Stottie

Heads up lads. The game's gone but you've got to keep going for yourselves and the fans.

Lacking shape, especially in the middle. Pope mistake aside, we've kept them mostly at arm's length, so not a disaster, but not good either. First 10 minutes showed we could get in behind, but we didn't/couldn't build on it.

170k a week for Maddison. Maybe we can pay that next season.

Great shot, unstoppable even with normal length arms.

In the last Group of Death, Japan beat Germany for the first time ever, and then beat Spain, for the first time ever. No Messi, Neymar, or Bellingham and Tonali is now in black and white. Just believe!

It's hard to explain, but I think we've reached a point where to move forward, we need more competitive games against hard opposition to learn how to play hard opposition on equal or near-equal terms. I suspect this was a problem against Liverpool at the weekend. Aside from the revenue, getting into the CL so early in the project should be a great experience for the lads in this regard. In this Carabao cup game, City will not be at anything like full strength, but they will still be playing City style football and Pep will be calling the shots and managing the game. They'll be more to gain from this experience than we'd get playing a Mansfield low block.

I strongly suspect the same about Lavia, who must be below Kalvin Phillips in Pep's view. I'm much happier about us buying Hall and Livramento as ex Chelsea, insert long list, than players who are ex Man City.

Sorry if Giggs or mentioned in UK commentary during the game, and for bumping the thread, but Liverpool have now not lost in their last seven games when down to 10 men. That's a pretty wild stat. https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/08/six-knee-jerk-reactions-to-premier-league-matchday-3/

I like Nunez and he is great at creating havoc and shoots a lot, those are definites. We'll have to see whether they consistently turn into goals against PL goalkeepers. Welbeck is above Kane in that list, but only because it uses xG. Wellbeck has significantly underperformed xG his entire career (i.e., is not a good finisher). Sunday aside, Nunez has not been a good finisher so far. Harvey Barnes put up big numbers at Leicester and easily deserves to play in the Champions League. Maddison may have been a more attractive signing, but all reporting points to Spurs paying him 170k and we can't afford that.

City away, 10 minutes to go, 0-1 down, us attacking with a 2 or 3 vs. 1 with the ball at Wilson's feet. I would take that situation had it been offered pre-game. Liverpool home, 10 minutes to go 1-0 up playing 10 men but struggling to create second goal. I would take that as well. In a rare flash of All or Nothing type footage in the We are Newcastle documentary, Tripper can be seen at half time in the Man U home angrily telling the team they need to be clinical because they're playing Manchester United. The other players can be seen commiserating WIllock, who was guilty of the biggest first half miss. From this scene, it's obvious who the onfield captain and leader is. Whether our players are good/clinical enough to press on further is debatable, but since we are in the CL, we'll get a few more competitive games against the very best. This experience can only help us in big domestic games going forward. We've never played a top team with 10 men before under Howe, so it should be no surprise that we do not know how to unpick them.

Exactly. FFP will only get easier for us. If we want Maddison or Diaby, we'll have a much stronger chance of landing them.

Just to focus on the reason why we lost Darwin Nunez vs. all PL teams except us (understat numbers) 1657 minutes 8 goals off 60 odd shots and 14.08 xG (minus 6 goals vs. xG) Darwin Nunez vs. NUFC (two games) 72 minutes 3 goals off 4 shots and 0.79xG (plus 2.2 goals vs. xG) Klopp only gave him 9 minutes, so hardly a tactical masterstroke. It was basically just a freak result.

Nice post! As for the potential concern of "we can't beat a low block (or 10 men)", this low block or 10 men was Liverpool with the best goalie in the league. Other teams' low block won't be as good. Last week a team called NUFC created a fine defensive display at the Etihad that limited Man City to 1.0 to 1.3 xG. I doubt many of their fans were calling for wholesale changes or dismissing Haarland et. al as ineffective. Rodri's error created a big chance to score, but we missed it and Nunez scored the chances he got.

A brilliant performance from him which deserved a win. Great movement and never loses the ball. He gets lots of hate for reasons I can't quite comprehend, I think it is some combination of his face, his accent, his history with prior clubs, and his tenaciousness on the field, so huge amounts of noise to screen out about him. If you'll excuse the politics, some of the noise will be from folks with otherwise progressive views, because kicking down on people who seem working class or "common" never gets the limelight other forms of prejudice do.

I agree with the comment, and just want to add that I think the "reason" was Maddison being on 170k a week at Spurs. FFP likely also cost us one of Szobo and Diaby. FFP mean less quality on the pitch, and quality on the pitch decided yesterday's game. This does not mean Howe could have set up better in the second half. His subs are one-dimensional and "have a try to please everyone" preprogrammed feel about them. Even if the plan is "use 90 mins of energy in 60 mins and get replaced", that's still one-dimensional. This match was a classic example of a team failing to properly manage what was a very favourable game state. There was a flukey, run-of-the-ball aspect to it, but a strong bench and a man advantage for over 60 minutes should do better when a goal up to overcome the randomness that will always be present in football matches.

As an individual Nunez scored two off 0.42.

No FFP and we buy a right winger who does not cut inside or simply stop and pass it back. We wanted Diaby or Szobo. FFP said no. If we do better down the right, I think it would make enough of a difference/margin to come out winners here.

70-80% good and 20-30% absolute disaster + flashes of true quality from Nunez that decided what should have been an easy match. It would be nice to see Nunez do it against someone else and not just us. This one's going to hurt. Stay off social media. No FFP and I think we win this match. We came close and could have won anyway with better game management, but we came up just one body short. Stronger in just one position and we get a second.

Yes yes yes

I can't say I've noticed the word "rivalry" much on here. People just dislike Liverpool. My own reasons for this are Repeated diving and other cheating (Gerrard getting Bowyer sent off etc.) in this fixture European Super League, trying to block our takeover, and other closed shop type behaviour. Ridiculously high number of ex-Liverpool pundits blurting on about them all the time with zero impartiality. Klopp nonstop whinging in the past two or three years. Before that he was okay.

We should ignore that tweet and live and let live. We're not rivals because we're in the Champions League and they're in the Europa on Thursdays.

We did better than that. 4 vs. Chelsea, 6 vs. Spurs, 4 vs. Man U, 1 vs. City, and 1 vs. Arsenal makes 16.

He probably calls the police "the Feds". To me, that's a shit brewery. It's a bit ironic for Hurst to go on about the Geordie Nation because the first two episodes are basically the board and commercial team desperately trying to expand the fanbase worldwide to increase revenue. It's all "30m potential fans in Saudi Arabia". They correctly realize that that is the key to growing the club.

Salah is on 350k, presumably with UK taxes. His former team-mates Fabinho and the mackem are now on 700k each, with Saudi taxes.

Salah plays right, Mitoma plays left. Ornstein?! Does that mean there's something in this. I do hope so.