Mattoon

Never a pen, thats a joke

Oi oioii!!!!

If it wasn't for work and the 6 hour round trip I would definitely head down for this one, seen tickets for £32

I was worried about this on Sunday, we rarely see the temperatures you do up here in Blackpool, but I can tell you, your -5 is warmer than our -1 here, I wasn't cold at all, even took my hoodie off in the first half. I was pleasantly surprised.

Into these flat cap wearing, penny pinching, ferrit nonces!!

Sounds more like Howe throwing Gordon under scrutiny or challenging him to improve than an admission of weakness to me. There's no way, in how meticulously careful Howe is in his pressers that he would deliberately say he's too weak to deal with a diva

Could have been thr best or the worst Christmas present ever, thankfully turned out to be the best. Heading back to Blackpool this afternoon, had a great time down here, Leazes was pretty muted most of the match but me and a couple of other guys around me tried to make enough noise for the whole stand! Had some great interactions, but mostly it was just great to see us win live. I will be back, I've got the bug now.

I was sat right behind the goal at the Leazes end, to see two go in and be ruled out was a killer, but we got the result we deserved, Big Joe was everywhere and Miley was class, but Bruno was my motm

On my way up from Blackpool now, should be there by 1pm-ish

Isn't it just as simple as Burnley have to accept an equal offer from City, therefore agreeing to both bids and then its up to Trafford what contract and team he chooses to go to as any other player would with multiple offers on the table, ergo Trafford chose City over us as you would expect most players to do?

Happy New Year!

My first game at St James' and going with the Mrs so any win will do please 🙏🏻

One thing that annoyed me last night was the way we continuously received the ball to feet with our backs to goal and kept retreating, no one showing for the player under pressure and we lost a lot of possession due to said player getting crowded off the ball while our players were spectators, where has the movement gone? The ball into space? We play ourselves into so much trouble, we invite a lot of that pressure needlessly. We need to learn to look for the space the opposition leaves when they press as aggressively as Burnley did in that 2nd half and stop holding on to the ball for so many touches. Let the ball do the running and the opposition tire themselves out chasing, which I think we achieved in the latter stages of the 2nd half.

I thought we showed all the classic signs of a team with no confidence after a run of away performances that got away from us. Lightning start to the game but Burnley were never going to roll over and accept their fate and when they started to fight back you could see how that lack of confidence affected us. We were fortunate and rode our luck at times, Burnley squandered a couple of guilt edged chances, but so did we with Barnes, Wissa and Murphy missing chances we'd have scored last season. But sometimes it takes that little bit of luck to turn a corner and we finally got some, Bruno's goal to seal the win was a fortunate chance but you can't take away from the skill and composure to bury it from that distance. We can only hope that we come away from that with a little bit more self belief and can put a string of wins in the bag to put us back in the mix, starting with Palace at home on Sunday (my first game a SJP). Thought we played ok throughout, Joelinton looked a lot sharper last night, the whole back line were good, Hall once again motm, midfield did OK, but still a shadow of the players they were last season. Gordon was tireless but largely inefectual after his early assist, he really needs to stop rolling around when he loses the ball and track back because he keeps leaving us wide open on the counter. Overall a dogged performance but we got the result and ultimately thats all that matters.

Right, who was doubting Big Joe? He's back baby!

Big Joe has been carrying an injury tbf, hopefully he's back to his best tonight, Barnes should be on the left and Murphy on the right, hopefully Gordon shows up tonight.

The amount of times I've been in the match thread and it's the total antithesis of the actual game I'm watching in real time, diametrically opposed doom and gloom. If Liverpool are grief junkies then a large contingent of our lot are pessimism junkies

I find it amusing we have several pages of arguing who was less crap in a game of two bald men fighting over a comb, neither team came out of that game with any kind of self respect, it was honking. It's like bragging you won the penis measuring competition by a nanometer, best left in the doldrums of history.

About time we turned up away from home and gave someone a hiding, we should be putting these to the sword and I think we actually will.

It speaks volumes that the two Man U fans that I know would take Howe in an instant, we have a very good manager that is going through a difficult spot is all, he will navigate us through this.

These things aren't mutually exclusive, we do have mitigating factors, not least of which was the Isak fiasco and the freak injury to Wissa, it cannot be overstated the lack of upper management in what was to be an extremely important transfer window in both incomings and outgoings, the whole club spent the summer in turmoil. Having said that, the form away from home is unacceptable and the patchy performances need to be addressed by Howe, it's his job to find a way to turn it around, mitigating factors or not. The pressure is on Howe and rightly so, but it's way too early to be contemplating pulling the trigger. It's not a failure that we are still competing on 4 fronts, that's a huge achievement given the circumstances but I do also think that it's part of the problem as we've spread ourselves too thin, something has to give and currently it is our league form, that will change over time as we won't win or probably even go a long way in every competition we're in.

That's the blue print to beat us right there, cede possession, park the bus and look for the counter, we can break play high up the pitch and we can build up play through the midfield really well but there's zero creativity up front and we're absolutely toothless in attack. Could have played all night and not scored, it's getting really depressing and predictable to watch, I'm totally, utterly and completely fed up of watching the same game unfold week in week out.

Now imagine that happened at the other end, what do we think the decision would be?

This is grim

Had this conversation with my gf's, sisters, boyfriend who is also a Man U fan, he said he expected us to smash them, but I think he's just hedging his bets to save face if we do win. I said we'll blow them away early on, but with our away record and our inability to maintain our high press for the full 90 that they'll get a chance to get a result in the dying stages of the game. We'll need to score at least twice to have a chance of winning this, but if we play like we did against Chelsea then we'll be too much for them. I'm sticking with my 1-2 prediction.