Gallowgate Toon

There are moments and games where you don't want him as the 6 still but he's absolutely fantastic there the majority of the time.

Today's pass had my hands on my head in disbelief. It was Iniesta-like. What a fabulous footballer he is when on form.

We're almost always shit here. Would love a win.

He played about 3 roles today and was fucking class at each one.

After the first couple of goals is the loudest I think I've personally heard the Gallowgate. It was immense.

I thought that but then can't shake that we seem to do things in streaks

I think this'll be a draw too. The nature of us getting battered a bit last week might see a knocked confidence hangover.

I was reading somewhere that Rice struggles with opposition that press high. Personally, I've not seen that myself, but that'd be a flag for our style if true as I think Howe will want us to improve in possession next year. I don't think we'll ever become like City under Howe but I'd be very surprised if he doesn't want us to manage the ball better in certain situations.

Feel like Ugarte would be the best fit for our style. While more defensively-minded, he's technically good enough to be able to rotate with Bruno in games and play 6/8 when needed, covers ground well, pressing mentality, got the feet to get past pressing opponents.

Pretty sure the road Bruno is on is between The Badger and Rotary Way in Darras. Probs just picked them up from training and heading home - ne panic.

I feel like rather than focusing on dropping deeper in certain games, Howe will primarily want to work on ways to make our press more effective. I think there are definitely games where we can settle into more of a mid while keeping our strengths intact, personally.

Brighton are so good at baiting, I think they're the worst match-up in the league for us with their build-up flexibility and pace - it's the game I'm least confident about this season. Villa handled our press so well but seemed to struggle with Chelsea's - I guess that's just the risk with these high risk-reward strategies on both sides. Howe's desire for us to push up every time is largely great and many teams are going to struggle to deal with it even when they have knowledge to bypass. I'd really like us to explore Isak in a free role more than we currently do.

There are a couple of teams for Liverpool to play who are a tricky fit for them. West Ham, Brentford, Fulham (who I think will pick up a bit of form again now), and Villa are all teams that have styles to cause Liverpool problems and at least get draws.

As long as we can keep players fit now, I think we'll get 5 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss. I'm not feeling that fearful of Arsenal anymore but feel like Brighton will be a problem for us with how they play. Hopefully, it's all sewn up by then.

Someone said they thought he went for it too early and, watching it back, I think I agree. After getting killed in behind for much of the first half, we had a better measure of the spaces for the first period of that second and then we seemed to become massively open again leaving huge gaps by committing forward (combined with rubbish tracking back). I feel like we've been decent at knowing when things aren't going our way this year and becoming more compact & upping the game management to try and reset. Not sure if we've been a bit unsettled by all of the media questions about dark arts but none of that was to be seen. It felt like we doubled down instead... maybe because of our recent form. Overall, a bit of a strange showing from everyone involved which makes me hopeful that it was largely just an off day with some good tactical learnings about the squad.

Watched some of the game back and he was all over the shop and rarely tracking runs (even very simple ones rather than rotations that'd be difficult to keep up with). Wonder if he's carrying a knock as he looked canny slow.

https://twitter.com/martics97/status/1647541578305552385?t=jf24eiF5zkQ58N2NiEXGQw&s=19 Bruno getting some stick in this thread, some of it looks justified, but some of the shots really look like other mids should be doing better in terms of tracking, like.

Main criticisms over the last decade of him are being overly pragmatic in league campaigns (but that's part of why he's been the king of the Europa), lacking a consistent philosophy, and he struggled with man management of the 'bigger clubs' and players. They whooped us yesterday but I'm still not worried about them going after CL next season, weirdly.

Think missing Longstaff has been a bit overplayed, he does some of the niggly stuff well but we saw against Brentford that he can struggle with physical teams & become a bystander. Looks like we struggled with balls behind and were pushed too high with too large a gap between defence & midfield for second balls. Sure, the pressing in the middle could've been better but that's a hard task to maintain against a well-drilled side. It did look reminiscent of the Liverpool shambles.

Howe's 'be brave' approach has got us to where we are, it'd be weird for him to change it. He thinks we can compete a certain way and one loss won't change that in his head. Arsenal was the only game I can really think of where we actually changed after getting battered for a bit.

He did win one of those games for us, like.

Stats suggest he was a non-entity today, what was the story? Bruno and Joelinton seemed more involved with touches, passes, tackles, duels by a long shot.

The defending for those goals Howe will be raging at some of the pathetic tracking back.

One of the best things about him is that he'll be calm. That can be annoying when you see we were poor in the first half last weekend and you personally want a proactive change today (I didn't think we were bad against West Ham first half either, we just sat off for a bit after going 2 up with a game a few days away in mind) but consistency is a big factor in what has got us into this position so far. Even the best teams in the division can have very off days. Today will have been a combination, there's an overreliance on saying it's only tactical but that's also a battle he lost today.

Woof just seen the result. Sounds like we were resoundly humped. Big kick up the arse for next Sunday!