jonny1403

I'm not talking about any of the other games (in which I thought Wood has played an important role). I'm talking specifically about Wilson's performance last night.

I don't mind Wood but we would have lost that yesterday if he had started in Wilson's place.

But Hendrick comes back from loan. Obviously we'll almost definitely sell him as well.

It's crazy that all of these leaving would still only allow us to sign 3 new players in the summer

The couple of tackles/fouls he made on people twice his size while running back at full pelt were immense

He was massively, massively exposed because of ASM. I don't understand it as ASM was tracking back quite a bit in the first half for Manquillo. We shouldn't offer him a new deal. Ability alone I would keep him as a squad player but he's never fit for more than 10 games a season and he just takes up a squad place and wages. I'd buy Targett and keep Manquillo as back up and focus on other positions for the rest of the summer. Obviously if we can also bring in a top class LB as well then great.

Exactly this. Van de Beek and Alli haven't started either ffs.

Makes sense to wait until the summer in any event as if we go down you'd imagine we would want to keep him.

I think who's that team we call United became really popular during Rafa's time as a bit of a symbol of resistance against Ashley, so I still like it. Old players do get a run out still tbh, Coloccini and O'Brien pretty much every game. I agree there's not much about the Keegan era players though.

Agreed. Would love to be wrong but I think people are reading something into the SkyBet thing when it's just a coincidence. Looking here: Sven Botman Club After January Transfer Window Betting Odds | Football | Oddschecker The majority of bookies have already removed that bet not because betting has been suspended but because it isn't relevant anymore, like they do with all transfers. He's 1/50 on to stay at Lille in one bookie that offers it. The only interesting point is that he's 9-1 to go to Newcastle at one, but 4-6 on at two others. There could be something explaining that difference...

Literally finished in the top 10 last season

Seeing a lot of pictures of him in training, so assume he's relatively ok?

SSN reporting it now.

According to the Athletic his injury isn't a minor one, and he's been carrying a groin injury for a while.

Stupid question, but if we have a homegrown player (e.g. Longstaff) who then gets older, does he take up a squad place at age 25 or is he permanently exempt as he came through our academy?

They were singing that to Chris Wood man

You feel like Diego Carlos would complement Schar really well.

Looking at it objectively, I think everyone would have snapped up 5 points from Man U (H), Watford (H) and Leeds (A)

As people have already mentioned to you, it's absolutely pointless looking at their current league position now, given that the likes of Wolves and Villa are completely different teams now (and currently much higher up the leage) to what they were when we played them. To be honest I still don't know why you are trying to apply this metric when it's obviously a pretty worthless exercise. The objective fact is that we have played 6 of last season's top 8 under Howe, and 2 under Bruce.

No, you're right, technically the fixtures were not the easiest possible fixtures that could have been generated ffs The point was that they were certainly easier than the next ten, and I stand by that.

That's a weird way of categorising it given that you've equated matches against West Ham and Villa as the same difficulty as Liverpool and City . You also for some reason think Watford away, a pretty awful team, is debatable but Brentford, a far better team at home is definitely an easy game? A much simpler analysis would be to flag that we had two top 6 teams in the first run and four plus Leicester in the second run.

And people forget that we had 10 games at the start of this season that apart from 1 or 2 were the easiest fixtures we could have hoped for. We were firmly, firmly in the shit before Howe arrived thanks to Bruce.

Maybe the fact that he's had only 10 games in charge of us? Half of which have been against the top 6 and with one of the worst squads we've ever had in the PL? It's honestly embarassing, we've come out of a decade of mediocrity and people are still kicking off. We deserve all the stick we get from the media at times.