oldtype

It’s crazy that Burn/Schar felt undroppable coming into the season and within two months those two may never be the first choice pairing again. Thiaw has acclimated ridiculously well.

I think it’s more we don’t know how to fit him in yet rather than him being bad at football. Give Eddie a half season and I’m sure he’ll look better.

The scouting report on him from Germany was that he’s an excellent finisher he just doesn’t get in goal scoring positions a lot. Showed his finishing skills with that penalty today. Imagine what happens when Eddie fixes the positioning

If he’s not going to sign a new deal we basically have no choice but to sell him in January and reinvest. We also have three other quality starters at that position so it’s not going to be like the Isak situation where we have to overpay to replace immediately.

This is why the club was ultimately right to “cave” and sell him at the price they did, even if he does eventually come good. There are diminishing returns on player prices, a 130m player is not twice as productive as a 65m player, and once you’ve gotten to that price bracket you basically always lose the deal unless everything goes right and they’re a top 5 player in the world at their position.

He also cost a lot more money, even accounting for fee inflation. We don’t need him to turn into Ali Dia or something, even “turns out he’s only a good-ish starting striker in the prem” would be a delight.

How glorious would it be if it turns out he was never that good to begin with, and it was all just Eddie Howe stardust and a half season of Papiss Cisse good luck

Yeah I’d have to assume every team has some version of this it’s not a particularly complex idea

Andy Carroll scenario still in play with this guy. Love to see it.

We don’t “need” anything tbh. We should just be looking for the best player available who can truly elevate the quality of the team, regardless of position.

I hate it when everyone expects us to win

Really think we've found something with Gordon-Woltemade-Elanga and that needs to be the first choice front three. The rest of the team I'm fine with rotating a bit. It's the attack that's been a little bit off all season and needs some reps to get more consistency. The midfield and defense are well-oiled machines as this point so I'm fine with Eddie moving players in and out as he pleases.

He looks really good with pace on either side of him. Gordon-Woltemessi-Elanga has to be the first choice front three.

Yeah, fuck all those German nonces. He's mint.

This is the main issue with the team right now. Everyone can see we have quality all over the pitch but we've also got a ton of new players and it's taking time for them to get used to each other. We're just waiting for that elusive "click" to happen at some point.

Folks, there's no reason to be slandering possibly the best CB in the history of the club just because we don't like the idea of him starting at LB in a midweek CL game.

We don't concede headers from set pieces, right? That's never happened recently, right?

For possibly the first time in club history, we can field two quality 11s when (knock on wood) fully fit.

The positive way to look at it is that we have a deep enough squad now that the team doesn't look like a crime scene even with a moderate sized injury crisis.

It will be Hall 1st choice, Burn 2nd choice at LB, Trippier/Krafth at RB until Livramento is back and I think that's mostly fine. I don't want us to be spending significant money on a fullback given that Hall/Livramento will at least theoretically have us set for the foreseeable future.

I cannot possibly imagine a Korean national team player being sold to a big prem club for a gazillion pounds and Korean pundits being like "eh, that's super overpriced" instead of being happy for him and supporting the guy. Just weird behavior.

Alright then, let's see some winning. Winning would be good.

Yeah, presumably having fast CBs helps cover for a slower LB.

Seems to me that Eddie is having some real trouble deciding which two of our three fit CBs should start and the Tino injury gives him an excuse to keep all three in the team. I don't think Schar is going to be a nailed-on starter anymore when he comes back from concussion either.

“Your striker bores me so I’m going to go be an attacking midfielder now” Dan Burn is my favorite Dan Burn.