Cf

"He doesn't normally do stuff like that" - Neville on a snide follow through from Van Dijk.

Missing out on most of our first and second choice targets was exactly what he wanted?

Yeah my response there wasn't to you in particular. I just think with our issues off the pitch in the summer, PSR, the fact we have about the 8th highest wage bill in the league, there are quite obvious reasons why we are struggling this season. YMMV but at times I don't think we have been as bad as been made out but I do agree we've a lot of times looked far from our best. I'm just conscious that we have a hard few weeks coming up as well. Things may well get worse before they get better. But Howe and this team have achieved things that weren't thinkable even 5 years ago. It's a time to be behind the team (whilst acknowledging changes are needed this summer) and supporting them rather than being out for blood.

Obviously. But ask yourself if Howe was in charge of Arsenal do you think they'd be 12th in the PL? If Arteta was in charge of us do you think we'd be top of the the league/CL? I'm merely pointing out they they vastly different levels of squads available to them. This isn't a controversial point

But that's a function of the he squad he has available to him isn't it? We ended up getting second/third choices for so many if our summer transfers that I don't read too much into it. I'm pinning my hopes on us having our backroom sorted and getting some technical and less sought out players early in the summer.

Feels like that's what people are after otherwise it's shit.

I don't disagree. I imagine a lot of people would not be happy with no going for it though especially when we were the holders.

This is such a boring point to have to repeatedly make but I'll say it again: Put Howe in charge of Arsenal and you'll find he can manage all the extra games perfectly well. Put Arteta in charge of us and you'll find he can't. It's not hard.

2 less games in the CL and 2 less games in the LC. Doesn't sound much but that's 4 weeks where we'll have had time on the training ground, to recover, to analyse games, etc, that we haven't had this season. Also we struggled during the fixture congestion as we are now. It's once that eased up that performances/results improved.

You don't get top of the form table by playing badly. I think people are underestimating how good the quality of the league is this year. Apart from Arsenal I don't think there's one team that can be consistently happy with their performances being to the standard that seems to be expected on here.

This is why I advocated playing the reserves mid week btw. I know it's unpalatable to some but we needed the break.

Weren't we top of the form table in the PL a few weeks back?

I don't think we were. We struggled post Isak but I think performance wise we were generally alright without being amazing and things just generally weren't falling for us. It certainly wasn't "shit". And December/January was actually a good period for us when results started to match the performances a bit. Obviously last few weeks it has just become too much.

Look at the state of that. And this relentlessness is going to continue for a few more weeks yet. But especially three away games within 7 days to PSG, Liverpool, and City. Yeah I get that the season especially in the league is a bit shit but Eddie Howe isn't the reason for it.

This. 1000 times this. I find these reactions absolutely baffling. Think it's fairly obvious our squad just can't cope with this amount of fixtures.

I mean the Trippier one was a nailed on penalty but that one was a joke. His arm couldn't be any closer to his side. What's Murphy supposed to do? Not have arms?

Because we're coming in off the back of away to Liverpool and City within the last week.

Can't help feel we should be giving the second string a run out here and resting our main players only bringing them on later if there's something to defend/play for. Not a popular view I know but we've just come off the back of PSG Away and Liverpool Away. Upcoming Brentford and Spurs in the PL are essentially must win if we want to save our PL season and then we've got CL after that. At some point you have to accept you can't give 100% every game with this schedule and prioritise. Starting 2 down away to Man City doesn't sound like the time for it.

My mum was getting me these for Christmas for years. Recently I finally told her that I didn't like them. She was gutted.

Is a bit mad that I'd expect all 20 PL teams to comfortably make the top 24 in the CL group stage.

But when he does that 90% of the time he just passes it backwards or sideways. I'm not saying he's a completely useless player. I think he's PL level. It's just we don't play to his strengths and he's increasingly looking out of position on the left wing.

Exactly. So it just begs the question: what's the point of him on that wing?

Surely he should be nowhere near that England spot based on this season's performances.

He needs to be playing much much fewer minutes than he is both for his and the team's sake. If Bruno wasn't out he'd have been on the bench you imagine.

Dear me.