Jagten

This is not how you evaluate players or their profiles.

Probably skepticism over whether the second part is true. Personally, he seems like a decent progressive carrier but I'm not sure there's a huge amount else.

Legit but extremely early question to ask whether as his influence has grown (and they appointed his brother in senior scouting position) talent ID has got a bit worse.

I think he probably has an average-to-goodish talent ceiling, which is probably difficult for us to reason with given his polarising nature.

On individual games this is possible, but as an average over the season our luck was probably par. Results are mostly just noisy realisations of a random process. We're all just trying to work out what the underlying trend might be from a small sample size. I think there's stuff to be semi-concerned about, is all.

I assume you're not going to like this but an ensemble of public expected goals models suppose they should have scored 2.

They created a lot more good chances. We created none.

You can be happy with the result without reverse-engineering the performance, or giving anyone grief for discussing our issues in the game. It wasn't particularly close tonight and we should have been comfortably beaten.

Our total inability to create chances is v concerning.

True but we've created very few chances against our last 3 opponents.

Oof https://twitter.com/OptaAnalyst/status/1704188088858104268?t=FtDaMHXLqL9TeNLRbSLvww&s=19

The expected goals will be violent.

We've really struggled to progress the ball like

Sancho can be elite and should be excellent in transition. For the right price, there's huge upside in buying him. Ten hag is a known weirdo.

Nah. Arsenal clearly better.

He's not especially progressive, can't be a lone pivot. The comparisons aren't important I just don't see the obvious point especially when he's the only starter you buy. Contrasting profiles of Madison or Lavia would have made more sense to me.

Yeah, for sure. Couldn't find anything else right now but the sentiment was not uncommon. I am not sold yet.

People keep saying this re Tonali but he cant do it. If that's the answer already we got the Tonali talent ID totally wrong.

I agree with this. He's being asked to do lots of things he's not especially good at.

Very early days, but I think this might end up being quite a bit lower than some of these ratings. I think we've spent a lot of money to - at least, right now - not make us much better, or address our weaknesses. Takes like this re Tonali seem plausibly not untrue: https://www.scoutednotebook.com/i/135916597/disappointment-of-season-sandro-tonali

Tonali not a 6.

We are struggling in transition so much

I slightly disagree re squad composition. We have one progressive passer, which is evident when teams sit off us. It feels to me like we've witnessed a subtle recruitment step-change since Isak, and signings have been more about enabling Howe-ball. I don't want an oppositional sporting director, but I do want a directorship that appreciates risk management. The most likely outcome is that Howe eventually fails. I hope we keep this in mind.

Howe has been fantastic. I am not suggesting we should have appointed anyone else. Results thus far could not have been any better. My point is we should be making lots of asymmetrical - ideally uncorrelated - bets. Whilst I am not privy to our internal decision making it feels like Eddie's influence has grown, and our largest bet has increasingly become him. Tonali and Barnes, the two most likely starters, feel like accessories to his style above anything else. Taking such a concentrated position is generally how you blow up.

Mostly OTT takes in a game where we weren’t great but were still unlucky not to win. That said, we have doubled down on Eddie – hired his family and gone to the limit FFP in pursuit of his style. I hope it does not become relevant to ask whether we could have hedged our advantageous position better.