Cf

It's the rotation everyone has been asking for!

He'll be on at some point. He's a player who's barely had any time out of the team in the last few weeks.

Starting to resemble an acceptable team and bench.

What a bizarre conversation

It wasn't an outright dive but he threw himself to the ground. Ref prob had the earlier incident on his mind too.

Now Sterling gets booked for diving.

Where the fuck are they getting these added time numbers from?

He should have been booked for that.

How many of our squad would get into the "elite" (forums favourite word recently) teams? Botman. Injured all season. Bruno. Tonali? Suspended all season. Isak. Injured for half of it. That's about it? Trippier, Gordon, Livramento might be decent squad options (though Tripper is on the way out and the latter two more long term prospects) but I don't think anyone else really gets near. That's what he's had to work with despite the injuries and getting us into the CL. It's asking a lot from anyone. The obvious question is I think we'd mostly agree that Pep is at this point the better manager but how much better do we think he'd be doing?

I got the impression from the Netflix piece that the ownership appreciated this. We got to the CL ahead of schedule. We strengthened our squad but it's still clearly not at the same level as the top teams. Even without the injuries we don't really have the depth to properly challenge. Last season we had a week between games and were able to implement our press every game as well as prepare for each game. The tactics instilled in the team helped disguise the slight lack of technical quality in the squad. We just don't have that luxury this season. On the roadmap I imagine this was put down as a transitional season where maybe we'd be pushing for top 4. And squad wise it still is. Add the injury crisis on top and I think we're not in the worst spot we might be. Howe isn't above criticism and maybe there's a few things he could have done differently but I'd be surprised if anyone else would have done much better with this squad, schedule, and injury crisis.

Yeah that was bizarre

Sigh.

I mean fair play just straight up pushing someone over unprovoked when you're on a yellow for what should have been a red.

Excuse me what?

This is getting silly now. They keep taking us out and nothing. We so much as look at them funny and he gives them a free kick.

That could be two yellows for Sterling for diving.

Yeah they need to take Gordon off for anyone at this point.

He wasn't like.

Refreshing discussing the red at half time and it's just "we think that was a red" without all the drama of why hasn't VAR intervened and all that shit.

It's not really that strange. I think this is for both their 7th game in 23 days or something.

How many fucking red card tackles have we faced recently? And why's there no VAR? To be equal across the competition?

Would be surprised to see him go. He can build a legacy here. That said if he's offered silly money and he wants to take it then fair play.

I'm against sin bins but at the same time quite like the idea for the cynical stop the break foul where a yellow doesn't seem punishment enough but a red is too much.

Lascelles and Burn (as much as I love them both) passing it between themselves was grim in comparison to Botman and Schar.

I think Krafth is just about up to standard TBF and should have been getting some minutes. But beyond that it's mainly bad luck. Like look at today. Ideally Schar comes off at 60 to give Botman a bit of a run out but nope bam there's the injury. We get Isak back but it coincides with Wilson getting injured so he's been run into the ground. Finally get Longstaff back so gives us a few more options in midfield. Then Joelinton goes. The problem too is is as we get players back we need to slowly bring them back in. But the players already out there are fucked themselves. He could maybe have subbed a bit earlier a bit more often but I'm not sure what he's supposed to have really done about this.