SteV

Holly Blades?

And saved Howe’s job in the process?

He said in his post-match presser he still views him as a midfielder rather than a fullback. That said, I could could see him remaining there for another couple of games until Tino and/or Tripps are ready to start.

Think he was asking how he felt we coped with Palace’s ONSLAUGHT in the first half.

Whenever I see Palace play in person, it never fails to surprise me how much of an absolute fucking unit Mateta is. We handled him well enough today mind.

That feels a tad OTT of a take…

Only if you’re a ST holder and you do it repeatedly

Sure Eddie would be buzzing to have American Todd telling him who to play at left-back…

Have we reached saturation though? The fact the numbers (attendance, viewership, whatever) just to continue to go up across the board, suggests otherwise.

I honestly don’t know whether I envy or pity being this committed to my morals? Or maybe I just haven’t really got any morals?

Few minutes tomorrow and/or against Leeds and he’s hopefully go v Man City with Schar suspended.

Hope he gives some absolutely mad rambling post-match interview as his swan song.

In theory, but not always in practice. See Liverpool last season.

Nah

I think, looking back at his club interview after the game, he feels like the team is low on confidence, and he’s trying to reduce the amount of negativity surrounding them. Difficult to do when you are losing, but you’ve got a bit more of a license when you win. I think it’s probably fair enough to rail back against the language that Ryder used (probably unintentionally in fairness, he just isn’t particularly eloquent) to try and make sure that Burnley game doesn’t end up being framed as ‘lucky’, when on the whole it was an even game with good periods for both sides, that we’ve done enough to win.

A blow for their ‘Most Respected Throughout Football’ cup hopes.

Kick on the knee I think Eddie said at some point.

Token gesture of giving Palace a bit longer as they had to play last night.

That’s what I mean. You can think ‘it’s Burnley’, so therefore we shouldn’t be under that much pressure. Not sure I fully agree with that, but I definitely understand it. But as a result, we end up thinking we’ve been under more pressure than we actually were, because it was more than we thought it would be. It’s a bit like boxing. If there’s a close fight between a strong favourite and an underdog that goes to points, everyone kinda feels the underdog should get the decision, even if the favourite was probably the (close) winner, just because they did better than was expected.

I think our perceptions of whatever opposition we’re playing definitely impacts our view of how a game actually went. If we’d been playing one of the better teams the other night, I don’t think anyone would have viewed that second half as an ‘onslaught’. Of course, it’s fair to expect us to have more of the play when we’re playing a team at the bottom as opposed to the top, but it shouldn’t influence our view on what actually happened.

Yes. But in a slightly jovial manner, and ended with a smile, as opposed to Bruce-style ‘you calling me a liar’ and being on the verge of offering him out.

I’m guessing: Three goals Wissa header Barnes 1v1 Gordon blaze over Murphy open(ish) goal miss

By no means am I saying that we they didn’t cause us big problems at times, and that on another day they couldn’t easily have scored at least one more. But as I said the morning after, look at the actual numbers for the second half, which was viewed by some as the ‘onslaught’ period: When I was at the game I remember thinking in that first 15-20 mins of that second half, ‘I really don’t like the way this is going’. The game was mad frenetic, and they were getting the better of it as we were turning the ball over far too much before we’d even got to the final third. However, there was a point where we managed to get a couple of minutes of controlled possession (can’t recall exactly when, 65, maybe even as late as 70 mins) and I thought ‘this is a lot better’. From that point on I was a lot less concerned about conceding again, other than the fact we’ve just been conceding out of nothing this season, but it no longer felt like it ‘was coming’. I also think we (including myself in this) probably underestimated Burnley. For all the negative pre-match score predictions based on our away form, I think deep-down most expected us to win. But as Eddie pointed out, no one has really gone there so far this season and won ‘easily’. Maybe Arsenal. Unfortunately we’re probably going to have the same issue going into Wolves in a couple of weeks, as they’re nowhere near as bad as their pathetic points total would suggest.

15/20 mins at the most. And he partly acknowledged that. But he’s right to fight back against the narrative that it was a game where we went ahead early then desperately clung on after. If anything, we were the team that subsequently created the better chances.

He does, but one of the best things about him is his ability to do it a manner, that whilst still unequivocally gets his point across, isn’t overly aggressive, and likely to cause aggro (see his predecessor). So Ryder will go away from that having been slapped down, but not hell bent on doing a hatchet piece as vengeance.