Gallowgate Toon

However we've done it, that was still a massive potential banana skin after the weekend. Huge respect for the pen takers and Dubs. It's unbearable to watch shootouts, I can't imagine what it's like taking one.

To be fair to the lad, he has made it count in our biggest moments this season.

It's lush to watch him run at pace in a midfield position at least.

His main strength is his stamina so it made sense imo considering other load management we're having to do with Miley/Willock/Anderson. I'm hoping it means he doesn't start on the weekend, like, because Wolves will be all over sneaking the ball off him and breaking rapidly.

How d'you know I'm a he? EH?

I didn't say that they weren't motivated. I said there was a lack of responsibility from quite a few which felt gutless to me. Nowt to do with effort, all to do with, imo, very poor application of the basics of football when you're the superior quality side by a distance. There's an angle to say Howe manages confidence; fair but we have a lot of seasoned pros where, imo, big accountability lies in this type of game to just get their job done.

I think we wanted to manage the game a bit but it just resulted in uber safe rubbish and then you start to get sloppy for counters. The amount of times we had good runners timing excellent dashes and chose to ignore them and pass backwards was infuriating.

Great penna, lad. Kinda telling we sent him up over Longstaff

He'll be up and down while he builds himself up. He's missed a lot of football.

He sent out a team more than capable of smashing Blackburn and some of them put in genuinely spineless performances, like. You can go on about coaching blah blah blah but we're a significantly better side than them, players have to take responsibility in those scenarios. You can't have players pulling out of 50/50s, playing blind balls around corners or absolute hospital passes, relentlessly passing the ball backwards when you're 1v1. These are not things that have been synonymous with Howe for the vast majority of his tenure.

Thank Christ. A genuine low point on many fronts but FUCK IT. YES.

Great pen.

Honestly sick of th sight of Longstaff. Same shit every fucking game.

An absolutely disgraceful performance from quite a few players imo. Gutless, safe shite.

Barnes and Miley should be on early in the next half.

The amount of times someone has made a run and we've failed to attempt a pass, man. Too safe.

Unbelievable but utterly unsurprising how much of a mess this is.

I thought it was pretty clearly explained by Ashworth how we use a traffic light system between himself/Howe/Rod Stewart and, presumably, the board to go ahead with a deal. But folk seem to think Howe swung things in his favour due to his nephew being on the scouting team and therefore had more say. Other than a few rumours, it's as clear as mud.

Ashworth was apparently responsible for 9 departments, more than at any other job he'd had. I think that's genuinely too many, really, and a DoF (or equivalent) should have tighter remits to ensure they actually deliver well. Having a sporting and a technical director might be the way forward or some other structure.

Klopp has been criticised for running players into the ground. He's had extensive injury lists on many occasions.

This 'signing players for Eddie's system' stuff is a load of bollocks, right? We've signed some absolute class. Trippier, Bruno, Isak, Tonali etc. and others aren't one dimensional footballers. The more future signings like Tino and Hall are definitely technical players as well. Most of the hard-working, physical but lacking in technique ones were, shock horror, here when we were a relegation-battling side.

But I think that's an ethos issue not a shape one. The answer for 3 one-paced mids isn't to go down to 2 imo - you're just opening up more space unless you go exceptionally narrow in the wider positions or have very aggressive CBs (who need to be excellent at it).

It's weird how formation is treated as this entity where everyone just sits in their exact zone and never moves. Howe messes with shape loads, from build ups to pressing structures to how the midfield covers space. Going on about 5-4-1 or whatever else we could cobble up with 2 fit senior CMs is simplifying things to an extreme. However, even if it wasn't, just saying switch to 5-4-1 isn't some silver bullet for all of our problems. Might help one or two things but has knock-on effects elsewhere.

Feels like he's 180ed as a player this season. Better moments/output, not doing the important stuff anywhere near as consistently.