Andy

Barnes is a low C. He starts for the majority of premier league teams, but doesn't offer enough in general play to start for best teams.

He's somewhere between a B and C for me. Last season he was an easy B, this season he's been a C so far. Needs to sharpen up in his decision making and stop drifting in and out of games, for me.

They're just at a different stage to us and are riding a wave of momentum. Liverpool and Chelsea fans would have said the same about our players in 22/23. If Forest and Bournemouth proceed to sign basically no one for the next 2 years and the current managers are still there, I guarantee they won't have them anywhere close to being in contention for the CL places. Squad staleness is one of the biggest challenges a manager can face. And yeah, we could have signed the players mentioned, but it would have been at the expense of other players we needed a massive overhaul when Howe took over and doing even half a job of that has impacted us in the market in the last couple of seasons.

If you're doing a "which Forest players would get into our first team to justify why they're competing with us?" thing, you can't then say "well that one only gets in because we haven't got anyone better" that's literally the point surely?

Our recruitment has gone stale due to PSR, it's clear there are still huge holes in the squad, and the holes are only getting wider as some players age and others completely lose form. It isn't that the players we've signed haven't been good, it's that the job is half done. We have one right winger who is only good in patches. Two goalkeepers who are on the decline. Two centre halves who are on the decline. A back up right back who is now finished. A back up striker who is now finished. A back up left back who is on the decline. Back up midfielders who've either lost confidence or are 18 years old. These players are all being relied on regularly. Almost all of these players alluded to above were here under Bruce. The ones who weren't, were good temporary acquisitions (Pope, Burn, Trippier), but now need replacing. Howe has made mistakes this season and has a job on his hands to get the best out of what he's got, but the source of our problems goes back to the inability to strengthen further, which ultimately goes even further back to the years of neglect that left us with no saleable assets.

The squad should be judged on its quality for the purpose of comparison to the teams we're competing with, not its net cost. The manager is working with the players on a match day, not the balance sheet, and I doubt he was solely responsible for the majority of our signings (or lack thereof, in recent windows). On paper, are we really that much better than Bournemouth and Forest? Our best players are probably better, but our squad players are probably worse, certainly the ageing ones. I'd definitely trade a chunk of our players with theirs. Bournemouth and Forest are doing well this season, but can they maintain it and would their managers do any better than Howe with this particular set of players? I'm not convinced. Momentum is huge in football and they have it in abundance like we did in 2022/23 and like Villa did last season. Once the sheen wears off they'll both start to drop. If they maintain momentum until the end of the season and finish above us, it isn't representative of a failure Howe's part IMO.

If you're comparing to Forest, every club apart from Liverpool is failing as they're challenging for second place. Bournemouth have gone on a great run similar to what Palace did towards the end of last season. If they maintain it all the way through, fair play. Brighton beat us yesterday but have spent more time around midtable this season than the CL positions.

We're only below one of those teams in the table, to be fair. And we just beat them last week. Comparing spend would be more relevant if we were languishing miles behind them like Man Utd. Those teams are over performing and we're about on par.

For me, he's alongside Longstaff in the pecking order, it would be a coin toss over which one I'd start. That's quite damning on Willock though as I think he has a lot more ability, he just rarely uses it effectively nowadays. I thought he was "okay" today having said that. Just a bit frustrating as usual and wasteful, but at least he was trying to get us up the pitch.

The pass that led to their goal was poor, but nowhere near as poor as the defending that followed it.

I think it was just pure frustration from him at how we and he had played in the second half. He's just gone to push him but because their lad is falling he's got him in the head. Unfortunate, but still stupid like you say.

He needs to sort out the inconsistency, and not just between games but between halves. Performances like the second half today are so much more annoying when we looked perfectly fine before the break. This is a recurring theme where we come out of the dressing room looking like the players have been pumped up with Nytol. It's mystifying to me how we can suddenly become so lethargic and completely incapable of passing the ball 10 yards. There are obvious issues with the squad that needs to be addressed in the summer, but the players on the pitch are still capable of a lot better than they're showing in large patches of games this year. At times lately we've looked disinterested and lazy, and that's unacceptable.

The missed header is definitely worthy of some pelters like

We were absolutely awful in the second half of normal time, mind, not just sloppy. No urgency, intensity or quality. Borderline unprofessional at times with how poor we were.

Great save, really strong hand by Tino. Dubravka's was good too.

Completely agreed, no increase of accuracy is worth this trade-off for me. Love the earlier cup ties where you know the decision is just the decision, even if it's wrong.

Similar sinking feeling to the Liverpool game ahead of the cup final a few years back. The absolutely unprofessional level of performance in the second half from all of them has led to the moment of frustration. As much as Gordon is an idiot, the whole team have helped craft that moment.

We are incredibly consistent at executing this second half gameplan of "under absolutely no circumstances pass to one of your teammates"

The problem is that he's finally lucid. It's been too long since he took a head injury.

He's been a B for us so far, but it's worth noting that he's playing a role that is probably a bit more uncomfortable to him; I'm sure he'd prefer to be more box-to-box but he's taking one for the team in sitting as the "6" since he's apparently the best of our lot at it. I'd like to see a proper DM come in next season to unlock him.

C for me. He's definitely "solid premier league starter".

I know he was always iffy, but was he really this bad on the ball in his first season? It's like he's doing a parody of how bad Nick Pope is on the ball

Of all of our midfielders he always feels like he's the least likely to lose it under pressure, which is pretty damning on the others given the age difference.

The ball at his feet is like when the ball gets trapped under a player in table football and you're just twisting the handles randomly to free it

If football was about running down blind alleys and eventually losing possession, Willock would be Pele