The Prophet

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.

While I'm obviously not blaming the fans, it sounded like the crowd thought we'd wrapped it up as much as the players did. The second half atmosphere sounded largely silent, punctuated by the usual moans and groans.

Can't argue with that Edward.

It seems the plan was to kill the game second half, but we ended up becoming too passive and nearly paid for it with some sloppy box defending.

A two goal lead v third in the league?

Stop sitting back please.

For goodness sake, you guys are so dramatic.

Aye, team and crowd need to do their bit today.

It's not ideal, but we won at Forest with a midfield of Bruno, Longstaff and Willock.

Longstaff massively out of favour these days.

I have no idea what tactics we're going to deploy or what personnel are available, but I agree.

Isn't the rumour that he's on the bench though?

U wot?

I didn't think it was a penalty either, but it definitely treads into re-refing the game territory.

Another fine day for VAR.

Absolute cowardice not giving a straight red there

Nice to see the knives already sharpening for Longstaff and Willock.

He was on the bench last week.

To br fair, us and Villa have been in the European picture for three seasons now.

This was the team that turned them over at the City Ground...

He's usually pretty solid with team news. Tried to unsuccessfully branch out into transfers.

It always felt like Rashford would start well. What will be interesting is whether he can maintain form over a decent period of time, particularly if he signs permanently for Villa on a nice long contract

Villa have now played two games extra too.