Smal

Big Jo just tanking James off like it’s nothing feels like a win at least

what is he doing haha

Bruno… so poor.

looked ideal for Hall that

looks a bit short on confidence today as well sadly.

Harvey’s really missed his chance here

when’s Trippier back?

ah, Miggy has to try and get on the end of that man

the pass into Jackson or Palmer is so easy, man. Can’t believe we haven’t done anything to try and stop it

looked our most threatening player imo . His off the ball runs are good.

Madueke is not good at tracking runners. if we can get Barnes and Hall 2v1 we are in all day down there.

midfield is neither here nor there really. Looks like the idea is to get tight to their double pivot but… we’re not and we’re just leaving a massive gap in front of the CBs instead . Awful stuff.

could be 6 or 7 this. Utterly horrendous from Livramento, Schar and Burn.

Bruno man marking Palmer seems like a bit of a mismatch

we are absolutely shite

he definitely has done in the past two games.

I do think there’s probably an element where we’re not very good at treating or diagnosing injuries, mind. Everything is exaggerated by how injury prone Callum is too obviously. Really disappointing because he adds a lot to us when he’s fit. Not just goals but his attitude and leadership are top level too.

he’s got that balance that only top players have. How far he goes is just going to be about finding the right team and position.

Anderson is really good

Not that I'd want to sell him because he's cool af, but you can kind of see Titchy Dan's argument for selling Joelinton. You'd probably get a good fee for him compared to a Longstaff or an injury-prone Willock.

we haven’t given Barnes-Isak-Gordon enough time to work imo. If we’re not doing it because Gordon wants to play left wing in order to keep him happy then…

Thanks I think it's easy to bemoan our lack of individual quality at right wing but for me the biggest issue is systemic rather than personnel related. You used to see clear patterns of play, rotations and combinations between Trippier, Longstaff and Almiron which were really effective, but the latter two of those 3 are hardly high quality individuals. Our in possession game hasn't really evolved and if anything it's gone backwards. Howe has tried a couple of things earlier this season like Livramento inverted which haven't really worked, but at least he's tried something. Imo systemically a lot of it has gone to shit since we started trying to accommodate for Bruno wanting to play higher up the field last season. He presses way higher than he did in our 4th season, and he doesn't show to receive the ball in the first phase of build up as much, or is too easily marked out of it. I think we'd do well to prioritise an athletic DM who is comfortable receiving the ball from the CBs and GK with his back to play, and can defend transitions better than Bruno can. That would free Bruno to play higher which might alleviate some of the creativity issues we have there, and Bruno would still be able to help with build up from that position better than a Tonali/Joelinton/Longstaff can. Unfortunately the profile of DM I'm talking about costs billions for an established player... we'd need some good scouting. I actually think Hall could do it and has the right attributes - and clearly used to play midfield in his youth career - but he's been good at left back and solved an issue for us there. There's also the issue that if we were to bring a DM in it would mean dropping one of Joelinton or Tonali to the bench. We're too well stacked in the box-to-box 8 role. Agreed that our recruitment has been an issue. Getting ourselves into a situation where we had to sell a really good prospect in our main problem position is crazy when we've got two CL quality left wingers in the squad. Barnes is a really good player but can't help but think we signed him because we could rather than having an actual plan there. If Howe makes it to January (which I hope he does) then it'll be interesting to see what happens. We should have some money to spend. I'd hate to think we spunk all of our budget on a CB tbh. There are two other positions which are more of a priority imo - a DM for the system and a RW who actually fits the profile of what we want there.

Burn is clearly instructed to play higher and try to win the ball aggressively which is why he was seemingly "out of position" (though he wasn't actually). This has always been something we've done under Howe - the two full backs are supposed to tuck in when it happens. When Trippier and Burn play they fully understand this but Tino and Hall are obviously still learning. They did tuck in eventually, but Schar didn't challenge for the ball well enough and Livramento's attempt at a challenge was really poor.

Still developing defensively of course but yeah… really important for us on the ball. Take him out of the team for a Kelly or Burn and we basically wouldn’t be able to get the ball up the pitch.

He should’ve done a lot better for their goal as well tbh. Think he’s been really poor this season which has surprised me.