AyeDubbleYoo

Has El Khannous done well on his German loan?

Well the other option would be borrowing I guess, not paying directly from current income.

How long would’ve been OK?

Right, but that doesn't mean the owners are disinterested. That's the part that's made up.

Awoniyi being back is a shame, very dangerous from crosses and set pieces.

Are you only believing these and not the other interesting links there's been? Any reason?

He’s a really good CB, I don’t get what people see sometimes. Confirmation bias on both sides I suppose, who knows.

I’m convinced people will be saying the owners are disinterested until the first game kicks of in the new stadium.

I want to beat Sunderland but it doesn’t define the season if we don’t. I’m not trying to look cool, that ship has sailed I reckon. I just don’t care ‘that’ much. Maybe I’m lucky because none of my colleagues and very few friends talk about football. So it’s quite easy to move on.

I’m not sure why this has become such a big deal TBH, I thought he’d just been left out for like 2 games. In a desperate run of form when Howe just wants Burn for leadership and headers. Is there more to it than that?

More and more pleased with this decision TBH. This season has been tough but Howe has never given up and neither have the players. That shows a lot of tenacity and belief from all parties, would’ve been so easy for the spirit to fall apart completely. In some clubs it would’ve been a complete disaster. Refreshing from a PL ownership to not buy into the ‘any other manager would be sacked’ bullshit and actually take a broader view of what’s happening. They have filled the key roles around Howe and now they’re giving him a chance to take us forward. In any world that makes a lot of sense. Nothing is guaranteed about next season but we’ve made a brave and quite unusual call and I’m happy to see how it plays out.

I know a lot of the links we’ve had are sexy, does indicate interest in young forrin lads. I don’t believe our existing policy was that bad either TBH, Iast summer was exceptionally bad compared to the bigger picture.

Don't think you can ever know given you can't run the scenario where he leaves and an unknown person comes in. Time will tell if he goes onto more success, of course.

I’ve seen the replays they showed in game obviously. Forgive me if I don’t analyse inferior Bruno’s every action that much.

I’ve definitely seen reds for it, it was out of control and contacted with studs up. It was nasty. Haven’t watch a replay but IIRC the sole of his foot made contact.

Bruno Fernandes seemed to get away with a blatant red card earlier, not sure VAR even reviewed it. Went in off the ground with studs up right on a guy's ankle.

I blamed Pope at the time but TBH the Brighton goal was absolutely brilliant play by them. Sure the clearance is dogshit but they put together an incredible move to score.

If he got his head up with that one attack and squared it, we'd be talking about a pretty much perfect performance. Not bad for someone with hardly any PL games. The little flick he did to keep that ball alive for the Willock chance was brilliant as well. TBH right now I would keep him and Woltemade and try to make them into a sexy partnership.

I don’t disagree with this, I just try to separate what we’re doing now from the bigger picture of our progression. Right now we’ve doubled down on the things Howe finds most familiar and thinks will get us a result or two, keeping in mind the horrific season and the rock bottom confidence. Like I said, he’ll never be a tiki-taka manager but I think we do want to improve in our ability to control games. Whether the balance is possible, we’ll see hopefully. This summer will definitely be interesting.

We have a big stadium, get over it. At Palace the roof blocks your view, at Chelsea it’s all over the place, even down at pitch side at Arsenal isn’t really a great place to watch the game from. I’d rather watch from up high than any of those type of places.

A lot of our signings have been technically pretty good. Howe likes Schar and we’ve signed Thiaw, Botman and Hall. I still maintain Elanga is meant to be technically better than Murphy. Howe rates Miley. We haven’t signed a technical CM but that’s because we already had our midfield pretty much locked in for now. Ramsey is very neat and tidy with the ball and rarely wastes it. Woltemade is obviously technically gifted. Even the forwards we failed to sign are too. I’m not saying we’re going to focus on possession as our overriding gameplan, but I feel we want to improve the quality in the team on the ball for sure. Of course balancing both is tricky because players who have both are playing for people like PSG.

What is the main reason though? You think we can get a better second or thirst choose striker with his upside for that money?

I’m relatively sure the plan is to make us better in possession, surely Howe wants this. For various reason, including confidence being shot, we just can’t do it at the moment. While we have some technical players we haven’t always been able to pick them together and we also have quite a few mistake makers in our ranks. I don’t think we should necessarily use this season as indicative of much TBH. It’s more like been one long exercise in struggle and trying to do whatever Howe things we can to get some results.

Would we? Then spend that much again to get someone we can use in his place?

Can’t see how we can be selling this lad in the situation we’re in. Maybe if we have 2 strikers lined up to come in, but I can’t see that happening.