Gallowgate Toon

It's also massively worth reminding ourselves that we built up to 'intensity is our identity' 2 years ago. Ironically, it was the Fulham game where we really started to kick into gear.

While he can be isolated, he sometimes massively fails at a fairly fundamental part of being a lone striker with his general play. Part of the reason we don't pin teams down in there to increase his service can be that he's behind play or is really slack with his decisions. An amazing striker when in form but he has to take more responsibility if he wants to go up a notch.

Personally, I don't think today's loss was massively a tactical one. Fairly obvious missing fundamental things involved in the goals - not tracking runners, not closing space quickly, not winning your battles. Letting a ball run through your hand doesn't help either. Whether we're struggling to motivate players is a pretty fair accusation though. I expected us to dominate their midfield with our physicality but it felt the opposite - we looked weak as piss across the front 6, in the main.

We still don't look fit, to me. Such a lack of snap in battles.

Absolutely brain-dead performance. Caught offside a million times, awful decision-making at both ends of the pitch. Isak and Gordon couldn't have been more on their heels half the time. Infuriating to see them a second behind very obvious scenarios.

Lots of athleticism in the middle. Would've like Tonali for the extra patience in possession but hey ho.

Fulham are fairly front foot so Gordon up top might work if we nail counters, but I expect we'll have the issue of it sticking when we're under pressure in our usual shape. They have some good footballers but their spine lacks physicality imo, we should be going there looking to dominate the middle.

Must be nearing a return? Just watched some of his highlights from last season and forgot how good he was in bursts.

He did look a lot more defensively secure at the back end of last season so it could be a fitness thing. Feels like he does need quite a bit of protection from others, at the minute, and his ability on the ball isn't outweighing that enough. So easy to forget how green he is in terms of professional gametime though. I'd be inclined to take him out this weekend and put him back in for the cup game. At his level of experience, lower league opposition is another good learning opportunity for him.

Yeah... The word at the time was more about hiring specialists in areas of product & function. I guess we've hired the Head of Ticketing role but I'd be surprised if that person is so operational that they're involved in the running & management of the tech itself. Same with retail, hospitality etc. Things can obviously change so maybe something happened, but this wasn't that long ago.

Think I posted this before but I was indirectly privy to the app process and the budget was a lot lower than anticipated compared to similarly-sized clubs. The site was quite late too but that's not unusual all in sports tech/tech. I was also told there'd be a fairly important expansion of staff this summer but it didn't seem to happen - the club still seem to outsource a lot.

I'd prefer him left of the two but Barnes played RW quite a bit earlier in his career. In his goal comps he pops up in quite a few different positions and has finishes on both feet. Saw a goal he scored for West Brom on his left, extremely similar to this weekend's. Extremely underrated footballer.

Hall has popped up in midfield quite a bit already this season. Think it's just a pattern thing we try on either side. Definitely agree Tino looks weird there though - did do a lovely turn yesterday in that slot but also lost it other times.

Pope Tino Schar Burn Hall Bruno Tonali Jo Gordon Isak Barnes Ideally, you'd bring in Willock from the start but I think it's more than fair to keep him as a bench option over the next few weeks.

I don't think performances so far have been great but also not that bad - we've had good chances in most games, this season, imo. It is in interesting that our games have largely followed the same pattern since Southampton though; start well for the first 20, become weirdly passive & messy for the next 20-30, finish well enough. I thought yesterday's first 'quarter' was our best yet. We looked back to our old selves in many ways - energy, rotations, good build-up patterns - but just couldn't capitalise due to a lack of quality as they sat deeper. We then seemed to lose a bit of impetus & confidence and it became open. Confidence is obviously fragile but I'm just not convinced we look fit enough yet - it's so important to win battles regardless of 'tactics' and we feel a second slower at this, at the moment. Well, that and technical quality balanced across the team is lacking when we're under the cosh. Tonali really could be such a help here - Longstaff's game just isn't great in tighter areas and never will be - but there are other balancing acts in the team we need to figure out on this front too.

Having competition with Tripps is fantastic for him. While Trippier has had good impact off the bench, we were hardly that great with him starting against Forest, so I don't think it's that simple. They're 2 very good tactical options to have throughout a season, like. I'd love to see Tino with Tonali & Gordon playing ahead of him.

He's had fantastic output in the league for years & years. Weird treatment of him, he's currently undroppable imo. The types of bangers he already has for us is absolutely insane, like.

Love the bloke but I think he's overthinking things at the moment.

Think we've approached the final third fine but we're not firing there at all. Almost like we should be playing our sharpest forward in the final third. Howe needs to be proactive. One of Tonali or Barnes on at HT at the very least.

Unless he has a knock, that's a very poor decision re: Barnes. It just sends a really poor message and is entirely counterproductive. What motivation is he going to have to perform if there's no consistency to him starting? I'd get it if our other wingers were class but it's Murphy and Almiron ffs.

Just caught the press conference. Some of the journos are absolutely desperate & shameless Hope and Bird being the worst. Horrendous framing of questions.

Surely CONTROL FREAK, TRAINING GROUND TYRANT Eddie Howe would be furious some fitness bod is encroaching on his BELOVED training ground grass?

Genuinely curious, which of his teams has won anything while he's been there?

Talking about overpaying for some of your current players is an interesting way to go about things. Referenced himself in the third person. Giant red flag.

Howe has spelled it out quite plainly over the last week - we aren't equal match fitness across the team yet. You can't really adopt constant pressing if you're carrying anyone, they all need to be on it. Gordon is a massive press trigger for us and he's the least sharp of them all.