AyeDubbleYoo

God knows why you would sign up to that just to get Sancho on loan, when you already have a massive squad.

I guess it’s how it’s applied. Automated offside can rule out goals in an annoying way, but at least it’s applying the actual rules and doesn’t depend so much on subjective judgement. I’d say it’s the lesser VAR evil, if we have to have VAR at all.

Yeah that happens all the time, an offside not given which then results in play continuing in whatever way. I'm not sure if the offside rule was only intended to be used in the event of a goal, or if that's an unintended consequence of the way it works with VAR now.

Presumably neither do we.

VAR has actually made diving worse, because now you don’t need to get a pen from the referee in real time. You can just engineer a tiny bit of contact that can be seen on a replay. It’s completely the opposite of what it should be for.

Doku is not one of their worst players.

And/or Forest for me. They’re not invulnerable either.

Not sure, hopefully it crushes the Villa momentum I guess. Plus seeing Villa lose is just fun.

Still think Kovacic is absolutely brilliant. Doesn’t seem to get talked about enough.

McAtee combines sublime and awful touches almost equally. Weird player.

Are we sure that Villa losing is best?

Does Simone just sign people because they're dirty?

Quickest deal ever made

Surely he’s on the grill at the end of the season?

Who signed this off?

I haven’t been watching spurs much but the squad doesn’t seem ‘that’ far off on paper, if a better approach could be applied and a few weaknesses shored up. Guess you could say that about most average sides, but it’s true. Sometimes when I see the lineup on paper I literally can’t imagine how it functions on the pitch. But I’m no manager obviously.

I expected us to sit back more after half time, but it wasn't really in the plan I guess. TBF we started the second half quite well IIRC, just the underlying tactical situation hadn't really changed enough.

No. And if either phrase it like that we need to remind them what a CL squad looks like. Like someone said, Villa signing 3 top attackers in one January should be instructive.

As long as the one comes at the end when the game's done.

WTF?

Yep. The pessimism is due to losing against Villa, it’s literally the only thing that’s gone wrong for weeks. We’re still in an incredible position and should do it.

We don’t know I guess. Right now I’d prefer Villa to lose, but at the end of the season we don’t really know who’ll be where.

Huh?

Solanke was a really baffling signing.

Means very little. We had a hard game where others didn’t. We just need to keep picking up points and we’ll finish top 5.