AyeDubbleYoo

Suggests to me that some players don't have the confidence and belief to be getting into the right positions, or we lose the ball too quickly for them to really get forward. Course, these are average positions (I think?) so it could mean that the wingers track back as much as they attack, so their average is around the middle.

This is a very weird way to look at making good signings and transforming a relegation side to CL contenders, have to say.

Yeah I understand, it just seems like we can't supply the manager with that many signings to take his pick from. It seems like all of our signings need to work and hit the ground running because we aren't in the financial position of Chelsea.

Yeah fair enough, but he also gets an infinite supply of signings and can discard whoever he doesn’t fancy.

I expect more to come from Ramsey like, I don’t think what we’ve seen so far is the limit to what he’ll offer.

Maresca handled it a bit differently TBH, he just fucked off half the playing squad and just worked with the players he liked.

Yeah sure, but he’s also quite poor and presumably can’t start every game.

He’s also a bad sub IMO, especially when the game is going against us or the opposition are confident. Never seems to have enough to impose himself in those situations.

This is selecting from the players we have in the squad like, not from hypothetical players we could’ve signed.

But Tonali 100% is.

Whatever your views on him he’s obviously significantly better than he’s shown for us so far. He looks like he’s never played football before at the moment. All I can think he’s struggling with the move and feels under massive pressure and lacking confidence. You could argue he should be introduced more gradually but that basically means start Murphy every game. Which we probably can’t do anyway. As I’ve said I think Gordon converting to the right is probably our best bet for now.

Yeah but I don’t think the right option was to just sell Isak as easily and early as possible. In hindsight maybe, but I don’t think people would endorse that general approach to letting our best players be poached whenever someone fancies it. Guess just have to differ on the signings for now, we’ll see how they play out. FWIW I’ve always said no manager should be all-powerful on transfers and I think we all agree the club needs a fully professional recruitment department and technical director.

Right, I mean I don’t buy that characterisation. We’ve only made 1 bad signing, could be 2 if Ramsey contributes nothing but with his ability I don’t think that will happen. Just as much risk giving loads of money to a new manager. It’s the structure of the recruitment department that should protect against wasting money. Not that it will ever be perfect. I wouldn’t say we had a full summer this year because of the Isak saga.

I would say you ask the other way round TBH. What are our ambitions, are they realistic with the budget and draw to players we have. Then you decide if Howe has enough about him to get back on track next season given a full summer.

We have to give him a full summer, hopefully one without all the chaos of the last one. That said, if we have a really disastrous season it will be followed by a very difficult summer if some of our better players start wanting out. But I don't expect that to happen.

I don't think one poor season would ever be enough to get rid of him, unless you've got Pep interested or something.

This is just what people post when a player is doing badly. You could literally say it about anyone going through bad form. Tonali is playing badly right now (with the ball) but he's an elite player.

I really think Barnes left and Gordon right is the only way to go with the wide players we have in the squad right now. Unless we're signing a left-footed RW with real goal threat in Jan.

Maybe, but even if we knew that it's not sackable. Elanga could well have been expected to perform much better than he has so far. So would Ramsey. And I'm sure the idea was to rely much more on the proven Wissa and less on Woltemade.

In theory he should work well playing in goal-scoring wide forwards and dropping the ball off to midfielders like Bruno, Tonali and Ramsey etc moving forward. Maybe we need to let him come much deeper and play the wingers much more narrow, so the CBs can't all follow him. I'm not sure he would work well behind another striker because he'd be required to cover a lot of ground defensively as well. That said, he'll lose his place to Wissa soonish anyway if we can't get him more into the game.

You too

We lost our best player very late in the window and none of the attacking signings have really pulled up any trees. I don't think a bad season necessarily means we're 'going backwards'. Nobody can guarantee constantly finishing higher than the previous year without any setbacks. He gets the summer and probably all of next season no matter what for me, barring a ridiculously bad start or player revolt etc.

For me both teams played a low block and therefore neither attack did anything at all. It was a dire game, should've been 0-0.

Yet we know he was PL level until this season.

I think we'll continue to have an up and down season, at least until we're out of the CL. We're just not good enough to be relied on in so many big games every few days.