reliant on our number 9 being absolutely clinical. Isak and Wilson were both ruthless and allowed us to consistently put games beyond the opposition even when playing badly (which we did a lot in the past couple of seasons too), they turned half chances into goals; as I mentioned earlier in the thread, our current strikers turn good chances into half chances instead. We've all questioned mentality this season with our inability to see out games, but I think the bigger issue is that we're unable to test the opposition's mentality by going and scoring two or three goals and putting the game beyond them. There's a complete dearth of Isak and Wilson type players in modern football, so I'm not convinced it's as easy as just going into the transfer window and fixing it.

There's only really the Osula one on one that I'd call a "good chance", unless I'm misremembering the others. He took the chance exactly how you'd expect Osula to take the chance, by having to look down at the ball to control it and being totally unaware of how much time he had to hit it first time. When you have players Osula up top a "good chance" becomes a half chance. We basically need to be creating sitters, which we aren't really doing at all.

I don't think I've seen a team not dominate against Forest this season (or most of last season either) tbf, they habitually allow the opposition to have the ball. The performance is difficult to evaluate for that reason. We didn't create a great deal despite dominating the ball.

We had good control of the game, but that's the case for basically every team that plays against Forest, so I'm not sure how much you can read into that. Thought Ramsey was a positive when he came on, need to see more of that front-foot play from him and some actual consistency. Not much else to say really, thought it was a pretty poor match overall.

The classic inverted fullback not knowing how to slide on that side.

I think he's played as many successful through balls to Forest's attackers as he has to Osula

Agreed, Osula could've hit it first time. I like the lad but he has the same problem as a number of our players where he has to watch the ball every step of the way when he's trapping it, no natural footballing instinct whatsoever.