timeEd32

3 more and we go to Paris ahead of them

WISSA

Of all the things that could happen when the ball is at Pope's feet the ball going out of play at midfield seems perfectly fine.

Had no idea they have Perisic. Ugh.

What a noise. I assume, based on what's in here, the whole crowd was just screaming expletives at Eddie.

Yes, it's chaos.

Wish there could be a Black Mirror episode where those 50 people get alternate NUFC to see how it goes.

We often do well when there is mass outcry about the lineup. HTL

As a self-proclaimed body language interpreter I really don't think that's the problem.

Yeah, they feel like one of the problem clubs in terms of being happy to go along with what the bigger ones want as long as they can cement their place in the PL. I hope they get relegated next season.

I don't need stats to tell me Ramsdale is shit. They do provide nice confirmation though.

I’m just going to start making things up. Ramsdale currently leads the league in ESIHWS (Expected Saves If He Wasn’t Shit).

Yeah, this is terrible. A big win for the “goals are the only stat I need” brigade.

Pretty sure our away form the last time we went to Paris was also bad. When we played Villa in January of 2024 I believe we had only won two or three away games in all comps to that point of the season. Stranger things have happened.

I don’t mind it. I understand some of the complaints, but a lot of it feels like not liking change more than anything. Not even enjoying the competition because of the format is strange to me.

Yes, the only thing holding him back is a move away from a manager who consistently gets the most out of just about every player in his squad. It can't possibly be anything else.

And a £10m bonus guaranteed.

The board's negativity has sent him over the edge.

I think it's just that he often has physical advantages over the opposing fullback in those games. When he doesn't have that, which is now most PL games, he becomes a very limited player.

Pretty sure I said in here months ago that just one goal and he'd be a totally different player. He's fallen to depths I didn't imagine back then, but still think it's true. He might actually benefit from our ridiculous fixture list. These away games against the better teams are, in theory, going to lend themselves to his skill set. But he needs to get the weight off his back.

There's a lot of bullshit on Twitter, but honestly some of the NUFC stuff is among the worst.

Last year 18% of corners were taken short. This year it is down to 11%. In 2018/19, 1.67 long throws per game went into the opposition's penalty area. That was the most over the last 10 years. This year it is 3.97 per game. Teams have decided that when you have a chance to put the ball in the middle of the opponent's penalty area you must take that opportunity. And this is another reason why Pope is so much better for us than Ramsdale. Pope has stopped 14.3% of crosses, the most in the PL. Ramsdale was at 6%, which would be middle of the pack.

The bottom 5 heading into the weekend played Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle, Spurs, and Fulham. They conceded two goals and none of them lost. This wasn't really an anomaly; the Premier League has changed and it seems disingenuous at this point to critique the manager and the players without at least recognizing the broader context (stealing much of this from The Times). I've been critical of our lack of goals from the striker position and also Gordon's output, but this is currently the lowest goal output in five years: It's even worse for forwards: And this is not just a "there aren't many great goal scorers anymore problem." They aren't getting the ball as much in dangerous areas: The clock has been wound back to 2009/10, which had the highest portion of set piece goals in the history of the PL era: There's all sorts of theories floating around about why -- the league has never been stronger in terms of depth, pressing has been figured out to some extent, teams are happy to setup defensively and hope to get a goal either on a counter or from a set piece, etc. etc. Here's a quote from Anthony Barry, England assistant: Games this season are averaging the lowest number of passes since 2012/13. The length of passing sequences is also down as well as how far up the pitch they are traveling. Long balls are up from last season. This all means there are less opportunities to press; there's more than 1 less high turnover per game compared to last season. I think we're trying to deal with the demands of multiple games per week, integrating new players up front, and trying to figure out how to adapt to and beat this new version of the league. We've particularly struggled to create chance and score goals away from home, but we've been very solid defensively. We'll see if either of those continue as we play more of the good teams away in the second half of the season. Oh, and while everyone looks longingly at Villa just know that they have scored twice as many goals as anyone from outside of the penalty area (12). It's particularly great timing and maybe partially strategic in a season when everyone is struggling to score. Maybe they'll be able to keep that up, but these are not high percentage chances and the most likely outcome would be some kind of regression there. Take away just a few of those and they'd be right in the mess that is from Liverpool on down.

I’d love to find out that you’re actually just recycling real quotes from the last couple years.

Hall needs to hit that.