Cf

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.

He needs Barnes sharing some minutes with him.

I don't think he was particularly at fault for any of the goals but then a first choice PL level goalkeeper possibly does something about one or two of them and he isn't that. Just yet another area where we've been shafted with injuries.

There'll be a certain element of maybe more could have been done but they won't have factored in having an entire first team out injured and us not even being able to fill the bench.

The mitigation for the lack of plan B is still injuries and the fixture congestion. There's been no time in the past month or so to train and coach around the injuries. The focus will have been on trying to just maintain some fitness in a decimated squad. We've had a game every 3 days for a month now. It's been bad for sure. But weeks ago to me it was obvious we were about to have a run like this. He doesn't have my unquestioning support but I think enough of this isn't on him that to focus too much on Eddie isn't fair or productive.

Get Mike banned.

This isn't good at all.