Gallowgate Toon

Was Cucu the smokescreen? If so, canny funny they're continuing to leverage Baldwards' desperation to be relevant.

A young player who can play well in multiple positions sounds right up Howe's street.

Surely there won't be any changes for this if everyone's fit? Almiron and Gordon are the perfect wingers for this type of match to keep things tight & competitive. Barnes-y to come on and snatch a point at the death.

The usual suspects will be absolutely frothing at this. It seems a bit tinpot and risking a small crowd is dumb.

The latter. His family stayed up here even after he moved on from us and now he's doing some kind of role at Gateshead. Pretty sure he lives on Beverley Terrace in Cullercoats.

I wonder if we've earmarked any of the youngsters we've bought recently for the senior squad the first half of the season. I think we've brought in a couple of 18/19 year olds who you'd think could be on the cusp of seeing even a bit of first team squad action if the conditions were right.

Surprised more players don't live near the coast. Have seen the Longstaffs & Anderson knocking about before as you'd expect and Rob Elliott is a regular around Tynemouth Front Street.

I feel like Sandro is mocking us by doing a pleb tour and sending pics to his mates

But what does he actually do? I caught him on 3 occasions last season + this weekend and he was barely involved each time. Looking at his numbers last season, he passed the ball a bit but not very effectively when not in his own half, he doesn't make that many tackles or interceptions per game nor is his success rate fantastic, and he's not an offensive threat in any capacity. His defensive output was worse than Bruno G's who is one of the least defensively-minded defensive midfielders around.

As a sidenote, I know Brummie has raved about him before but I just don't see it with Kamara as a midfielder. He's decent & tidy but just doesn't stand out when I watch him. Feels like he'd have been great ~5/10 years ago in the world of pure defensive mids.

They had 2 nice possession moves, one for the goal and one when Diaby slipped in and fired into the side netting. Everything else they created were cheap turnovers and straight counters iirc. I was honestly pretty disappointed with them - they could've been 2 down within 10 minutes

Ridiculous VAR stuff aside, Man U are just really, really boring.

Really liked Gordon/Joelinton rotation for this. It's not quite as fluid as Joe & Jo but still worked really nicely, especially as Gordon looks so sharp taking a touch inside and driving towards the box. Joelinton almost played like an inside forward at times but would still make some great overlapping runs. You can see why Howe wants such flexible players for in-game stuff like that.

Why aren't we singing his 'gimme gimme gimme' song? I'm unreasonably annoyed that a player as good as he is isn't regularly sang about

£100m for a very good young player is the going rate for clubs that spend idiotically.

I don't think we'll ever win there but this is about as good a chance as we could have. A draw would be tremendous, tbh.

Think Klopp has lost it, tbh. It's starting to feel like late Wenger with the massive stockpile of attacking midfielders being shunted everywhere. I think Szob can become a pretty decent 8 in time but it's a big ask to come to a new league and an entirely new position.

Enzo looks much better as a CM rather than a DM.

He's going to continue to lose possession. Howe recognises the net benefit, luckily. He takes the ball in deep positions, inviting pressure by design, and opens up spaces for others (did it today expertly for the Wilson goal) on a regular basis. If this doesn't work, he wins fouls an awful lot.

Got a canny left foot. He really is lightning. That recovery run for the Diaby break was impressive as fuck.

Dare I say it but I thought his tactics were a bit arrogant Clear as fuck that playing a high line really isn't wise against us at home but he almost doubled down on it.

Thought his general game was slightly under par but he still did some absolutely ridiculous things and that finish ffs. He's the most talented player we have, without doubt - I've really missed watching him play.

He's going to be a monster for us in the final third.

Looked best when rotating into the CM position today. We made some lovely switches between the 3. Tonali will help him as teams adjust to figuring out how to deal with him which will open space back up again. Bruno had some excellent games at the back end of last campaign and does so much grunt work for us but sides had figured out ways to limit his space & influence.

He is very fucking quick and his touch is outstanding.