Heron

Demonstrates what a good job Howe did last season for me.

4 Palace - 1

Only 359 miles away man

As soon as they concede one they turn to shit.

I guess I deserve that...right?

Just a shit Lidl.

1-0 Arnautovic for Inter.

Head turned by Spurs...

A fairly bizarre passage of play before in the Chelsea game. In fact it has been for around 5minutes. Chelsea are entirely static and with Palmer being seemingly tightly marked absolutely zero movement from anyone else. Keeper to the centre half, back, keeper to the centre half, back, keeper to the centre half, played long into feet and then lost. Southampton come back at them. For all their money Chelsea really aren't as good as they should be. One man team pretty much. Fans are getting a bit restless it seems.

From the Strawberry Corner he looked to be setting himself for the diving header and then realised it wasn't going to bounce up enough or quickly so adjusted his body to shield/dick the ball in. He actually did canny well in the end it seemed. You're right though, it was bizarre.

The thing is we can score goals for fun too when we're "on it". Lewis Hall has been our player of the season so far and with that, hopefully, we can entrust him to keep Salah quiet, maybe even give him something to think about in the opposite direction. My biggest worry is doing a number on Liverpool tomorrow and then we get ahead of ourselves and they suss us and dick us in the final I honestly think the whole backs to the wall mentality, come out swinging, will serve us well in our upcoming games with them.

I actually think it is the best way to play them tbf. If we sit in versus these we'll get dicked.

I mean he'd still start at around 10PL teams at least.

Got to be a C surely. Think giving him less is very harsh.

He's a C for me. He isn't gonna tear it up anywhere but he's reliable enough like.

TBF I wish folk would stop clapping. Ruins half our songs We no longer clap in things like "United" and do that shit thing that makes no sense "Toon". If anything it should be "New-cas-tle" but even then it was traditionally 3 claps as far as I am aware. Then we clap along relentlessly to every other song half of which should just be sang without any clapping and fairly slow so that the song carries and not just a mumble of people MCing. Half the ground don't join in with the corner because the corner finish before they themselves have even started.

That may be the case for some on here, not others, but even at the stadium this level of imbalanced criticism exists. The amount of folk who kick off at Murphy by comparison is farcical. As soon as he makes any mistakes "He's fucking shit". Etc. It's bollocks.

I get it's a forum and football is all about opinions etc. but I honestly find it a bit strange how much folk go out there way to criticise certain players like He shares the same number of goal involvements as Gordon this year and I think it's pretty unanimous who folk think the better player is (ability wise). That suggests to me that Murphy is actually performing at a higher level to achieve the same, and yet Gordon gets zero shit.

Hadn't really considered that tbf. Fair point.

Our player of the season, thus far. I don't mind saying I felt he was our weakest defensive link in the opening weeks but his relationship with Burn and Gordon is fantastic and I think Howe has man managed him superbly. A real talented player.

Commanded his box fairly well but felt he should have done better for the first goal and his kicking was shite.

He's better with the ball at his feet than Pope. I actually think he's our more in form goalkeeper too tbh.

I don't really think this is a game where we can sit back and hit them on the counter like we have done against the likes of Arsenal. I think our best chance of getting anything is to really go toe to toe with them and if the game gets stretched that will benefit our front 3 in particular. My concern would be more around our two centre halves though, because, despite Burn being one of our players of the season both he and Schar aren't particularly quick. That's why for me Dubravka also starts and acts as a sweeper keeper.