ponsaelius

It was the same when he came in last season TBF. There's no doubt he's better with the ball at his feet than Pope, and it does help our possession game. It's just once he starts facing shots regularly that any benefit from that is completely wiped out.

Not uncommon for local games to be 11am on Boxing day. Most of the Northern League is.

I reckon 90%+ of all Central to Manors (and reverse) are done for that exact purpose.

Yeah I just bit the bullet because it wasn't murderously bad. If it had been £100+ I'd have bought a single to Manors to get through barriers and hid in the bogs for the Peterborough leg at least

If barriers hadn't been down I'd not have realised. Only when I couldn't get through I realised. If I'd got very lucky they may have let me off, but also could have been a fine and even more expensive ticket.

It would be absolutely sensational if we were able to get him gone in January. Don't think we're getting any new signings unless players leave.

I'm heading down to Cambridge this morning as doing a day there and night over beforehand. Got to the station to realise I'd bought my ticket for Saturday by mistake. £50 walk on ticket. A good start to the weekend, hopefully things improve.

Murphy putting his buzzer as 'Just Put It In The Net Man'

Plymouth FA Cup replay? Was just discussing that game yesterday funnily enough, think it was lowest home attendance I can ever remember us having in a competitive game.

I still think his performance has to be severely caveated by the fact Leicester are very poor. If there was ever a game you wanted to be the deepest midfielder and look good then that was it. However - it's a positive sign that we seem to have finally decided to try him as a #6. Tbh this has been the thing that's puzzled me ever since his debut in pre-season at Rangers when he lined up at RCM with Longstaff in DM. Especially since we've also talked for ages about trying to 'release' Bruno further forward.

For what it's worth irrespective of my comments quoted above I'm also not convinced a different manager would necessarily be demonstrably better with this squad as it is. I think if we do make a change it has to be made with a very clear vision about how we plan to navigate PSR/squad building, rather than because we want to just roll the dice on some other bloke in the hope it improves. I'm strongly of the opinion that there's lots of good coaches out there, but they're only as good as the structure they're in and how that is aligned. I think whoever replaces Howe will have equally as many foibles as he does merits - even if they're slightly different than Eddie's.

Did you watch Kelly against West Ham?

Milan did their very best in the second half to completely kill the game. It was very effective, although helped by the referee, and I was concerned they might nick one themselves. Atalanta keep finding a way to win though, their mentality is totally different since the Europa win. While they don't have the attacking talent of the side of a few years ago, this team seems their best ever squad from back to front. Weirdly I'd worry they end up being too good for their own good - and ultimately get stretched by going far across three competitions.

In terms of getting a fee the only option is Saudi now. Really hope we are pushing for that with him. Don't think any other European club is doing anything other than taking his wages off us, if we're lucky.

I think the physical decline was noticeable even before everything dropped off a cliff due to the personal issues. Like no doubt he was hugely influential in our game and still playing well, but you could still see it coming on the horizon IMO. Agree that it's been a huge issue trying to replace what he brought to our game. But this is always going to be an issue with relying on older, experienced players.

Enjoyed Zaniolo scoring against his old club and giving it a proper celebration.

Bove went down out nowhere, was pretty terrifying Eriksen type incident. Players have gone off.

Howe has done a great job developing both of those fullbacks and improving them. They have become full internationals over the last 18 months since joining. Neither were signed as one and remain long term project players. I think you can quite easily go and get another coach that might for example makes us more solid at the back but doesn't develop talent at the same level, or somebody else who gets us pinging the ball around expansively but conceding goals for fun. I may be wrong but I personally think whoever we get in is likely to have their own flaws and the real issue is that the squad has a glass ceiling of about 6th.

Still think the biggest issue is the stagnation off the pitch and the inability to mix things up/refresh the squad. Given the constraints we really needed to be more ruthless and proactive in the transfer market to build a more balanced squad. Some of the blue chip players we've retained and banked on building our season around (Bruno, Gordon) have been atrocious tbh. I think Howe deserves a fair amount of criticism for the way we're playing but I also honestly don't think changing manager is going to make a huge amount of difference given where the club/squad level is at right now. Indeed I think there's just as much chance the inadequacies would be exposed even more under a different coach.

Result is not really that much of a big deal tbh, the performances are the worrying thing.

We absolutely did not deserve to win, TBF.

Just looked at the match stats

So both Bruno and Tonali are both #6s in this system. Not ideal.

TBF he's not looked fully fit to me.

Superb pass from Guehi.