Smal

should've been about 8-0 this

break a leg, Alex

bit weird they didn't show him the replay from the side where it was clearly a penalty

Ugarte has literally nothing that is the level required to play in the premier league

Pope's probably cost us about 12 points (and 2 extra fixtures in the CL) on his own from individual errors this season tbh

Isn’t he getting paid more than double there and on a long contract? He’ll be fucking laughing. As if he gives a shit about actually playing. Hope the Barca rumour is true and he dies from drowning in scouse spit.

I watch a lot of prem football and there is not one team in the league that constitutes anything other than a tough watch this season.

The criticism that he doesn’t change formations shows a lack of understanding of football. There’s nothing rigid about his system either tbh, if anything it’s not structured enough and is too off the cuff in possession this season. One thing I’m definitely not seeing as much this season is us abusing the space in between the opposition CB and FB. We used to constantly have the 8s (or the wingers if the 8s had pulled wide) making the run in between them to the byline to generate cut backs. It was a huge source of success for us but we don’t seem to get into those positions anywhere near as much. Not having a reliable striker probably doesn’t help here as the team has no confidence anyone will be there to convert it.

their league position is false based on actual performances, they’re lucky not to be in a relegation scrap. They’re absolutely shit. Other than that we’ve had extended cup runs and the CL to contend with. Basing it on two results and league position is simplistic.

Been our best player since going up top. We’ll just have to accept the inconsistent finishing for the rest of the season, but at least he gets chances and shots which is automatically better than any of the other options.

Not just this but we didn’t concede when he was on the pitch and sunderland didn’t threaten the goal once. Was a completely different story after he went off. I thought he was fine/good.

yeah, I think the pitch always looks particularly stretched when we get counter attacked. Like we’re not compact enough. Schar would quite often be halfway into the opponents half when we have settled possession around the opponent’s box, don’t ever really see that with Thiaw.

Mitchell and Eales literally created the whole conflict with Howe over transfers. They lost any leverage they had when Howe won a cup and qualified for the champions league off the back of years of recruitment that came good. This summer just gone was a mess and it was almost entirely their fault.

played like he was sulking that Woltemade started ahead of him tbh. Such poor application the whole time he was on the pitch.

I guess the problem with playing Gordon up front (who is sadly our only viable striker) is that there's nobody to rotate with Barnes.

love Big Dan but I fear we're seeing a fair but of a downturn from him recently. He seems to be losing his head a fair bit defensively.

yeah, I mean I get why people are upset and this season has just been consistent anguish over and over again (not to mention the huge mitigating circumstances from the summer), but given what we've had from him in past seasons it's flummoxing that so many won't accept a bad season from him.

yeah, it's kind of exactly what I mean. I have no issue with him as a player, he looks really good individually. I just think it's pretty clear that whatever we're doing defensively has not worked this season and I'm trying to find explanations. Thiaw defends much lower on the pitch than either of our CB pairing from the last two seasons, and that could be one of the main reasons why.

I am really confused by this guy. Seems like such a good player individually but... the team completely falls apart defensively when he's on the pitch. Brobbey won a few duels with Botman in the first half but they never had a sniff of the goal whatsoever. I posted it in the squad and tactics thread a couple of weeks ago but, for "high defensive actions" (a metric which records tackles, interceptions or clearances in the opposition half): Burn ranks 88th percentile in the league vs other PL defenders (including full backs who generally score higher in this metric), so very highly. 1.21 actions per 90. Schar 73rd percentile. Also high. 0.87 per 90. Botman 23rd percentile. 0.3 per 90. Thiaw 6th percentile. 0.18 per 90. He is one of the least proactive CBs in the league. I need to watch for it when we play but there has to be something in it, and it would explain why we don't concede as many goals when Burn and Schar play together. Dunno if it's affecting the defensive line, ability to play offsides, the positioning of the other defenders or what.

I should add that some of them will be mine

is he trying to get his price down or something

three weeks of reading utterly shit opinions now

suspect he will have lost a lot of the crowd after that. No idea what's happened to the mentality of some of these players. They've been absolutely pathetic.

not sure why but the team is a disaster defensively when Thiaw is on the pitch

such a good chance that, like