Gallowgate Toon

Hopefully, this is our Fulham from last season. Interesting to look back at our start last year. We were great against Forest and had strong underdog displays against City & Liverpool, but were a bit insipid against Wolves, Palace, and Bournemouth. From Fulham, things started to click a lot more.

If the space was as wide open as you're saying then they absolutely would've exploited it more. I can't imagine their primary gameplan would really be so many crosses against a very & tall aerially-strong defence so there's a good chance that we preferred to draw them into those areas and let them have a go. We did look to press at the beginning. From their GKs, we set up high as we do against pretty much everyone and we actually did get at their CBs in possession quite a few times especially in the first 10 minutes or so. We settled into more of a midblock once they'd beaten the press a few times which is fine. We still wanted to be in a proactive enough shape to keep a hold of possession, turn second balls into counters, and build a platform for attacks. We actually had the ball in the final third a decent enough amount to be able to do some damage but linking of play was poor there and we lost it very, very cheaply on multiple occasions.

Lots being made of the midfield again and there were a few passes that got in behind but that's football. Unless you sit in banks all the time then that space will exist and teams will find pockets on occasion. At one point, their RB roamed into an AM position and had a shot - that's canny hard to account for defensively. Looking at the highlights, most of their best chances came from wide positions and set pieces. They put in a lot of crosses.

He repeats the same thing each week without context. Why isn't he saying Tonali can't play with Longstaff? Or Joelinton? We play a midfield 3 yet his obsession is with 2 players who aren't similar profiles. The whole thing is designed to target the 2 most high profile names for his shitrag to stir a conversation. Tonali isn't a DM so that isn't going to happen. He's played as a box-to-box mid for the last 2 seasons alongside a DM. Bruno has excellent defensive output. There's a reason we didn't concede much last year and we didn't concede many shots either with him as the main protector. Sure, he's a bit unorthodox but that works in our favour the other way. The bigger problem we have at the minute is players tucking in behind our 8s to create an overload, unless our '6' has 8 legs then he's not going to beat that outnumbering.

It was a lovely bit of play to set up Longstaff. He's had some good moments already this season imo, it was his set up for the Gordon chance against Brighton, decently involved against Brentford. He definitely has a platform to build off now if he can stay fit for a while.

I see Craig Hope is straight back on with his Bruno/Tonali hot takes again. Seems to think Bruno played poorly which is bonkers to me. Grown to really dislike him. He was one of the freaks yesterday who was asking about the plane delay and what the players did on the plane.

He got a bit sloppy and we stopped using him as an outlet as much for a bit which was a shame as, at about 10 mins, he skinned their RB twice (poor cross in though) after being found with a diagonal. I thought we'd do that a little more once the RB got his yellow but it didn't happen. Feels like we're still learning how best to use him.

The numbers show he linked with team mates a lot, to be fair. 20 passes (18 successful) and 34 touches, these are good numbers for a striker playing away from home and showed how generally involved he was. Yes isolated in some advanced positions but he at least had lots of opportunities to combine with teammates & build moves. Giroud for comparison had 20 touches and 12 attempted passes (only making 5(!)). Our wingers were shit tonight which was the biggest problem going forward imo. Gordon was wasteful with passing and seemed a little awestruck, Murphy too shy to be proactive. Tonali far less involved in possession that Bruno/Longstaff as well which is likely due to how poor Dan Burn's passing was.

I think that was pretty purposeful as he'd been lacking in so many touches before Brighton. I actually liked it as a tactic too as a ball from the CBs even if it feels weird to have someone dangerous drop so deep. I think the idea was for him to drop in but keep the wingers high & wide to help stretch their defence for midfield runners. Maybe in hindsight they should've dropped in and let him stay higher and move into the channels instead.

I reckon he'll be really glad that's out the way as well. The buildup to this has felt Cup Final-like. It's class for us as fans but he's had so many questions about it for weeks and I thought his responses in yesterday's presser were telling when it came to trying to play things down.

Couldn't give a flying fuck about the performance tonight. Good result and just loads of fun to be part of again.

Another game where you see the absolute worst and best in him

I'm glad that's out the way for him. We've got some winnable games coming up where we should have a lot more of the ball and he can build better relationships. Had to do a lot of off-the-ball work in his time here so far.

He was one of the few who looked of standard, or at least had played at this level before. Thought the occasion got to quite a few of our lot.

We've been a genuinely excellent team for a year, bar some dips, with some fairly journeymen players in the squad. Howe is very good tactically and our underlying numbers over the year reflect that. Every team has weaknesses, football is a short blanket game as Rafa said. You move someone somewhere else and a new problem appears. It's the same for 99% of teams and the good coaches focus on net benefit over time. There are loads of articles about how he's changed us from 21/22, including a switch midway through last season. Bruno says he's a genius, Wilshere said he was an unbelievable coach, Joe Cole talked about how good he is tactically at creating overloads. There'll be countless examples of this. Proud as fuck for him tonight. He knows we can do better and we will improve. We look a team who need a run of easier games to find attacking rhythm and some upping of this side of our game on the training pitch.

Liked how he was trying to link play in the first half and thought he had some nice touches but faded as we went on and was pretty pathetic the last 10 minutes or so. You could see it why Howe left him on as he can have a moment at any time in the game but it just didn't reflect well overall.

I don't think language barriers would be that farfetched for in-game tweaks. Gordon said it took him a while to get used to our system & tactics.

That's why I said in January where we we played PL opposition in the League Cup (can include December though for the cup game vs. Bournemouth). We played a lot of games between the restart and the Cup Final and he only properly rotated for Sheffield Wednesday in that period iirc. A lot of the noise on here was that he wasn't mixing it up enough during that period as it coincided with us struggling to put some 'easier' teams to the sword. He knows above all about the importance of momentum hence why he so often keeps selecting a winning team. The factors are nicely lined up for the CL to keep that consistency. Let's see tomorrow!

Really like the potential of Gordon/Barnes. Pace, decent workrate, both can go either side having decent weaker pegs, they can either stay wider or take up inside forward roles depending on overlaps from FBs or the midfielders. Main component they're missing is ability to consistently beat a couple of players if needed but they're very capable 1v1. Barnes primarily left makes sense due to his shooting/finishing and nous for finding space.

This early in the season he absolutely does have the choice. We saw in January with the cup run that he was more than happy to keep the XI consistent despite congestion. With how we've started this campaign, I think he'll be focusing on continuing to set some of the standards from Brentford over the next couple of games to set the squad competition up for the rest of the campaign.

He's exceptionally talented but we saw against City, Liverpool, and Brighton that he's got a bit of a way to go yet. He was anonymous in the first 2, despite us having decent share of the ball, and wasteful at the AMEX. Wilson had one chance to make something happen and took it there. Wilson actually had almost as many touches and more shots against Liverpool & City than Isak did despite playing less than half the minutes. The easy thing to say there is that he was isolated in those games and that'd be true, but we bought him for the money we did as a difference maker who should be roaming and looking for the ball when space in the central spots is locked down. He didn't do this enough so didn't see the ball. He's my favourite player to watch at NUFC and the most talented in our ranks but there's a reason that he came here in the first place despite already having been at a big club European club. I think the Swedish coach is meant to be shite but I think he recently made some comments about how Isak needs to take more responsibility and I'd agree with that. Competition is the healthiest thing to help him develop his mentality.

There's a stat out there which tries to reflect pressing which I think is ppda or something. There was a vid before Brentford that we were midtable for this so far this season. Last season, we were 3rd or 4th for it. To be fair, it's a small sample and City & Brighton beat our press very well so it's natural we'd adjust in-game. Feels like where we're lacking most is second balls more than anything if there's a stat for that. Not sure if midfield positioning is the potential reason for this. There's been quite a bit of tinkering in defensive shape. Good article in the athletic about how we've used Tonali differently in each game he's played. Definitely tried to adjust Trippier a bit to presumably avoid Villa-style humpings where they exploit the gap he leaves. His heatmap is still all over but more mixing up of him stepping into mid or just plain old staying back too.

Howe loves to keep a winning team together though, it's part of what helps to create that competitive mentality in the squad. With it being so early in the season, I don't think he'll be as worried about rotation as he will in a couple of months.

Some interesting options using the squad. 1. Tripper stays back when Hall pushes up 2. We go to a more aggressive shape and leave Schar/Botman to crack on with the deepest covering mid ahead. Feel like we've tried this this campaign to very mixed results. 3. We drop into more of a box mid when both FBs push high 4. We copy City's 2-3-5 shape - either FBs help make the 3 or CMs stay together. Could be a mix. It's true that removing Burn would create some gaps but it'd also give some new opportunities - there are lots of ways to win. I think we'd miss him most from defensive set pieces.

I think he'll only make one change for Tuesday... Tonali for Anderson.