The Prophet

Liverpool away? I know we have a particularly bad record there, but it's a nightmare for most teams.

Might as well tell Eddie and the lads to cancel the trip to Wembley.

Aye, that Forest win was yuge. Effectively makes this a free hit.

I'm shocked anyone would put him below a B tbh, he's clearly better than "solid". Bare in mind last season he played while injured, in a team decimated by injury and shipping goals for fun.

B+ When he's fully it he's one of the best CBs in the league. Brilliant reader of the game and excellent with the ball at his feet, he has the potential to get better too.

Brentford and Brighton away up next too.

TBG's hit rate is outragous. Superb longevity.

Jeez...

Tino is still learning the game. For his age, he's defensively excellent. Going forward though, he definitely needs to develop his game. Unfortunately on the socials he's joined the list of players that folk absolutely love to get stuck into after a poor performance. Thankfully Barnes will be back soon to take some of the heat.

C- for me. He's still a competent PL fullback, but his regression over the last twelve months means that it's no longer for a side challenging at the top end of the table.

Interesting state from BBC: "So far this season, only 38.7% of Premier League games have been won by the side playing at home - the second-lowest on record"

I think we'll try something different here. Wouldn't be shocked to see Bruno or Gordon rested.

Interesting Howe said he didn't want to risk Tonali, but felt we needed his engine in the second half.

Thought Pope's inclusion might have been tactical. No Tonali requires the back line to push up leaving more space in behind.

Other than the initial error leading to the calamitous first goal, I thought Pope was fine yesterday.

Has this already been leaked/debunked yet?

This and City away are probably the only fixtures in the calender that I still write off. Anfield is a fortress, a fortress we never get any luck and rarely play well at. VvD does struggle against Isak though, so I fancy us to bag. 3-1 to the home side.

They're obviously much better than average. But aye, they're perhaps not as strong as some previous champions.

Wilson's decision making was horrific, but he's a seasoned professional who should know how to come on and see out a game. Osula is still an absolute loose cannon at the moment.

Plenty of teams have got at Liverpool in recent weeks (Villa, Wolves, Everton), so if we turn up (and I expect we will) we have more than a punchers chance. Yes, we come in as underdogs against a very strong team. We may give it our all and it might not be enough, but if you can't look forward to days like these we might as well pack in as football fans.

In Howe's first season, without ball players, we'd just shithouse our way through second halves. We're currently not equipped to do that either though.

On reflection, I think the formula was one we've seen from Howe many times. Overwhelm the opposition in the first half, then kill the game off in the second by slowing it down and making it stop-start, it's something we used to be very good at. Today few things become evident though. To kill the game, you need a "spoiler" next to Bruno. It used to be Longstaff and now it's Tonali. Willock and Miley just aren't equipped to play that role and as soon as Tonali came on, we looked far more comfortable. We miss the additional height and ariel protrction that Joelinton offers from set pieces. We were able to compensate for this v Arsenal by bringing Botman in, but without that third physical presence we look a bit easy to bully. The last point is that we're still making a lot of individual errors. Murphy and Pope for the first, Burn for the second, etc. It's just really poor, but brain farts from the likes of Schar, Burn and Bruno have become way to common in recent weeks.