Smal

he’s a big problem but he’s been given an impossible task. Pretty infuriating.

this is the closest I can get you with some data noncing: not having a viable striker is the biggest issue we have by a million miles

I think this summer we have to let a load of them go. Of the guys out of contract I’d only keep Schar, so that’s Pope, Trippier, Krafth, Ruddy and Gillespie all out. Ramsdale loan expires. I’d rather keep Tonali and Livramento, but I think both will be sold for decent fees. ~£150m for both. Then there is a bunch of guys who probably want to go where I’d be fine with it too - Gordon, Willock, and Osula. ~£80m for these, maybe more if Gordon has a good world cup and Osula still has suitors. It’s also time for Murphy to leave. Hopefully can get £10m for him. So about £230m-£250m brought in and whatever leeway we have from PSR, which must be substantial by now surely. Fair bit off the wages too with Targett going. The remaining squad being: GK: RB: RCB: Thiaw, Schar LCB: Botman, Burn LB: Hall DM: Miley RCM: Bruno LCM: Joelinton, Ramsey RW: Elanga LW: Barnes ST: Woltemade, Wissa We need two players for each position, so we’d need 9 signings I think.

fucking Mourinho you guys are masochists in the extreme

He needs some confidence, not sure how we get it to him tbh. Maybe give him a run of starts where he knows he’s going to play like he had when he was actually scoring goals earlier in the season, but there’s so many games and the games are so hard that it might do more harm than good.

I think their thinking would have been: 1. Wissa is the Isak replacement. We tried for other targets but in terms of profile this is as similar as we could get. Somebody who runs in behind, and has a good PL goalscoring record. We spent £55m on a 28 year old, that’s how important we thought he was going to be. 2. Woltemade is a young player brought in to develop, and enable the team to evolve into a side that controls games more in the future. Not necessarily a signing for this season which is fine, because Wissa is supposed to be the short term and immediate solution. Wissa being both injured and abject has scuppered both signings to an enormous degree.

hindsight of course, but we shouldn’t have signed a player who went on strike. His injuries and lack of fitness are his own fault, signing him was ours.

whenever we’ve gone on a run in the past it’s coincided with a striker averaging a goal a game. I really can’t stress enough that it obviously will not happen with our current two . You can say adapt the system, but how? We play every 3/4 days and don’t get any time. Both strikers were brought in with no pre-season. It’s an impossible situation thanks to how appalling the summer was.

Think it’s going to be a bit like this until the end of the season now, unfortunately. Hopefully people can get used to it and get behind them team once they realise. The full back situation is really bad, and the striker situation is probably worse. These are self inflicted issues ofc but I don’t think anyone could possibly have expected Wissa to be so bad. These two issues are absolute killers, they are costing us goals at both ends every game and there is not really a way to fix it now this season, especially with no time on the training ground. Get to the summer, let a few players leave and fix the issues with the squad.

man this is really depressing. Absolutely sick of our forward options. Another game where we’ve played largely shit but still had more chances than the other team to score. We don’t score ours and the other team score theirs consistently.

it is absolute negligence that he is playing so much

Pope is a fucking meme, goodness me

I don’t rate Osula at all but at least he runs and challenges for the ball. So much more threatening than Wissa.

crowd haven’t helped us today, like. Barely even cheered our goal

I think this setup with Gordon instead of Wissa is about as good as we can field. Miley in for Trippier if he was fit as well ofc.

I honestly think not having a striker is such a huge problem, like. It’s affecting the whole team’s confidence because there’s no faith that somebody will be on the end of what we create, and no faith that if there is they’ll be able to finish.

we were doing fine until they scored, like. There is a big mentality issue for sure.

Wissa is unreal, like. Looks every bit as bad as Rivière did.

Wissa and Murphy off at HT please

this is just never a penalty man

Not signing a 4th full back for the squad in the summer has cost us a lot of points this season. Not signing one in January is pure negligence from the club.

Unreal cross tbh, not sure how we could’ve defended it

Botman is battering Igor Thiago at least

I think if people watched more PL this season they’d not be so enraged by our performances tbh. I haven’t watched a single side in the league and thought that they’re a good team with any sort of consistency. Pep’s positional play has finally been beaten but it’s been countered by something even more boring

the team winning the league by miles is the same 90% of the time.