Shadow Puppets

For me, he was the main disappointment last night. Just doesn't seem to react to situations well at all. Always needs that extra second. Don't fault him for the goal, but I thought his all round play was really poor.

You do realise he's pulling your leg, right? He isn't actually ITK.

Yeah, I can't help but feel that the Tielemans chat is just agent or press driven. Doesn't seem to be anything concrete in that.

Our bench isn’t particularly weak when everyone is fully fit. I genuinely think that everyone is overstating of “weak” the squad is. It’s not. It’s just being highlighted right now because we happen to have 3 of our best players out at the same time. If everyone’s fit, our bench is significantly better.

But surely with a fully fit squad, Murphy gets very little if any game time at all. The assumption is the front 3 will be ASM, Wilson and Isak, with Fraser and Almiron as first backups.

At the end of the day, with a fully fit squad, Murphy and Wood are unlikely to feature much at all. I think people of overstating how bad our squad depth is purely because we happen to have our 3 best players out at once.

It’s a big ask, both financially and from a sheer workload perspective, to get both a starting 11 and bench significantly upgraded. We’ve done half of that in 2 windows. We are still a way off, squad wise, from competing for top 6 in my opinion, but that’s also OK. It’s going to take time.

That’s fucking outrageous that. How the hell they can confidently say that’s actually offside is beyond me.

Was he though, because his head / shoulder looks perfectly in line with the defenders foot, but some fucking arbitrary lines drawn on make it look like he’s comfortably offside. It’s millimetres if anything.

Such a shame after an excellent performance. Dunno where the extra 3 mins of stoppage time came from, but we didn’t manage the game well enough at the end. Such a shame.

I mean, he pretty much is. His engine is incredible, his tackling and harrying all excellent. He plays slightly more advanced but is basically playing as a DM.

Lineup makes perfect sense to me like. 3 games in 6 days, this one being the least likely to get a result. Rest a couple of players that need it, and put out a full strength team on Saturday. It’s called using your squad.

Disappointing but Fraser did a great job last season when he had to fill in for him. ?

I know... I said "more often than not". Let's be honest, it's absolutely entirely believable that our business is done. Everyone works themselves up into an excited frenzy as deadline approaches and 9 times out of 10 nothing significant happens.

He's probably right, to be fair. He is actually right more often than not, the prick.

He also said he doesn't expect to do any major business, and loans are more likely.

I like Tielemans a lot but I just can't see us spending big on the last day. Still fully expecting a loan of some kind.

Howe said yesterday that ASM is a doubt but Trippier is fine.

They'll have been preparing all week with Wood upfront (without knowing if Isak could play) so I fully expect him to be on the bench.

@Ando7 is the master of bullshittery like, but I love him for it. ? So vague and non-commital, but with a desperate audience.

Tielemans isn't the fastest, but my god he's a good player ?

If you watch Eddie's press conference he does seem pretty adamant that we're unlikely to do any more significant business.

It’s literally got nothing to do with us.

Howe has already confirmed that he expects Isak to play with Wilson, which leads me to believe Isak is the right sided forward moving forward.