Shadow Puppets

Just to add, I can’t really fault much of our all round play, and the majority of the team put in a 9 out of 10 for effort. But we are carrying Wissa and Gordon in my opinion. Not impressed by Wissa at all yet… would much prefer to see us adapt to Nick’s game than play Wissa, personally, even if it takes a little more time… and Gordon is just infuriatingly patchy.

I thought we played well enough in our general play, but missed our 3 big chances when they fell. Villa on the other hand took their chances. Overall there wasn’t a great deal between the teams… that was the general consensus from everyone I was at the match with.

Generally, I much prefer watching Nick play (if we play to his strengths), rather than Wissa. Wissa to me seems just a bit meh. No obvious stand out quality.

He has 7 goals in 16 premier league starts this season. He’s better than people give him credit for.

🙄

Tonali won't play. He just had his baby yesterday.

I think it was a OK/decent performance from a team who clearly look low on confidence due to recent bad form. You could see Eddie screaming at them to push up the pitch during that 15 min period in the second half when Burnley were knocking on the door, and our control of the ball just alluded us. BUT… we scored 3 goals away from home, Gordon and Wissa both inexplicably missed glorious chances, Barnes had another good one saved, we had one cleared off the line… Could have been a lot more convincing albeit it they should probably have had another 1 too. That period in the second half, watching it back, wasn’t actually as bad as it felt at the time… I think our collective memory of recent form makes it feel worse / like history repeating, but in reality they just had more of the ball and created a couple of chances. It wasn’t a capitulation. We just needed to win, and the manner of it (battling, backs to the wall at times) is pretty irrelevant… it’s actually potentially a good thing rather than bad. If we’d strolled around for 90 mins and won 4-0, we / the players wouldn’t really have learned anything from that. By grinding it out, hopefully it gives them a bit of belief that the next time we have to grind it out, we can.

This 10000x

Tonali’s head is not with it because he’s expecting his first born any day now.

Why would going 5 at the back stop that from happening?

I might be wrong as I say, but I heard that was the plan.

Just throwing it out there, but I believe we are setting this up as a back 5, with Murphy RWB, and Hall LWB. Miley as RCB.

Looked completely uninterested again. And didn’t do the warm down with the rest of the subs. Something not quite right there.

Our supporters can be fucking knobheads like. Moaning when he made one backwards pass. Absolutely pathetic “support”. All in all I thought he was quite positive when he came on. Certainly offered a lot more than Gordon.

Atmosphere was pretty dreadful first half but built nicely in the second half. Absolutely hated the crowds reaction to Elanga tonight. I thought he did well and made a difference, but the fans were moaning and groaning every time he did anything. That’s not support.

Fucking cant stand those morons. Stealing a living.

🤣 You guys… honestly. Absolutely mental. It’s almost impossible to know how much damage has been caused by an injury like that until you try to play on. I know this because I had an almost identical injury about 3 years ago… went up for a header, was flipped mid air and landed on my side on top of someone. Very painful, winded, couldn’t breathe properly for a couple of minutes, but then I felt like I could continue. After about 15 mins I could tell something was properly wrong, and I was struggling to breathe properly. Went to the hospital that night and had punctured my lung. Very painful, but not something that can be easily diagnosed on the pitch at the time. Anecdotally, I was back playing within around a month, so hopefully it will be similar for Dan.

Just pointing out how ridiculous the reactions are. Every week.

I don’t think getting rid of him is remotely in the thoughts of anyone at the club.

I’m calling some people over the top, yes, because they are, and the match day threads ARE an embarrassment. They always are. They’re worse than Twitter.

The irony.

Because, to me, this place is pretty extreme most of the time. Extreme overreactions to wins. Extreme overreactions to defeats. Match day threads are an absolute embarrassment. And in my experience the opinions on here, generally, thankfully, don’t match up to the general match going public opinion. I find myself having to provide some balance else we’d be staring at page after page of absolute drivel. 😁

Propaganda? For recognising the reality of where we are in the season? I agree we’ve had plenty of poor performances, and plenty of things that everyone should be doing better, but it’s not remotely close to a shitshow, man. That’s just nonsense.

They’ve won leagues and continental cups with considerably bigger / better squads. There’s zero evidence that any of them would be an improvement for us.

Worst post of the year, and that’s saying something.