Smal

The fatigue is 100% a factor. We haven’t attempted to adapt to try and combat it one bit though. Howe is right to try and stick to his principles, but if the whole principle is intensity and you can’t be intense then there has to be some room for manoeuvre. I think/hope Howe will learn from this experience. We should come back stronger from it.

these are *extremely* bad numbers, like

Think we have to try a 4-2–3-1 soon (or perhaps even a back 5 like we ended the game with tonight) and try to keep two midfielders back to protect the back line. Without the speed of Willock and Joelinton in midfield and transition, and the added issue of fatigue to exacerbate the lack of pace further, I think it’s clear we simply don’t have the recovery run ability in midfield to play the midfield structure we have been using in this run. It’s been so, so easy to get straight at our defence and run through the midfield - even against weaker sides. I think Miley looks more like a #10 and it would take some of the defensive responsibility from him too, which he’s understandably struggled with recently.

Thought Burn was fine tbh. Won most of his duels. It was the defending once they got past him that was the major issue. Gordon also gave him absolutely no help when he switched over to that side.

I’m not even slightly Howe out or anything but I guess my counter to that point would be why on earth is he playing? It was obvious he couldn’t run weeks ago, let alone after the first half today. That he played the full game today seems absolutely mad to me. That we haven’t really got anyone else doesn’t really change that point either imo. He’s (same applies to Miggy) been struggling for ages… just take him out and play Ritchie for a game and sacrifice that area of the field/adapt to suit. The season is long, and especially this season you can’t just take each game as it comes like we did last season.

We… really were though? Honestly it’s remarkable we didn’t concede 7+ goals, there was no point in the game where we looked in control defensively, and we really didn’t offer any consistent threat at the other end of the pitch either. We defended atrociously and were really, really poor when we did have the ball for more or less the whole game.

it’s .76 (I rounded for ease) but yeah. It’s based on historical conversion rates iirc.

I mean it bumps it up 1.5, which isn’t massive given the numbers involved.

7.2xg conceded is really whew, like. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for them to have scored 9 or 10 goals. It doesn’t get worse than that performance in the PL.

gonna assume he’s injured. Only excuse for pulling out of challenges like that one with Van Dijk. Could’ve cost us 3 or 4 goals by himself today.

I mean, it’s another away game where the opposition should’ve scored 5+ goals, like. I’m not sure what’s gone wrong the last 5 weeks but we’ve been well and truly awful defensively.

Tino’s been an absolute disaster, man

Gordon really needs dropping

Think we need Krafth on for Tino soon

is Livramento injured or something? As bad an individual performance I’ve seen all season

Gordon seems like a total confidence player. He is fully back to the useless form of last season and has been for weeks. Not sure how he gets it back atm.

Perfect tackle from Miley tbh

Joelinton Anthony Taylor’s favourite player or summat?

How’s Joelinton got away with that hahahaha

Really frustrating watching Gordon atm

Drury has no idea who any of our players are

Gordon has been painful to watch for about a month now

Tino has been unbelievably bad so far

long ball to Joelinton and win the second ball is our only reasonable bet here tbh.

makes him miss the ball and fall over, yeah