Conjo

Maybe we shouldn't aim try and get Isak involved in play after all? Awful attempt at a pass, then loses the ball immediately after to give Chelsea the goal.

Christ Isak

Isak losing another toe.

This ref man

Might as well get Krafth & Kelly on for Schar and Burn if we're going to keep doing the same thing second half. They'll get done same way Schar and Burn is, but at least they have a bit more recovery pace.

I don't like this free role Burn has gotten. Random bit of play and all of a sudden a 2 meter tall geordie appears strolling across the tv screen coming back from a midfield position

Two teams have players where we're genuinely better off man marking them wherever they go on the pitch to try and make it a 10v10 in a way. Palmer at Chelsea is one of them. Rodri at Man City the other. Stick Joelinton on him and tell him to never be further than a metre away from him.

Sucks that Gordon is out, but its not nearly as big an issue as the doom squad indicates. He's out of form, and we even have a good option on the bench where we can sub Barnes for Willock & shift Joelinton out wide if Barnes is struggling to make anything happen today.

New contract signed. Time to rest yee olde legs for a bit.

Play a midfield 2 and have Joelinton mark Palmer all game.

Don't understand why we need to blame anyone for a situation we have had no control over. If Howe got his way this summer, that would only mean that the board/club got their way too, which was never going to happen. If you start to think "ok, but its the boards responsibility to ensure the club isn't in the position we were in this summer", sure, but that means less investment in the previous windows (and subsequently meaning Howe wouldn't have got his way the previous windows), which people would moan about as well. We'd probably not have gotten 4th either. It was a calculated gamble which would probably have paid off if we didn't have insane injury problems last season.

He should try to do something about it then.

From a pure football/performance perspective Mbuemo would be great. Taking a more holistic view of him as a target, we'd be buying him at peak value, at an age where his value is most likely only going to decrease, and on top of that require a level of investment that will prohibit us from adding "oven ready ()" players to other positions for at least both January and summer transfer windows. Not sure we are in a position to do that unless we sell one of our key players considering that we know we'll need significant investment for center back position, and also need to get replacements for Wilson and Trippier as back-ups/prospects for Isak and Livramento.

Very impressive result from them this evening. They looked like a youth team compared to Luton when I watched their play-off game 2 seasons ago.

Come on kaka. Really?

He's been here long enough for us to know that Willock usually takes quite a long time to get his match sharpness up to a decent level. Always looks like he takes an extra second to react to situations and running in syrup for a while after coming back from injury.

It's a win win to me. On one hand I'd love to have the derbies back on a more regular basis, on the other hand they're always funny to laugh at when they mess things up.

If our only activity in January is selling Almiron or Murphy for a symbolic fee to one of the struggling teams in the league, and buy a new RW using whatever we sold Almiron or Murphy for + some of the Guehi money I'd be very happy.

Whether it's a lack of confidence or by instruction, I wish he tried to take on players more often to disrupt the oppositions structure. Seemed like he went past players for fun last season. Think he dribbled past one player once against Brighton and can't remember him doing it otherwise this season. He's not exactly a technician. His passing is quite poor and he rarely crosses the ball so assume that's not a strength of his either, so play to his strengths. Let him take on players, and take advantage of his pace by making runs into the box so he can put a 45 pass back to one of the front 3.

you think? This place turns feral when we face adversity. Actually saw someone starting to turn on Howe. It was difficult to distinguish between rational criticism and chronically miserable cunts when we were unambitious and shit as there wasn't much positive to say about our situation anyway, but some peoples true nature has really come through after the takeover (on top of all the shitty new members). Had 0 on my ignore list pre-takover, now I'm worrying that the next person I ignore will hit a max cap or something

Can't fault the effort the players are putting in to a man today imo. It's a matter of finding a way to unlock the low block from Brighton.

Veltman falling over easier than a deck of cards all the time. Hope it comes back to punish him the one time (if) the ref actually sees it and doesn't give him a free kick.

An early goal for us and Brighton will crumble. PLEASE COME ON

So after Brightons goal, Schar is now weak as piss, Hall is unable to cross a ball, Tino has slow reactions and a oldie but goldie of Murhpy being shite. We could have created more with our dominance, but howay Brighton playing really deep and making it extremely difficult to find openings. We've been the second best all of 10 seconds in the first 45 minutes.