Minhosa

He's just pivotal isn't he? Take him out of that team today and we're looking at one point, at best. He's by far our best player and irreplacable, as things stand.

If Forest do go, they're fucked financially surely?

Beat Man Utd at home and things look very interesting...

Looked really shaken after that incident today. Hopefully he can get passed it quickly.

Superb today.

Slip aside, thought that was his best game in ages tbh.

They didn't need to get out of first gear man. They'd have buried us if we actually caused them issues.

Major issue with him is his inability/unwillingness to take the ball on the 1/2 turn. Slows us down, means he gets caught all the fucking time from the opposition hunting down the ball from behind and also means he takes too long to shift the ball forward. He's not good enough to be starting for a top 6 side.

Painful viewing at times during the first half.

Gave away possession tonnes today and has done fairly often since the turn of the year imho. Set pieces poor. Again. Quite the decline from his early season form.

Firmino to leave Liverpool at the end of the season on a free. Contracts up.

Got £20m from Chelsea for Potter. Get £20m for De Zerbi. Get Potter back for nowt = £40m loan fee for a few months .

A fit Tierney is a HUGE upgrade imho.

Hes' got a ST with his old man in front of us.

It also probably depends upon expectation as well tbh. Clearly, at Man Utd there's huge expectation across the board given their history. Given ours, I'm happy to be more patient and would happily watch the owners build it from the ground up over ten years even though that might require living with many ups/downs. Even this season, I was just happy to be out of a relegation scrap and pushing for top half but maybe I'm just easily pleased.

I can't lie, I'd love him but I guess that does contradict what I've said previously

Yep - said yesterday at the game, if they literally don't make that one signing, I think we're giving them a right game. Thought he was superb. That's what you're paying for I guess.

It'll be interesting whether we're 'allowed' to by the footballing gods who are seemingly hell bent on tilting the table towards the established 'big six' or whatever they're called nowadays. Only a personal preference tbh, but I'd far rather have a team full of Bruno's and Botmans who come to our club/country with their best years ahead of them (in theory anyway) than sign players like Casemiro and Varane. As I said, appreciate that won't be everyone's view, but it's mine.

He absolutely owned ASM in pretty much every 1 on 1.

Yep - some of them are mental but it's indicative of a super-club really in terms of spending power and desire to win things. We're obviously not that and, despite the new found riches, I'd hope we don't adopt the same approach tbh. So we'll have to find a way to compete with the likes of you, Man City and Chelsea etc whilst not being able to pay those sort of wages. My earlier point of the 'money/success' link, I think for that reason, it's only a matter of time until Chelsea end up back fighting for the title when they sort their shit out. Might take a few years but broadly the principle of 'if you throw enough money at it' really does apply in football bar the extreme clusterfucks of QPR, Ridsdales Leeds etc. Your established super-clubs, if you like, have the whole balance tilted in their favour and will always be there or thereabouts until theres a fundamental shift in how football is governed/structured.

The gulf in class between them two would be huge imho. I've been frustrated with set pieces for ages but Trippiers overall game is generally really good and I'm not sure what, other than maybe freshness, Manquillo would bring that would improve us tbh. Given, we effectively write-off the left hand side to accomodate Trippiers attacking tendencies too, I can't help but think replacing him with a less attacking full back might render us even more toothless going forwards tbh. It's a tough one, because in many respects, we've built this system around Trippier so he's intregal and it's kind of designed to entirely suit his game but we almost don't do him any favours by not having an equally attacking full back on the left. Though, to make that work, we'd need a geet big fuck off athletic CDM I think. Ideally, we'll buy a wonderful CDM this summer, add an attacking left back who can cross a ball from a set piece and that might take some of the load off Trippier, who's been superb broadly.

Wanted Alvarez before City signed him. Would LOVE him at our place.

One of the things that makes this place so great are the opposition fans. @brummie for Villa, @Froggyfor Man Utd and @Mikefor Liverpool etc etc. We can't just get the hump when they beat us and decide they're not welcome . The fella's done nowt wrong. As for the game, having calmed down a bit, you've got to think that English football is now essentially a money game and it broadly plays out that the bigger spenders/salary payers tend to outperform the rest, Leicester's miracle and the odd upset aside. When you look at the amount of players in that Man Utd squad earning double/treble/if not more than our top earners, you're essentially playing against pro's at the top of their game and/or peak of their careers. Off the top of my head, the following must all be all on over £250k per week;- - DDG - Varane - Martinez - Casemiro - Fred - Rashford - Sancho - Antony - Eriksen When you think our highest earner is probably on less than £130k per week, you can already appreciate the gulf in expectation/value/top level experience. They're buying pro's from the highest levels at and/or near to their peaks. We are buying Bruno/Gordon/Botman/Isak hoping they'll get to that next level with us. With that in mind, I felt even before the game that we'd need an early 'incident' or NUFC goal to give us that little bit extra to cling on to but it never came. Maybe even if VAR had overturned their opener, that might have spurred a reaction/lift. I was a bit disappointed we didn't spend the balance of the first half getting ASM on the ball every fucking time so as to drive at the yellow carded Dalot before he got hooked at HT tbh. Felt like there was a bit of a missed opportunity but, hey ho, we performed pretty much in line with where I thought we'd be. As for atmosphere, I was in level 5 and it was pretty good around us other than after their second. A mix of folks standing/sitting but no arguments about people choosing either and most of the folks around us in good voice. Fucking queues getting through the turnstiles were a joke though and made me wonder what the point of that fucking allotted entry time was tbh... Have a feeling we might struggle to lift ourselves after this and, if we're honest, it's been a major fucking distraction for us and it never seemed to be for them.

If they hadn't have signed him, we'd have beaten them today. Literally one signing has effectively won them the game.

Got smashed in the tackle with Bruno Fernandes didn't he? Either clipped or rolled his ankle, no?