r0cafella

Bruno should be rested given he’s absolutely irreplaceable.

My posts are most querying the clubs transfer strategy than the manager, and are meant to be discussed and not with the intention of being critical of the club.

Oh yeah thanks for highlighting this aspect of my post I didn’t consider and want to make it clear. Eddie Howe is the best thing to happen to this club since Keegan imo and I mean that with no disrespect to Sir Bobby or Rafa or anyone else.

No no, please don’t take my comments as criticism,I understand why the club has bought the way it has, I just wonder if in hindsight it was the correct approach I don’t think Barnes is a bad player or a bad signing, I like him and think he will turn out great. The issue is, we bought a guy who plays in the same position 6 months prior for the same money, could we have used our funds in a more productive manner? Ive been pondering these questions since the window closed and I'm still not sure, I think last night exaggerates those thoughts because the squad we have, the gaffa doesn’t seem particularly keen to use and we have players who imo we could have upgraded who would have upped or overall level.

This window we kinda made a departure from it imo. Livra and Hall are obvious, but Barnes is interesting to me as I see his role as to compete with Gordon for the left wing and thus not an immediate upgrade. Of course with Tonali we knew it would need time. The window looked great in a vacuum imo but our bad luck is kind of making it sub optimal.

Err, Academy players being sold? So player trading yeah?

Good post. I think the system clearly works very well when we are fresh, and everyone understands the role. The hiccups come when we are beading players in or the fatigue sets in. I can see how on paper, what we did makes a ton of sense. Tonali rotates with Longstaff, Willock rotates with Joelinton and we always have legs in midfield to maintain the high energy style which has given us so much success. I could be wrong and I'm lazy to check but I'm pretty sure we haven't played a game this season where we haven't had at least two of our central midfielders out.

He was free, his salary was say 30k per week above our structure, if you actually factor in Bruno’s salary plus transfer fee amortisation the package we bought him for is the same ball park. So not only would he have improved us, he would have also been an absolute no brainer as worst comes to worst he doesn’t work out and you flip him for both a real and FFP profit. We have to improve our player trading, it’s this what has allowed chelsea to spend a billion (no I don’t want is to become like Chelsea just illustrating a point).

It was an example of missing out on opportunities to improve our first 11, he’s a great example because he was free. And we lost out to Villa who can afford his wages but we can’t?

Absolutely but I also like villas approach, they bought players who come in and improve the fire 11, it’s the way to go imo.

Absolutely he’s on decent wages, he commands the premium by running his contract down. I mean we’ve paid Tonali the same as what Villa have paid Kamara and given ours also cost us a massive fee I’m not sure why it would have been stumbling block. And I’m not criticising the club here, it’s just in order to bridge the gap we have to be creative.

Villa is an interesting case, I really feel we made a mistake passing up on Diaby and Kamara. Kamara on a free was a no brainer.

More points dropped from winning positions is the issue sadly.

Oh yeah, without a doubt. FFP means we have an extremely small landing zone and mistakes are absolutely destructive for us.

Absolutely isn’t, I think the issue we have is the bar seems to be higher this season and if we don’t improve the requisite amount we are going backwards. (this isn’t criticism of Howe or the team before in jumped on).

Here’s a question, and to be honest I don’t know the actual answer but here goes. have we improved since the last season?

To be fair, we rolled the dice this summer and opted for very long term targets. Unfortunately the injury situation plus the Tonali disaster has caused our approach to backfire.

Was an easy catch. He did a paper wristed punch

Ffs, completely avoidable.

Good spot, I think it bears out too. Remember Targett joined us because he wanted first team football after Villa bought Digne.

I would I think, Bruno has played a lot and has made a couple of laps around the world in the last 6 months as well. If he gets injured we are monumentally fucked.

His absolute lack of minutes suggest he’s very much an emergency back up.

The gaffa said that? If so what our media muppets actually doing?

Please, for the fume alone

Ahhhh didn’t see articles from them, maybe held up at the premier league approval stage.