Interpolic

Doing yourself a disservice there, you said it over a year ago then we won a cup and qualified for the CL (again).

We're getting off into loads of tangents here - my point was if the whole league is playing like shit why are we expected to be the only team that isn't? You can say what you want about not caring about the rest of the league but it doesn't make sense. It's like still being furious that we ever switched from playing 442. There's a wider point of which manager can you give the 8th highest budget to and expect to consistently deliver top 5 results. And take his best striker from him, put disruptive knackers in as DOF, we all know the list goes on re what he's had to deal with. Howe has earnt the right for us to stick with him until he gets it right imo, I'm almost certain if we chose to twist anytime soon we'd live to regret it. I'm personally fine to accept one disjointed season to keep a manager we know is successful and leads us the way he does. Massive summer in terms of player trading though.

It is. If the entire league is struggling to put in aesthetically pleasing and dominant performances consistently then there must be reasons for that. There have been discussions on here about potential reasons such as the increasing reliance on physicality, set pieces, low blocks etc, plus the narrowing of the field from top to bottom. Our PL results have overall been disappointing, particularly away, and we're 2 or 3 wins short of where I was hoping we'd be. But in terms of performances, why is squeaking past Wolves good enough for Arsenal and Villa but not good enough for us? Most teams are labouring to most of their wins this season, there aren't many dominant performances anymore. That's why the league-wide trend is important context.

That's a ridiculous thing to say in all honesty like

It's a trend across the league tbf, due to loads of factors. I can't think of a team in the league that are particularly impressive most weeks, including those nearest the top of it. You talk about us labouring against Wolves for example, the team bottom of the league. Villa beat them by 1 goal (their usual screamer) and Arsenal also won by 1 goal (in injury time). Both at home.

What a cunt.

Fuck Arsenal, man. Utterly gutless football.

Casemiro has cost Man Utd between £119m and £148m over 4 years depending on which reports you believe. Froggy verdict - worth every penny. Literally no better way you could have spent that money

Never seems to occur to Arteta to do anything with style, the insecure little freak has really built a team in his image. Doesn't matter if you keep calling everything "beautiful", it really fucking isn't.

Wood had scored double figures in all 4 full PL seasons he'd had prior to us signing him, made perfect sense as a signing to get us out of relegation trouble and then be a rotation player. I expected him to score more goals but he seemed overwhelmed by the size of the club. I never expect us to have a 100% hit rate with signings like Man Utd do, the best I can hope is we look to them for inspiration and dig in and try our best.

Guardiola: Man City's net spend is always going to look better because of their conveyor belt of youth products they sell for high fees. Their gross spend over that time is 2nd only to Chelsea. Plus their wage bill is fucking massive. He's coming out with more and more bitter comments in the press lately - seems yet another one who comes across very classy until it's not all going his way then the mask slips.

After 14 years of us throwing cup ties so we could concentrate on existing in the PL, good to see good cup progress is completely taken for granted already. Another rod Howe has made for his own back.

After 3 windows of spending next to nothing.

I usually hate wacky but I love that. Like one of Barcelona's stupid ones, except it looks mint. Miserable owld cants.

This one-goal Strand Larsen stuff is a bit weird like. It was only 6 months ago he was being linked away for £20m more than he is now. Don't think he's a worldbeater but he seemed to have his head turned in the summer and has not been the same since.

christ

Cheers, he says 25 minutes to half an hour to find our feet there and that PSG were good for 20 minutes in the other interview. The commentary team said in the second half that we'd been under the cosh all first half which was a huge misrepresentation of what happened. Speaking personally the first 15 minutes were borderline traumatic but after that I felt fairly comfortable defensively and excited by us any time we managed to get forward.

Got the quote as this is all I could find? "We were conceding too many chances, and I thought Paris played really well in that opening 20 minutes."

Genuinely think anyone describing the first half like this is viewing through an anti-Howe lens. After the first 15 minutes the game was even at worst. We looked dangerous quite consistently.

Compared to other away performances this season it was night and day. Passing out of a tight press then getting it forward quickly and accurately. The final ball was often still lacking, would agree there.

we were so calm and proactive on the ball last night, was great to see.

aye

He'd assist more goals if he played on the right. Couldn't possibly score any less there either. Hasn't made sense for a long time. That week where he said in an interview he thought he was playing brilliantly actually and Howe effectively said he wouldn't play on the right - man, nah. I'd be shocked if a few of our players aren't really frustrated playing with him by now either. Hall must feel like he's wasting his time trying to link up with him.

Yeah I really fancy us vs Villa, they seem to be wobbling at exactly the right time for us too.