alexf

Appearance based permanent option loan would be perfect. Gives us chance to assess if he can stay fit playing week in week out and if not we can then just send him back at the end of season. Not that Arsenal would go for that, because who wants to help out the evil Newcastle.

Is crazy to be away to Man City and actually feel excited for the game. We may still lose but as people have said just the fact we have any belief we can now go there and give them a proper game is light years from where we were a few years ago where we would just be dreading the idea of getting pumped 5:0.

I think it was pretty clear Villa's fitness fell off a cliff. They slowed the game down massively after Mings went off 1st half, using the stoppage and the dampening of the atmosphere to gain a bit of control of the ball. That continued briefly into the 2nd half, but once we got our wind again, triggered by a strong miggy run if I remember? and then the gift of the 3rd goal, our tails were up and superior fitness began to tear them apart. Their high line playing right into our hands of course also.

Good to know they are starting as they mean to go on with gameweek 1 for Man Utd. Howard Webb is in charge of VAR in this country for goodness sake, no one should ever be surprised, not if they ever saw him referee a Man Utd game back in his day.

Crazy how many "top" teams have just copied Pep with this full back/centre back stepping into midfield. Can see Lindeloff is doing it here.

Sarabia has been poor.Would sub off of I was Wolves

Rashford is easy to keep quiet when he's through the middle if you don't play a high line. Really hope we play Livramento against Antony when we play them. Can show him inside as he's right footed and he also has the pace to see him off. Was annoying seeing Burn get the mick taken out of him by that little runt purely cus he was small and agile. Be nice to see Tino boss him.

Came alive 2nd half but he was unusually quiet 1st.

Allegedly..... Complained about our takeover at every opportunity before it happened and again after, Refused to shake our executives hands publicly at a PL meeting Complained about Saint Maximin transfer. I'm sure there's more.

Came on and played there on Saturday. So would assume he's ahead of Tierney in Arteta's thoughts.

I mean with black and white tinted specs on, we could link all recent rule changes to us. However they could argue they are for other reasons also. Depends how paranoid we want to be ?

Annoying Man u have such an easy home game to start the season. Wolves look like they could be awful so could easily see Man u winning like 5:0 and topping the table by the end of the night. But I still have a sneaky feeling they might underachieve this year if their new signings don't settle quickly.

Yeah strange when I saw them both come on as sub. Assumed they were injured if they were playing gakpo midfield. Strange lineup.

I think what we did to Villa, coupled with our performance last season is already enough to see the majority of teams will come away to us and try to sit in.

Hasn't he said he prefers playing right wing or something and isn't a fan of left back? Davies that is.

Hope it's bollocks. Was bemused by the money people were bidding for him last summer and he was even worse than expected when you watch him closely at Chelsea.

Think the ideal scenario is for Liverpool to miss out on all targets AND for Chelsea to later be found guilty of FFP breaches. Not that it ever seems to mean anything if someone is guilty. Liverpool and Klopp are surprisingly to me becoming our new closest rivals with all of their whining and complaining. Thought it would be Spurs when we got took over but feels like we have already moved past them.

What we can't do is leave any of the back four exposed 1v1 with Haaland. May need to be a tweaking of tactics which probably goes for any away game but especially away to City. But you can guarantee we will have a go, just like we did last season and hopefully the lads have even more belief that they can match a team like City.

Not to forget when we initially signed Targett on loan (assume salary stays same when made permanent) we were pretty desperate, so I can totally believe us giving out 100k salaries at that time.

Saw people mentioning Spurs signing Ferguson. If I'm Brighton I wouldn't be selling (ridiculous bid not withstanding) The way FFP works then surely makes sense for them to not sell all their assets all at once. So may aswell have one big sale each year. If there is an intention to reinvest any of this money on their squad. Plus Ferguson looks like he's only just getting started and his value should only increase.

I mean Eddie Howe is probably the most mild mannered and composed manager in the whole league. He got confronted by a scumbag Leeds fan and still kept his dignity for godsake. For there to be any kind of narrative spewed out from these other cunts to the contrary is laughable. Klopp's a cunt.

I don't think he was terrible overall but was below his level. This isn't a pile on after just one bad game but I have thought for quite awhile that I don't think he will ever reach elite level purely due to his athleticism. He's a great technical player and plays with intelligence most of the time but he's just not blessed physically like some of the great elite players have been. But hopefully that just means he will spend the best years of his career here and not at Real or Barca or somewhere.

I think this year's Liverpool, same with last season is, don't get caught on the counter by them. They are dangerous if you let Salah get in behind your full back at full speed etc. But apart from that they are no where near as strong as they were a few years ago. It's something I noticed alot last season about the so called "big six" now that we can compete, you realise that most of them bar City and Arsenal, were primarily just counter attacking sides with lots of pace. Spurs with Son and Kulusevski, Man u with Rashford, and Liverpool with Salah, Nunez, Jota etc.

Said this at half time. Looks like they were just tired. Really shocked me how badly villas fitness fell off a cliff in the first game of a new season. You have to say that's bad conditioning, or am I underestimating how fucking machine like our players are? Felt like we backed off the press massively once Mings got injured but then 2nd half their high line allowed us to tear them apart at will. Have to say, we fear the pace of other players against us with our defence, but with Miggy, Isak, Gordon, Murphy, Barnes and Willock still to return, we have some serious pace ourselves in attack ?