SUPERTOON

Agreed, although there were games such as spurs and Everton away where the game was completely gone and we still didn’t see changes. Just get some of the players off the pitch for a bit at that point imo.

We seem to sign long term targets if they are available more than what we may need. That may change this summer mind.

We did it quite successfully against Wolves at home in fairness.

Twitter rumours suggest Tino misses tomorrow, Miggy is going to be a bad one.

From my point of view, it was more we have conceded 3 or more in 8 of the last 15 games (something along those lines). I wouldn’t have minded seeing a change in some of those games to help out a clearly struggling defence. Our injuries/fatigue have meant we can’t press as effectively as we did last season a switch to a low block may have helped.

Don’t get me wrong I understand the reasoning, just saying I wouldn’t have minded seeing us try out a low block (we did so to some degree at home to Wolves and we looked really solid).

In fairness, we haven’t pressed that effectively for a while now.

Howe confirmed it.

Seems a lazy link, we can do a lot better as well.

We did this very successfully with lesser players from about January onwards in his first season. I have been wondering why we haven’t tried it this season.

I’d be a little reluctant to start Barnes and Anderson, simply because it means we would have no positive subs to make should we need a goal.

Get your point, however we haven’t looked more solid with him on the pitch for the last few months. That’s more down to other factors than Trippier himself mind.

Interesting that the 4 sides most likely to battle for the last European places are all clustered together there with us in the table.

Where are Man Utd in the table since then ?

Don’t even think it was necessarily that, for me it was more he put Paqueta through the middle and Schar and Burn where able to cope more. If had put Bowen or Kudus through the middle we probably would have conceded again.

Our defending means we won’t have any straightforward victories, still think we will get the win here though.

Find it difficult to sympathise with them or any other set of fans after the way the lot of them went on regarding our takeover tbh. Football is already ruined as well.

Why would it ever stop ?

And fairly brilliant ?

Grim reading for Everton

Think there is a balance to be had, defensively we aren’t good enough, that’s probably an understatement. Obviously there are reasons for it, but it’s been that bad consistently now for a couple of months, we pretty much concede the same goals and chances every match and nothing seems to have improved. Hopefully the return of Pope and others (maybe not until next season) will see us back to our best. I always look back to the Arsenal home game earlier in the season, our best defensive performance by a mile this season. Give me hope going into next season.

Agree with this, however the defence/defending is a massive concern for me. Hopefully players returning will help, but maybe that’s to simplistic.