Smal

Good to see we're pressing them really aggressively. They will not like that.

Don't finish work until 6pm . 10 minute drive home... gonna miss most of the first half.

I think I’d be playing Wilson, Gordon and Miggy, with Tonali, Bruno and Longstaff behind to try to press them off the pitch.

ACL injury for Rico Henry. Probably out for the season.

Can Barcelona afford him? You’d think given how much we paid it’d take £120m to get him. Real probably more likely to come for him.

absolutely weird to single Anderson out for criticism haha. It was his third PL game in reality and his first 90. I thought he grew into it and did some good stuff. He’s very good at receiving the ball in between the lines on the half turn.

he will be more useful in Europe and the league when we’re playing against the bigger teams imo. Definitely feels more of a transition/counter attacking player rather than someone who’s going to breakdown a 5 man Brentford defence.

who’s going then? Well jealous

I think he’s hit a new level this season so far

can’t believe how bad refs are at their jobs, like. Every week is horrendous.

Love Big Call. More or less guaranteed goals.

ball has been bouncing off longstaff all game

Wilson is such a tank

Anderson can be creative. Biggest issue is trying to get him involved. We’re outnumbered by their backline.

If we’re going to have this much possession then I’d like to see Hall come on for Burn soon. Tonali for Longstaff at some point. If we’re not going to press high then we don’t need the latter really.

I don’t understand why we haven’t been committing Trippier to the attack this season so far

Really want to see Barnes start. We need to start putting our half chances away.

I see he played in a double pivot alongside Casemiro. Of the players we have, a Tonali-Bruno pivot seems like the best option if we want to try something new imo. Joelinton can play left wing or 10, or as a rotation option for the pivot players. Willock seems ideally suited to a 10 role with Isak ahead of him too imo.

Our press was miles off. I'm still incredulous that Joelinton played. He couldn't run, let alone tackle. You can't carry someone like that in midfield with the way we want to press.

I actually thought Tonali did well against Brighton, but tactically his positioning was very odd. Bruno seemed to be isolated in the first phase of build up and had no option but to either pass back to Schar or an aimless/overly-ambition forward pass. I mean, look at where Tonali is on the pass map: This just seems well off from what we were doing last season. Trippier has plenty of the ball but is really deep and generally just playing it back and forth with Schar. Tonali is receiving the ball where Almiron would have been normally. The shape is all over the place. We need to get Tonali to help Bruno in build up and start getting Trippier high and wide with Almiron closer to Isak, and get our patterns going down that side again.

Not really. Teams can analyse you and work you out. Both City and Brighton relentlessly exploited the half spaces between our midfield and defence. You need flexibility to counter that and we don’t have a specialist 6 in the entire squad.