Gallowgate Toon

My 5-month old always smiles when I sing his song

Iirc Adam P called him out for being a bit of a dorty old man.

Ffs want Spurs to start dropping.

Ah fort the answer to all of our 'problems' against deep teams was simply to have Maddison.

A draw is the best result for us.

It'll be a fairly amazing moment for him should he lead us out on Wednesday. From captaining us in the Championship to the CL.

Think his knee is giving him gip, he's just not as explosive and agile as he was last season. Still, as he's a class player, some good moments today outside of his cool af pen.

The talent to play like that against some canny good opposition on your first start in 18 months, man. He's got a bit of a 'Rolls Royce of a player' feel about him. Everything looks so smooth.

Assuming Howe was playing cute with injury updates, I guess the only change here from Sheff will be Miggy on the right and Gordon going back left?

Pressing as the striker can be a thankless task, tbf. Out style seems to leave the forward to do the work between the 2 CBs until the rest of the team are ready to trigger. We'll press to a decent degree in most games so either Isak works on it or we need to rotate him in-game with wingers a bit more to try and protect his legs.

Really nice 3-2-5 shape for our goal. A shame that Tonali and Bruno are standing so close together as the 2 considering how SHIT they make eachother.

I imagine there'll be some particular caveats around that release clause. Competition conditions, timeframes, payment terms etc.

Bring it on! Personally, loving playing big teams more often - it feels like it'll only benefit our squad preparation for the future.

To me, it seems he has very good technique & athleticism even just from last night. A lovely turn before being fouled, some nice little dribbles in space, the excellent ball for Isak. Probably going to be a quiet first half of the season for him but expect he'll start to really push after New Year.

He played a much more conventional RCM role in the second half with Tino providing width and Murphy tucking in a bit and I thought that really suited him. Much better second half. That deepest mid role against strong midfields is tough work.

Thought he was fantastic that half. After seeing someone else try it, you could see the benefit of all of the hard, important work he does for us in tight spaces. He also always gets stuck in and wins lots of duels.

Wew. That was canny great. Good footballer, great athlete, fantastic 1v1.

First bit of proper football for him in months. Looking forward to him getting up to speed - you can tell he has natural technique.

We thinking that's a 343? Or is Hall in midfield in a 433?

Good to see the big man back with the Barnes news. He's a really solid LW option as well as mid.

I thought he had a decent amount of positive moments last season, tbh, but they largely seemed to come when he was a sub rather than a starter. Obviously not much output (although he did provide a few good chances) but some intelligent touches, movement, and build up play. The main difference this season is his drive to go forward and run at the opposition. He was far less confident in this side of his game last season, cutting in & playing simpler passes extremely often apart from one half against Southampton. I think his dribbling stats were generally pretty poor.

No idea why it should be a handball. It's not deliberate and doesn't benefit Gordon - it actually makes it harder for him to keep the move going.

He can definitely play a Firmino-like role when required. It's just not feasible tactically for us to always to be able to create space for him to run behind. In those situations, we either need him to play like a proper poacher and accept he'll be largely out of the game or become more of a link man to help draw defenders out. To make it work, it requires either midfielders running ahead, wingers tucking in, or both. He does need to move the ball quicker when he does this though otherwise the gap created is gone. From his time at Sociedad, there are some nice clips of his one-touch link up - it's very smooth when he does it so I can see with some more polish that it could be a really effective tactic for us. Or we just shove him out to the wing

Do we break out 5 at the back here to try and protect those pesky half spaces better? City are just about the best in the world at finding those spots. I'm expecting Hall and Livra to start.

It was cool to hear in his NUFCTV interview that he'd been working with Tindall on that shot - before, he said he'd have tried to hit top bins but they've been working on a more controlled effort.