Smal

The wide players should be the threat against Man City because they largely surrender their full back areas. It's one of the reasons ASM was able to play so well against them earlier in the season.

Gutted for ASM. He's our best counter attacking threat so ideal for today. He'll be off in the summer. I guess we might get to see if Gordon has anything today.

yeah maybe, but I feel like if we're going to play more attacking full backs on both sides then we probably should've signed a more defensive DM so we're not exposing the CBs.

Teams have mostly been playing deep against us since the world cup restart tbh and it makes Miggy and Wilson much more ineffective. We have to work on some new patterns of play. Like, I haven’t seen the Bruno clipped ball over the top for Almiron for ages, or even much of Trippier’s through balls for him.

Will say one thing, I’m not sure this approach of sending all of our attacking play down the right is sustainable long term. It was great when Miggy was having his purple patch but when he’s not on it or the opponent has worked him out it really doesn’t work as we have seen this year so far. ASM is mostly isolated when he gets the ball too so it’s no surprise when it looks like hard work for him. I think it’s time to take Miggy out for a bit tbh. He was maddening today.

thought his set pieces apart from a couple were absolutely fine or good, even. Burn missed another really easy chance. Ultimately we have the highest xG from set pieces in the league iirc. Underperforming on that means our delivery is good overall and the lads attacking them should be putting more away. More generally I thought he was back to his best today after some sloppy performances since the WC.

Burn should’ve scored as well.

Very strange of Eddie to take ASM off and leave us with literally nothing in the left hand side. We were tragic after that sub.

Need Isak to go over and play closer to ASM. He’s not beating AWB one on one so needs help.

Wish we had someone decent to bring on for Miggy.

fairly typical 2023 performance. Good everywhere apart from either box.

please make this a chant when we win, cheers

The BBC lineup person regularly puts Rodri on the wing and other mad shit for City’s lineups. I think it’s supposed to be an ongoing joke .

Nah, come on. There are oceans between Howe and Pardew that mean that won’t happen.

well you should be. Pope has been coming off his line like that all season and it’s a huge part of how we play and why we’re able to play such a high line with slow defenders. It’s typical the first error he’s made with it resulted in a red and missing our first cup final for decades. There will most likely be huge gaps behind our defence for Rashford now.

Yeah definitely. They were both at fault. I reckon Howe is fuming with Trippier.

Rewatching that first goal. It’s Schar’s fault as much as Trippier’s. Rafa is right that his body position was bad and he was so slow to react. You have to be watching for Nunez in behind.

I was too busy crying to be angry . When they showed his wife and kids, man. Poor sods.

unpopular opinion but I didn’t mind it at all. I took it as their way of showing solidarity.

what is wrong with Burn’s head. How’s he headed it behind from there, wtf

Gordon really not doing anything to ease my doubts about him

Now that he doesn’t play I find Matt Ritchie very likeable

Injuries inevitable when you play like we do and decide to go into the second half of the season with 4 midfielders.

Yeah. He’s a kid with no experience at all.