AyeDubbleYoo

Think proven generally means proven to be good Know what you mean though.

First thing I noticed And he’s tall.

I like our approach of going for class players, but it will make this window more difficult. We could hoover up cast offs and mercenaries who would be much better than the players we have, and we might well stay up. But that doesn’t seem to be the way they want to run things.

Its a transfer rumours thread like. Standards in this area are not high.

One CB is OK in this window, if necessary. Shame to see this one fail though.

The CIES Football Observatory has NUFC as the worst-off club in the PL for points below expected points. Expecting (based on shots taken and faced) 0.9 points per game and actually getting 0.58. So we would have nearly 19 points. Spurs and West Ham are +0.4 per game, by far the biggest points scorers above expectation.

They were never going to sell key players to us.

Nah. Also Coutinho is likely to end up somewhere else if he does well.

That’s true in hindsight, but I guess we expected to get through.

Surely Burnley would never sell a first team player to us in the middle of a relegation battle.

Our team is Championship, they’re League One. There were some bigger shocks than that yesterday. At the moment we’re only a PL team on paper.

I know it’s unacceptable, I just mean it’s quite likely to happen. We’re very vulnerable to anyone who has a decent game plan.

Dummett would be a massive upgrade if he’s available. That’s how bad Ritchie is at LB.

I don’t think it really matters what level of opponent we’re playing right now. The squad is rock bottom on quality and shot to bits mentally. Any decent football team from any level has a chance to beat us in the right circumstances.

I don’t disagree in the theory, but it seems very rare in football. Maybe clubs just don’t want the distraction of taking offers to let their players leave throughout the start of the season, dunno. Anyway, of course they need to be as quick as possible. But I don’t think Trippier in and 2 CBs close is that bad at this stage.

Been injured for eons but he was on the bench yesterday. So guess there’s a tiny chance he’s fit.

I was thinking this too, but after seeing the balls Trippier can deliver from the right I’d be leaning towards keeping him there.

There’s been 4 working days in the transfer window.

While I agree, it seems there wasn’t really any other option.

The weirdest thing was that he just stood in the centre circle behind the play for most of the time. Presumably he’d been brought on to carry the ball a bit or provide some kind of threat.

I think he just got a bit frustrated.

It’s easy to underestimate just how bad our squad is. Rafa (maybe the most organised manager in the world) got a tune out of them 3 years ago.

Hoolahan was a really good sub, reacting to us playing Shelvey on his own in midfield by bringing Willock on.

And we’ll be relegated.

I think on loan he had nothing to lose, he knew that to stay up we needed him to just do anything it took to score a goal. It’s not real football. That said, there must be something health or fitness related going on IMO, the decline is just so extreme.