Stottie

That goal was his best "Ice cold in Alex" moment since the lob of Fabinski. Celebrating before it hits the net. Unstoppable at the moment. But for the Salah revival, a strong shout for best player in the league. fwiw Those arseholes at the Guardian moved him down three places in their "Top 100 players" list a few weeks ago. He's below Kai Havertz and Cody Gakpo.

I think it might have just been positive PR for him, but I remember someone saying Tonali had the hardest shot in the squad. After Sunday's evidence, I respectfully disagree.

Looking forward to this, albeit with illogical feelings about us coming back from break, even though we faced full-strength Arsenal away just a week ago. Any kind of scrappy win will do me. Isak has a great chance to beat Shearer and Willock with seven in a row, but that is completely secondary.

With Murphy fit and playing well, and no 23-24-style injury crisis, Miggy's stock is now lower than the summer. This opens more scope for selling a low, ahem more realistic, fee.

Probably not a coincidence that Murphy has done much better since we pushed Bruno up close to him. Just as Bruno was highly involved on the right when Trippier and Miggy were doing well. Only exceptional players can do well with little support. Even isak struggled to make an impression when he was isolated up front. I would question how much game time Barnes has been given in a team near full strength with a balanced and functioning system. I think Barnes has done reasonably well for us, and IMO was a good buy. It is mostly super stupid PSR rules, the need to allocate your resources with surgical precision, that questions the deal. Since PSR also rules out buying unproven potential that does not come to fruition, this also pushes the club toward Tino, Hall, Barnes type conservative signings and not some cheap, potentially high ceiling signing from abroad. Staveley said on several occasions that the club could not afford to make transfer mistakes.

Accrington CH has to cut that cross out. It looks like he half hesitated and went with the wrong foot.

Too early for Tonali. He's also lucky enough to be playing #6 with two ballwinning #8s. Makalele did not have Frank Lampard tackling and harranging defenders like our #8s. To his credit, Tonali was impressive against Arsenal with no Bruno in the team, so my hopes are high.

After the Ashworth debacle at Man U, you have to wonder how much of Brighton's success is down to their system, and that massive loan from the owner that PSR doesn't care about, not some wonderous performance by any particular individuals in their system. Potter took all of his staff to Chelsea but couldn't get a tune out of very good players. Even when Howe joined us and we were losing 4-0 to Leicester, there were still clear signs of improvement over Bruce. This was not necessarily the players instantly grasping what Howe's ultimate tactical destination would be. It was likely more stop-gap tactics to improve organization etc. until Trippier and Bruno arrived. On a similar tip, I think Klopp gets a lot of performance credit actually due to whoever out of the Moneyball bods said "we must sign Salah". He wasn't Klopp's choice.

I guess this is on an earlier page, but the final is Sun March 16. If still in Europa, Spurs would play three days before on Mar 13. There would be a CL game for Liverpool on Mar 11 or Mar 12. Assuming we get through, I'd rather face Spurs than Liverpool. Most of it is down to Mo Salah winning games on his own like a cheat code.

There are many examples of players who didn't get a proper chance at Chelsea, like Salah and de Bruyne, or if you prefer, Hall and Livramento. Their current star is someone who didn't get a chance at Man City. There are some great ex City players out there. Antony is ex Man U, and has been given dozens of games without producing. There are not many examples of brilliant ex Man U players. Chelsea sign or train good players but don't make the most of them. Man U's recruitment and academy are nowhere near Chelsea's.

Liverpool still scoring for fun, but that's 11 conceded in their last six games. After conceding about half a goal a game for the first dozen matches. We've tightened up and have conceded five in the last six matches, four of them to Brentford.

If we are fecked by PSR and can't buy a striker/RW, we need Barnes because Gordon is our second choice central striker.

Have a hallelujah! I reckon Salah is the greatest player in Premier League history, now above Henry. Salah deserves far more credit from the Scousers, some of which should be taken from Klopp. They need a Salah statue, not a Klopp one.

Its blunder of the season if Man City could have bought him for 80Mish last June, with PSR meaning we would have sold. What a complete shitshow those rules are.

I thought Tonali was a bizarre signing given our needs, our budget, and the limited record of Italians in English football, but have been proved wrong. I thought this because he played in a double pivot at Milan and didn't do something that obviously fitted our system when we bought him. He's now operating mostly as a single pivot, but with one press-resistant, foul-drawing, key-passing eight and another dynamic ball-carrying, ultra-destroying, former-striker one. It was not obvious that Tonali would thrive doing this, but its looking very good on the evidence so far. My overall theory though is that if you sign good enough players, you can teach em a new system. This also applies to barroom discussions of players from the past. The better ones would likely thrive in modern football too, but would merely learn different skillsets. They would not be stuck in whatever outdated role they did in the 1980s, 1990s, or whenever.

Based on previous league results in this fixture, this was probably the least confident I've been with us 2-0 up with 80 minutes gone. This is in spite of beating them there in the cup.

Wow, men against boys, in midfield, its geriatric old men, so far.

Salah can even score with a backpass!

Understat's expected points has them a smidgen above us. Man U are shooting somewhere between 5 and 7 below xG depending on the model. Bournemouth are massively below, but that's what you'd expect for a team with inexpensive players. Here's hoping the reversion to the mean is not tomorrow. All I'll say is that we should be going into it with a lot of confidence.

Tomori's only just turned 27, to save anyone looking it up. He's right footed. 6 foot 1.

If there is money for one only and the idea is RW, do we buy one who can play centrally or rely on Gordon? In Barnes, and the Joes will are loaded with depth at LW if Gordon goes central.

It is possible to win lots of tight games by completely shutting things down once ahead. You can also do it with an exceptional keeper. Forest have scored first in 14 (!) out of 18 games, easily the best in the league. Their xG if you limit it to when the scores are level is really good. We've have a higher points per game when scoring first, but have only done it in 8 out of 18 games.

RTG or RAWKmeltdown level.

Goal difference and xG don't like Forest. Their record in the last six is P6 W5 D0 L1 F9 A6 15 Pts GD*3 xG7.77 xGA7.35 Five wins from such tight margins is likely unsustainable He might have got the eyes, but Forster almost dives out of the way for Elanga goal that beat Spurs.

New CL format, Villa doing well, and no Man U in the CL makes it more like for a fifth CL place for English teams. It could be on. We certainly look a ton better with Sandro stepping in and intercepting allsorts and Bruno higher up hitting key passes. The first goal began with Sandro dispossessing Kamara. I don't remember us imposing ourselves so strongly and so early two months ago.