r0cafella

Dean and Neville

Have Arsenal got a lot of injuries? The bench didn’t look that impressive given the amount they’ve spent these few years.

Massive deflection that, nice slice of luck for Liverpool.

PSG have a special exemption from FFP.

Need some quota filer games, every team needs to be on a certain amount, this is two birds with one stone for sky.

I wonder if we’ve actually managed to reduce the wage bill this season.

I don’t think either want to naturally play a double pivot though, they both want to get up and down and be more involved then breaking up Possession and recycling. Also we don’t have a natural 10, playing Isak there is very much shoehorning him into the role, it might work but it’s another experimental gamble. We’ve gone all in on this fluid 3 and it isn’t clicking yet.

Gordon longstaff and Anderson all asleep in this image too. Look at the overload they have on the left.

Hope says Wilock has done has Achilles and is out for 6 weeks. Also, I think a few of our players will be going to join the national teams so I don’t think this break is a magic bullet for us.

Absolutely this, which is alarming when we have 3 8’s on the pitch. We are such an average team when we abandon the press with the high line.

No, Longstaff isn’t a 6 at all. He’s also not great positionally and your basically wasting his best abilities by playing him there.

Re hall, I don’t think it’s as simple as that, here’s a couple of reasons why. According to Eddie, hall had barely any pre season ( I’m not quite sure this adds up but we can only take Eddie’s word for it) so with that factored in Eddie might find it’s too soon for him. The system we play isn’t really conducive to playing with two attacking full backs at once given our lack of defensive midfielder, it’s why we have always seen Dan Burn just sitting and making a lopsided 3. overall I’m desperate to see more of Tino and Hall but I’m not quite sure where they fit into the system given how we play. Never forget the quote from Rafa about never having enough blanket to cover both your head and toes.

Yeah, definitely but at the same time I can totally understand why we did it, it’s like for like, Barnes will end up with more goal contributions than ASM and it looks great on paper. Upon further inspection the flaws do emerge though ASM also gives intangible benefits such as forcing the whole defence onto his side creating space for miggy and Trips and obviously the funds could have been deployed on a centre half, a DM or a RW to arguably better effect.

Yeah, and this highlights another potential issue with our recruitment this summer, I think Barnes is going to be really good for us but I’m not sure he was needed given we have Gordon, Bog Joe and Isak to fill that role. Maybe the recruitment we did this summer would have been better in a FFP free world, given our starting 11 still has some significant weakness.

We got absolutely punished for not having a proper 6 yesterday, Ferguson and Pedro having an absolute field day. Eddie’s going for some form of ultra fluid midfield but such a system is really hard to pull off consistently.

It’s pretty reasonable to question this summers business given the start of our season, I do think in time we will all look back happy with our business but the fixture list and a lack of confidence does seem to be taking it’s toll and making things look worst than they are. I’ll be watching closely how our squad is utilised this season as on the surface Eddie doesn’t appear to rotate too much, and if that trend continues it will make our signings look like poorer choices if they are lacking impact. That being said, I felt when we bought Gordon he was the replacement for ASM and that tells me Eddie is a big fan of forward planning and slow translation into the first team.

A lot of teams are using inverted fullbacks against us and creating a numerical advantage in midfield which is really making our press less effective. A lot of work for the Gaffa to do. Our lack of pace In the backline plus Popes lack of confidence is really hurting our ability to compress space also. hopefully we can gain some confidence in the games coming up.

Yeah it depends right, I think as a left winger I prefer Barnes, he will get more goals from wide than Maddison. We don’t play with a 10 and this have little utility for Maddison he’d be a square peg in a round hole in our system.

Weren’t you complaining about a lack of presence defending the half space? Not sure how removing a central midfielder for a forward would help that.

that was absolutely honking mind. Not sure what’s going on with us but we looked a shadow of our former self.

Hope our contract with them is water tight if not they will be suing us.

You can borrow Matt Targett for a 15m loan fee fee no bother.

https://twitter.com/YesWeCrann/status/1697195143055523967 Hayden and Hendrick linked to Sheff Wednesday

You’d think so, he’s back in the situation he was at Villa. That being said, we need a permanent deal and we need to make sure we don’t take a loss so it might be difficult to do given the limited time.

Aka very good squad management.