ikri

Considering the number of head injuries that Schar has received in the last two seasons it's a bit of a miracle that he even remembers that he plays for us. We do need some extra pace at the back, I expect that Lacelles will be the one to move on in the summer with a replacement, either long term or short term, for Schar.

A little lax in the 2nd half, a lot of the poor passing might have been down to a saturated pitch from the 1st half downpour but whatever it was Wolves passed the ball around a hell of a lot better than us in the 2nd half. They still had to get through us though and we held out well and Tino's first goal sealed everything off quite nicely.

What a difference Willock makes.

We fundamentally changed the way we play this season too in order to accommodate Gordon and Barnes as wide forwards. Last season, most of the time we had Joelinton and Willock either on the left of the midfield three or in the wide left forward position. They would swap around during the game as well which made it a nightmare to defend against them and the wide forward was able to drop back into the midfield easily giving us more bodies when required. With Miggy's constant running we were able to switch between a 4-3-3 and a 4-5-1 with ease and then as soon as we were in the position to go on the attack, those wide midfield players were suddenly forwards again. It was all very dynamic and very successful. This season, with Gordon playing up there instead, he hasn't been able to fill the same role as an ad-hoc midfielder, instead he's been an ad-hoc centre forward. Barnes is the same, he's a forward rather than a midfielder. If we'd had Bruno, Tonali, Willock and Joelinton all available this season we might have found some sort of balance but with the injuries on top of the change in style everything has gone a bit tits up.

Brilliant saves by Dubs in the shootout but it should never have gotten that far. Blackburn looked the better team throughout whereas we looked lethargic.

Presumably. West Ham agreed to pay Sheffield United £15m back in 2009 when they went to court over their relegation. 15 years later I would expect that figure to double, maybe more. With 4 or 5 clubs involved as well they could be looking at having to pay out hundreds of millions. For Everton, that wouldn't just be them screwed under FFP for a few years, it would be administration and the complete collapse of the club.

Everton are still likely fucked. Even if they stay up this season they're being sued by the clubs that were relegated in the last couple of seasons whilst they were overspending. They may survive in the league only to owe tens of millions to rival clubs.

Poor performance, so much of Arsenal's good performance came about from our own reckless and stupid passing. Our lack of midfield hampered us enormously yet again, so many balls going backwards because Miley and Longstaff weren't able to find the right positions or hold on to the ball. Botman having his worst ever game for us didn't help matters either.

Arsenal have been great. We haven't. At all. The constant backwards passes when it's been clear since the 1st minute that they're going to press the defenders immediately has been infuriating. The ball goes backwards and we get stuck on the edge of our own box with fewer and fewer ways out giving Arsenal chance after chance. I'm not sure how to change it easily but they simply cannot continue playing that way, it's suicidal.

The great irony of comparing Sunderland and Wrexham is that Rob McElhenney was inspired to buy a football club after watching Sunderland Til I Die. He and Ryan Reynolds could have easily bought Sunderland at that point but instead decided that a Welsh non league club was a better option.

Great that we managed to come back to draw but it's another game where we've dropped points against a team that we absolutely should not be struggling against.

If you spend £400+ on a season ticket and see people turning up every week paying nothing would you keep paying or would you look for some of those free tickets instead? If you work or visit one of the places that regularly gets a bunch of tickets there's simply no reason for you to ever consider buying one. To fix the issue, the club then gives out more free tickets and the number of people asking why am I paying for this when I can get the tickets for free? goes up. Rinse and repeat until you're giving away tens of thousands of tickets but your matchday revenue is lower than a L2 team.

Decent win

It's the midfield. Longstaff and Miley follow the ball far too often and coupled with the lack of pace in the midfield they get bypassed far too easily.

That's a lovely goal

Well that was fucking embarrassing. Dan Burn should never start another games as long as Tino is available instead, he was absolutely horrific today.

Wasn't there a load of thought that Chelsea had spent a load on younger players knowing that they were likely to breach FFP rules? The assumption was that they'd get hit with a transfer ban for a couple of seasons but they wouldn't care because they'd have these young superstars available to pick from. With the players not performing yet and with points deductions for FFP rather than transfer bans it makes it look like Chelsea were incredibly reckless where they could be looking at 20 or 30 point deductions over multiple seasons. That could absolutely kill the club.

I think he'd fail the No Dickheads part of our transfer policy.

Brilliant win

Brilliant stuff

lol

Get in!

Channel 864 on Virgin as well.

All three midfielders were awful in the first half. Bar Longstaff's goal they could have all sat the half out and it wouldn't have been too noticeable. In the second half, and more so after the second goal, they started to impose themselves a lot more and they all looked a lot better. Miley started showing up everywhere in the last quarter of the game and looked pretty good. Bruno, Longstaff, Miley as a midfield doesn't work but it's all we really have available unless we want to start shoehorning less suitable players in there.

Better second half and a decent win but we looked all over the place for a lot of the game.