Conjo

I think he is decent going forward. Maybe not the most technically gifted, but he can carry the ball well enough, makes some smart runs when the opportunity presents itself, got a nice pass & cross in him as well. Defensively very solid, rarely lets anyone past him, decent in the air. He is better than a bottom 10 PL left back in my eyes. Seem to be a nice guy and humble guy as well. A character we need in the dressing room. Of the current left backs in the PL (excluding wing backs like Doherty, Alonso etc), I'd rate Robertson, Zinchenko and Chillwell as clearly better than him. Tavares, Castagne, Telles, Shaw, Digne, Cucurella are of similar quality to him. Difficult to say who is better than the other due to the different qualities each of them has, but I've really liked what I've seen of Targett on and off the pitch so would prefer him over the others listed. There's obviously better left backs out there in the world, and we may be able to attract one here, but I'd sign Targett asap so we don't have to worry about that position and can focus all the attention on improving more critical areas in the squad.

I'd sell Clark if someone offered north of £20m

Too slow imo, same as JWP. We need more pace and energy in our side.

He's easy to defend against because there's little else teams has to defend against when playing us. He's more than deserved to stay on as a first team member next season. Hopefully we'll have more things teams has to worry about so they can't double/tripe/quadruple up against him.

Assist from Anderson 89th minute to equalise 3-3 away to Rochdale Edit: Wrong Anderson

"most caring and amazing football agent that ever was" "Minos's mission of making football a better place for players" Would rather he had retired obviously, but can't help but feel football is better off without him.

EPO only helps for stamina (stimulates production of red blood cells which improves oxygen transport capacity to the blood). As you say, he seems faster and stronger than he was in his early 20's If he is on something, my bet would be TRT.

Why do Liverpool have to be so annoying about everything? Don't really mind the result, but the way they behave, from the bench to the players on the field. Can't wait until they are back to a non-entity like in the 90's.

Was just about to write that. Good to know our players can just fall to the ground if they fail a header to stop the play.

Really shows the gulf in quality when they are looking so comfortable playing without Salah, Fabinho, TAAAA & Thiago.

Jota went meek there. Fuck him up Joe!

Honestly would take a red and game over if someone suckpunched Milner on the snout. Would be worth it.

So annoying that it's seemingly always these controversial decisions that opens up the game for the bigger teams against us. Maybe it was the right call by the ref, but it wouldn't have been a massive talking point if Schar had gotten a free kick either.

That's a really good point I've never really thought about. Maybe we could have gotten a "better" manager with more experience and better track record, but would that manager have been as dedicated to his job as Howe is? I doubt it. Howe definitely feels like the right person at the right time type of appointment. Hope he stays for a long long time.

"I want to create my story. I want to create history." Wish more players had this mindset, which would make top flight football more even and competitive. If you're good enough, you can always join Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man City, PSG, Liverpool or whomever are the biggest teams at a certain time to win something, and although winning titles no matter what is a great team achievement, how big of an individual achievement is it when you're surrounded by the best players in the world? Imagine Bruno winning the PL and/or CL after coming here, dragging us out of a relegation fight and be a focal point in turning the club completely around to one fighting for titles. He would be considered one of our best players ever, and more widely remembered for his achievements here than any other player of similar ability playing at one of the historically bigger clubs.

Bulk deal for Ritchie, Clark, Hendrick & Gayle? We'll give them £5m lump sum they can use as they wish to cover parts of their wages.

This is a great site to illustrate different scenarios: https://tactical-board.com/UK/big-football Anyway, one thing I hope the team can get better on (or get more confidence to do), especially since we have good passers of the ball in Schar and Burn, is to be a little more adventurous when playing out from the back. So many times in a similar scenario as below when opposition team is closing us down when our CBs has the ball, we lump it up (red arrow, either directly, or back pass to Dubs who boots it up) because we don't want to take the risk of losing the ball deep into our own half, while a fairly simple high pass (blue arrow) to one of our full backs is open which would relieve a lot of pressure and give us a better chance of advancing the ball. We never do this atm.

Would absolutely love it if we manage to shut Liverpool down and frustrate them to a 0-0 draw. If we score an early goal first, similarly to against Tottenham, or Liverpool take the lead I think we'll struggle.

It probably sounded harsher than intended. There's no doubt he did well other places as well, but I wouldn't say he did great (ref. for context earlier discussions above on good vs great). Fulham had just been taken over and he had a PL budget in division 2. Man City had just been relegated, retained most of their PL players bar Paul Dickov and added Pearce, Bernabia, Jihai Sun, Macken, Niclas Jensen, Berkovic and a few others and contrary to most relegated teams had a massive net spend. While the scoring record was amazing, automatic promotion was the minimum expectation. First season back to the PL they got Anelka, Schmeicel and Foe so in terms of their squad 9th isn't really that impressive. Good, not great.

Would be nice to see him play before end of the season just for the feel good factor.

Feel like I've read these posts from you a thousand times before HTT I agree he was a great manager - for us.

Pleasantly surprised at how he has performed in a back 4. Deserved the contract extension. It will be interesting to see how he reacts if we bring in someone to compete with him and he loses his regular spot. He wasn't happy under Bruce, but was that simply due to not playing, or was it because it was obvious he was the best CB at the club?

Keegan was a great manager for us, but it's difficult to argue he was a great manager since he didn't really accomplish much outside of his first management job with us. Listening to the Howey interview that was posted on here recently I was laughing when he was answering questions about how Keegan was in training and during team talks ahead of games. My impression was that they mostly played 5/7/11 a side games during training and pre-game preparations were basically him picking a team and telling them to go out and excite the fans. Doesn't exactly scream high level coaching

If it wasn't for the amount of vultures ready to pick up the torch after him I'd be happy on behalf of football in general. Now it's just sad for him personally and the family and friends he leaves behind. RIP.