Smal

Get Anderson in this team.

Sick of watching Willock hide behind one of the opposition midfielders when our centre backs have the ball, like.

Willock is becoming an issue, like. His main contributions have been defensive ones this season and he's not doing that well today either. We should've signed Paqueta

ASM is much better when he trusts the players around him. He obviously doesn’t trust the likes of Longstaff, Burn and Wood and I don’t really blame him.

We are exposed when they have the ball wide, like.

Yeah. Allows Almiron to play more centrally too. Quite like it.

I’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt given the front three we had ahead of him. Willock didn’t play well at that level either.

Get Miggy on for Ritchie asap. Front three is never going to cause anyone problems.

Absolutely ludicrous refereeing, like.

Isn’t Manq on the bench?

This front three, man. Absolutely tragic.

I’m guessing his injury is worse than first thought?

As much as I love him, it's stuff like this that makes you realise he probably needs to be replaced sooner rather than later. If we play as intensely as we have been doing so far this season then his hamstrings are just gonna go pop every few weeks aren't they.

Agreed, but perhaps that's how Howe wants his central striker to play in the future? More of a link up player with goals coming from wide? Like Liverpool, or City and Arsenal in previous seasons. Pedro has predominantly played as a central forward in his career so far. It's why we really need a goalscoring wide player out right. If someone who can finish could get into the positions Miggy has been getting into in this system with service from ASM and Bruno, then they're gonna score 15+ a season for us imo.

I agree Bruno will be best for us in the single pivot role. Howe had some weird but wonderful tactical stuff going on against City with Bruno though. He was the pivot, but he was also seemingly assigned as the player to press and mark Rodri! Was weird to watch. We frequently left our back 4 up against 5 City attackers. Was always going to be a mad scoreline with us playing like that.

We're looking to sign Pedro as backup for Wilson with the view that he will hopefully take his place in a couple of years or so. Can't see him playing wide to be honest. We still need a proper right-sided forward urgently, but getting Pedro so we don't have to give Wood as many minutes is great business.

It was Burn’s man for the second too. He switches off quite a lot unfortunately.

I thought he (and Schar) struggled but the massive, massive caveat is that it was Man City and we did not play to protect our centre backs, either.

Love Miggy, but get a goal scorer in his place and they will gain us so many points this season.

I don’t understand how he’s so good

I think his performance against Everton earlier this year was better, but he wasn’t far off it at all.

He had Pep tactically today, like. Really took advantage of them playing with the inverted full backs.

What a game

Pope with the ball

He is really doing the team thing, yer kna. Beautiful.