AyeDubbleYoo

Such a bad move for a player with so little stamina to take such a long break from training and playing. He can only play 55 minutes effectively even when fully fit.

They immediately cut to Barnes after the whistle and he was visibly raging.

It's winnable like, obviously can't say I'm confident but we have a lineup that can do the business now assuming the proper FBs and Woltemade play.

Should play LCB only and even there I’d have him as second choice behind Botman. That said, if Hall isn’t fit we don’t have anyone else and I still prefer Tino just focusing on getting better at RB.

Not sure what’s going on with this lad. Sometimes just doesn’t have anything in his game, sometimes looks like he has everything. Probably something to do with mentality and possibly his relationship with his teammates as well. Noticed right on half time that Barnes was raging because Gordon ignored him a great position. I really rate Gordon in theory but I’m leaning towards trying to get money for him and invest it in more reliable attackers.

I know, we messed up a lot of final balls throughout the game. But we did play well for significant periods IMO.

Can’t remember how many minutes but there was a significant period where I thought we were going to steamroll Marseille. And we played well for a period towards the end when chasing the equaliser.

He might get dropped now, this mistake was bigger than his normal ones so might give the reason.

This but I think he’ll go for Joelinton and maybe Schar/Burn at LCB. Still a very good team.

That's only 14 players for significant fees though (say 5 for 'big' money), and a few key ones have been injured all season. It's not like Howe is working with Arsenal's squad.

Well I guess a lot of clubs physically can’t spend that much so they have to fill the squad cheaper/younger. I’m generalising but you get the point. We needed to recover from 1.5 decades of neglect and buy a hell of a lot of players. And we decided, rightly IMO, that we couldn’t take many risks on ones that might not work out.

I mean, any PL player costs 30m+ and we probably needed to buy 20 after not spending for 15 years. That’s before replacing Isak.

Funny one last night, I was proud of how we played for big parts of the match, at the start and when chasing the equaliser. But obviously we wasted a lot of good attacks by lack of quality, and then Pope fucked us. Still overall proud of most of the team, we looked like we were going to steamroll them at some points. Still carrying makeshift fullbacks on both sides, Murphy was dogshit and so was Gordon in attack. Even Bruno failed to execute all the key passes (albeit hard passes). Maybe we ultimately just don’t have the quality to rotate players and be confident of wins. Mixed feelings basically

Save this for 3-5 years when he plays a first team game, it's not bad

I think he did have some pre-season.

I’d be quite surprised if Hall plays, think we might keep him for the PL.

Aye, teammates should bollock each other when they make a mistake

The amount of made up stuff when talking about the rules of football is very worrying like I do the same obvs, but it's a very strange situation where everyone involved doesn't know what the actual rules of the sport are - probably including the players and managers.

They talked about the momentum rule on MOTD I think, but I don't know if that really was a factor. Like if a collision was the inevitable consequences of momentum, they might have thought that Schar was just blocking the shot and/or Foden's action of shooting led them to collide. Who knows. I do think pens for missed attempts to block shots is a bit shit.

Where can you in the PL at his age and start regularly though? Probably a promoted club at best, and even they probably value experience and grit more than ability.

The second chance with his feet was harder than it looked, he had to shoot to his left because there were like 3 defenders blocking the other side of the goal. Shame but not a bad miss.

Yeah. But same as the criticism Botman has had recently, defenders look worse when exposed and good players are attacking them. I just wouldn’t say yesterday is a clear case of Schar now has the shirt over Botman.

Tripped and fell over for the cross that led to Foden’s miss as well. I love Fab but I think Botman would be my clear preference now for most games.

Quite clearly the best defence in most of our lifetimes I would say

Nah he hasn’t.