Stottie

Szobo back at RB again. What a waste.

Spectacularly bad. Burn's been done for pace loads of times in games without directly costing us goals, its only cost us in shifting players to cover for him and messing us up on the left side, but it has cost us super big time today. He should have been hooked after the VAR reprieve, so that's on Eddie. With them chasing the game, we offered no counter threat whatsoever and just kept giving it back to them. The team with the lead is supposed to hold the ball and slow the game down. I thought their striker backed into Pope for their first goal, moving away from the ball in the air, but they'll never get given and is one of many reasons why corners and long throws are so big now. From that point on, with it 1-1, the entire game was a shitshow from us.

Some very poor football on display, but we scored with the only bit of quality. This is happens with Sky 6 teams too, they play terrible but their quality lads bail them out. Good to see another goal from wide. The lads have been slow starters this season (CL aside). CHs have started chipping in too after many blank weeks.

Ekitike seems to have gone off the boil a little after an initial flurry. I would be much more worried as a Liverpool hater if they were creating Callum Wilson goals for him, crosses to a striker who's found space in the box which he then clinically finishes. If he's hitting snapshots off rebounds from 18 yards out, like at SJP, the majority of them will end up wide or in the stands. In build-up, Woltemade seems way superior. We are not very good at getting it to him though, or giving him options to lay it off to. This is because we've not had a "lead the line" striker for a long time.

Yeah, fourth and fifth choice out there against West Ham. A lot of what we do in wide areas is little triangles and it doesn't work with lesser players. For the most part, we've dealt defensively with Tino and Hall missing, our defensive record is one of the best in the league, but it has been by sacrificing other parts of the team.

https://archive.li/20251104055551/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6771541/2025/11/04/newcastle-away-form-tactical-issues/ The article has some good stuff. We are certainly vulnerable to a vertical pass through our midfield. I can't say whether this is a "flat shape of midfield" problem or an "insufficient pressing letting someone find a passing lane" problem. The nine winless away games listed feature two one nils and three nil nils. One goal in each of those games would have brought three wins and two draws. We have the fourth tightest defence away from home (and the second lowest xG against for those who allow that stat). Our goals scored and xG for away from home are both woeful. Scoring goals away strikes me as the big problem.

I'll just repeat again, but Gordon, Tonali, Barnes, and Joelinton have hit 44 shots between them without scoring. That's three decent games' worth of shots for a Premier League team. You can't get three points without scoring. However bad we've played, it has still created 44 shots for those players. We've taken more shots than Brighton, who've scored 17 to our 10, nearly twice as many. This season, we're fourth bottom on goals per shot (0.07), last season we were fourth top (0.12). Murph and Barnes scored 8 and 9 goals last season. Tonali, Gordon, and Joelinton scored 14 between them. We're missing these players' contributions, more than any change from Isak to Woltemade. Sunday was terrible, but the only example of it this season. Leeds away was poor and uninspiring, but with a makeshift team. We should have beaten Villa. Bournemouth was just a keep it tight, and we should have had a penalty. Brighton was unlucky and a bit flukey for them.

Most shots without scoring, league ranking. 2. Gordon (14 shots) 3. Tonali (12) 6. Barnes (10) 15. Joelinton (8) (via. Statmuse) Of our wide players, only Murph has scored and he broke his duck last week. None of our defenders have scored in the league either. Until yesterday, our defence has been really good, so I wouldn't judge it on that one game. West Ham had 9 shots on target, the most we've faced this season. And they separately forced an own goal.

That was our worst performance and defeat of the season, not just the scoreline. We were better against Arsenal, Liverpool, and Barcelona, albeit all three were at home. I thought before the game that our only big individual errors had been the Gordon sending off and the Pope kickout against Arsenal. We at least doubled that yesterday. I don't quite understand why we were so off the pace, but don't see it as particularly systemic or representative of how we've played this year. Just a very bad day at the office, especially for the lads on the left side.

Worst performance in a long time. Very very disappointing.

Dreadful. Lackluster and being outplayed, which is inducing more mistakes than I've seen all season. A rocket from Eddie and time to use the bench. There should be more goals in this match.

Great goal from Murph. Looks like the Bowen one brushed Krafu's knee.

fwiw, I rate Scholes and Gerrard way up there as #8s, but I think the deep lying playmaker "quarterbacking" thing they did was massively overrated, especially for Gerrard before the famous "slip". Tiki taka (i.e., keep the ball with super high percentage passes) and gegenpressing (don't give anyone time in midfield) have destroyed the deep lying playmaker midfield role. That mantle has been passed to fullbacks like Trent, keepers like Ederson and CHs like Schar. A great midfield passer now is a throughball merchant, like our own Bruno, something I think he is underrated for. In the past, your throughball man might have been a second striker like Beardsley or Bergkamp. Probably unfair to talk about peak Pep Barca without mentioning Busquets who could pass but was certainly was not a deep lying playmaker. Like Kante, and Yaya Toure, highly overspec'ed as a footballer for the DM role. This was shown best by Man City when they would push Toure up to second striker for the final 20 minutes, including at SJP in the Aguueerrrooo! season.

I think he was better than Ginola, who was overrated just because of the looks and aura. He got Players' Player of the Year at Spurs off 3 goals and 10 assists, which sound like Nobby Solano numbers, with Nobby also tracking back and making tackles. Murph got more than that last season. Stats don't tell everything of course, but they are pretty good for attacking players with highly questionable defensive contributions. Robert was more consistent, esp. pre Souness, and is above both Ginola and Ben Arfa.

Include international duty, and he's outscored Isak in all comps. In one and a half games for the Doctor.

Its a basic midfielder skill but Scholes seriously struggled to time a tackle! Some real horrorshows in his career. His best spell was as a goalscoring box crasher, see the SJP 6-2. Maybe that's what Zidane meant. Zidane had probably retired by the time Scholes was playing further back in a two with Carrick spraying 50 yard passes about to much acclaim. From about 2006 he didn't play that many minutes even though Fergie was there until 11/12. Other players, like Ferdinard and Vidic, Rooney, CR7 were more key to their success, such as the Moscow CL win. (Carrick was probably underrated)

Probably can't be done nicey nicey within the rules as set by the cartel. Something will have to be done with the stadium, likely a new one. This too cannot be achieved nicey nicey. Opposition at the planning stage will need to be crushed.

My impression of Jota was that he was going to be sold based on age profile, rumours, and how they do transfers. He only played about 1000 minutes in the league last year. I'm loving what's happening to them, especially after eScousers claimed they'd had "the greatest transfer window ever". It couldn't just be good, it had to be better than everyone else ever. By splurging the cash, they have placed themselves in the Chelsea, Man City, Man U category of big spenders. Pundits on tv have always rimmed them and spread them myth that they never spent big money. World record fees for a goalkeeper and a defender were irrelevant. After half a billion in one window, we will not have to hear this tedious myth very much any more. fwiw, Darwin Nunez got 15 goals and 4 assists in all comps in his first season, where they finished below us. I doubt Isak can hit those numbers now. Even Ekitike might not, given that his game time might be limited by the need to play Wirtz and Isak to justify their fees.

Fourth bottom in expected goals against this season according to the Understat model. The Opta model has them midtable. Liverpool only conceded 8 in their first 13 games of last season, at which point they were 9 points clear. If you start at the 3-3 at SJP they've conceded 41 in 32 games since. They still have got lots of points but its by scoring lots of goals.

Just a note for folks overseas like me, but UK summertime ended yesterday and matches will now start an hour later. For me it means CL 8pms are now at 5am, not 4am. As it happens, our next two weekend games are Sunday 2pms, which for me is the same as a Sat 3pm during summertime (11pm to 1am).

Van Dijk and Konate will be sinking in that table by the week! I bet Burn and Schar cost the least when accounting for transfer inflation.

I thought a shot whose saved rebound is scored was an assist but apparently not. Great little cameo from him, and yes, he makes things happen.

I thought we had the best chances and made it difficult for ourselves by missing them. Their goal was a bit pinbally with multiple deflections and a great hit from Jiminez that ultimately fell kindly for them. Two shots in the goal move will both score big xG, but Fulham had few actual chances in the game as a whole. Just promising situations they messed up. We created actual chances but missed them. On the whole, lots of sloppy play and some excessively lenient refereeing, leading to play being broken up more than it should have been. Not a game to watch for the purists. We got the win and that was the main thing.

Someone's probably said it, but that was our first league goal from a wide player this season. In game 9

We created the best chances and should have scored one more. Fulham have had possession in dangerous areas, but no clear cut chances for them so far. Need to keep going, try to avoid the sloppy mistakes, and give it to Gordon because he's got his man beat and on a card.