Cf

Yeah that's fair. But I can't help but feel there's a certain element of it's not hard to be world class at a world class club. You can obviously fail at that level. But at the same time I suspect there's plenty of managers who'd be just as good as the ones you mention if given a chance. Eddie will get his chance here over the next few years if appropriately supported.

Yeah you can probably throw them in too. But then take a look at Conte he hardly set the world on fire at Spurs recently when he didn't have the elite squad. Not trying to pick a fight I just don't find people saying "Eddie howe isn't elite because he's not won anything" very helpful because I think it's more nuanced than that. If Howe isn't world class like everyone else in that list would we therefore have expected all of them to achieve what Howe did in his first two seasons? I'm not sure I would.

I mean the only manager who I'd give that label to is Guardiola. And I still look at what Howe managed to achieve in saving us and getting us to 4th the following season. Would Guardiola have managed it? I don't think it's nailed on he would. Don't get me wrong I'm not downplaying managers of his calibre. And you wouldn't trust just anyone to do the job at the level he's doing but there's a certain amount of they're getting to play at the big boys table which naturally puts a shine on them.

Different topic... I don't like the idea of sin bins but what do you do about the cynical fouls City and Liverpool are so good at? Not the obvious stopping a counter ones that are easy yellows but the "we've lost possession so a little nick there so we can regroup" ones. Just more aggressive yellow cards for it? Just seems like a really good strategy for the high possession teams. And I'm not sure intentionally fouling the opposition should be an allowable strategy.

They need to do something about penalties. I hate the way they spend ages on offsides but it's at least with a view to making the right decision. And I get that whilst offside is mainly black and white a foul is more subjective. But it's like they've just decided to wash their hands of it and just blindly stick to the on field decision unless it's so obviously wrong they can't help but intervene. Penalties though are as close to a guaranteed goal as you can get so I'm not sure why there isn't the same wanting to reach the right decision. There might be some stoppages to review incidents the ref has missed but the ref completely missing a penalty is likely to be "clear and obvious" anyway because I think the bar for a penalty should be reasonably high with benefit of the doubt to defenders. Alternatively just scrap VAR because it's shit. People say it's not the technology at fault, it's the people using it but I disagree. We can certainly try to improve the way we are using it but fundamentally I don't think trying to referee football games by watching replays of an in progress game is a good idea.

De Zerbi is still a bit of a question mark for me. He inherited a team that was already performing really well. This season they have one more point than us. Howe inherited a Steve Bruce side that were nailed on for relegation.

We got there without the demands of being there already (the extra hard games mainly) whilst a couple of other teams had a bit of an off season. Not to downplay how well we did mind. We were really fucking impressive. This season I think was likely to not be as good. The injuries make it really hard to judge where we are but just look at the squads of the "bigger" teams. I think it's fair to say we're quite a way off.

And without major investment to boot. Season has shown how far away our squad is from CL/top 4. And even then before it unraveled we were giving it a good go.

I know Burns time should be coming to an end but I think we also need to remember that Mo Salah is very very good. Meanwhile in the corresponding position we had Almiron a player who is quickly going from can't help but love him to can't stand the sight of him.

The fact we are even discussing the possibility of starting the likes of Ritchie and Dummet who would both struggle to get minutes in the Championship shows you the extent to which his hands are tied at the minute. I get maybe you just sacrifice some positions/games by starting them but any options he's got are shit. Different options might be slightly less shit than the others but there's not really a great deal between them. Just need to address this in the January and upcoming summer window. The fact he got this squad as high as he did is remarkable but it's clear now we need to strengthen.

Yeah. It's not a difficult calculation. Not sure why it's not done this way.

And the 0.8 for the dive penalty of course.

The expected goals whilst bad isn't quite as bad as it looks. The penalty in the first half will have counted for like 1.5 because of the follow-up (obv you can't score more than once but xG strangely doesn't take this into account) and there was a bit where they had a flurry despite being offside and the flag not going up and us getting the ball at the end of it. It's still bad like, but not quite worst of all time bad.

I mean if the officials are going to give penalties when players are cheating them and then VAR are just like sound nice dive enjoy your penalty then I don't see how they're supposed to be gaining any of this respect we're supposed to be showing them.

I think this part of VAR needs changing the sticking to on field decisions thing. The bar they use is far too high.

That's an utter disgrace.

Just give them the goal.

Well now...

There's 19 games left. Maybe with 5 games to go you'd have a point but it's clearly fair to say that if they continue anywhere near their current rate they'll be comfortable as long as they don't get whacked with more points penalties.

That's with -10 points applied. They'd be 10th without that. Just based on that and expected form you'd expect them to make up the places. Not saying it can't happen but it seems very unlikely.

Think Everton will be comfortably mid table. Any talk of them going down is ridiculous imo. That ship has, unfortunately, sailed.

Pickford

Very harsh penalty that. One of those where do they just assume defenders shouldn't have arms?

Agree with most of what you've been saying but not sure I do with this part. There'd have just been too many games for our squad without any additions. We wouldn't have been able to play our pressing game and the plan B everyone talks about wouldn't be all that hot either because our squad isn't technically good enough across the board. As with rating the window as a whole I think like everything else from the last month it has a big asterisk next to it that makes it really hard to judge. Potentially the lesson to take from it is to address the balance of immediate vs long term to focus slightly more on the immediate requirements next time around.

Losing to Sunderland would be shit yes. But you don't fire your manager because of a single result.