Infinitely Content

Mewkeyeyley transfer request at HT.

Alex Baena, Goncalo Ramos, Anatoliy Trubin and Ferran Torres. Make it happen.

They got any tall fast English lads with no technique? Howe will be licking his lips.

The 7-3 was good fun though, Marveaux ballin' out with trivela assists and that.

Jacob Ramsey's younger brother has missed a couple of great chances to keep alive Leicester's survival hopes. Howe's fault imo for making his big brother into such a bad role model with his shit coaching.

Will wash my mouth out after saying this, but he would be exceptional in that PSG midfield as a Fabian Ruiz replacement. Joao Neves, Vitinha and Bruno G. All Portuguese speaking, all tenacious ballers. Would be the best midfield 3 in world football.

I don't know where the blame lies for signing a striker who doesn't look like a striker, much less a Premier League one, maybe it's Howe, maybe it's the recruitment staff, maybe it's the disorganisation and failure of the powers that be at the club. Maybe it's all of the above. My point is, and I'll just quote my earlier post to save time, that Woltemade doesn't really look good enough and I don't think the blame is solely on Howe not being able to figure out how to use him.

I don't think anyone 'hates Nick' like I think you need a striker to offer a threat in behind occasionally, especially with so many teams playing with quite high lines these days. Woltemade will never be able to do that, so he has to compensate by being either elite in the box and able to link play up (Harry Kane), or by being brilliant at holding up the ball and fantastic aerially (Olivier Giroud). He's not good at either of them. In fact he's quite terrible at them. He offers one or two decent first touch passes per appearance and some good feet on occasion, it's just nowhere near enough to build an attack around. I still don't even know if he's got a good shot on him. The best case I can make for Woltemade is for him to play a Roberto Firmino type role, a facilitator, but there's a huge issue - Firmino was quite quick and had relentless defensive work rate and pressing ability. Woltemade doesn't.

Eddie Howe isn’t trying to sabotage us or him though, if Woltemade was performing well both on the pitch and in training as a striker, he would be starting games there. Clearly he isn’t/wasn’t. The mistake was buying him in the first place, not taking him out of the team.

So Woltemade was performing well and Howe just inexplicably dropped him, and then spent the rest of the season refusing to play this supposedly brilliant striker in his position? I know Howe’s not flavour of the month but are those in favour of Woltemade suggesting that our manager whose knowledge of the game is vastly superior to anyone on this board just dropped him for absolutely no reason? And then stubbornly refused to put him back there? I don’t think so. It’s easy to level it at Howe not being able to use him in a time where Howe is seemingly the reason for everything dysfunctional about us this season, but I think those people are forgetting how lousy a lot of Woltemade’s performances were. I’m sure there is something Howe can do to get a bit more out of him, and I understand we’re all searching for answers, but this idea that he’s some superstar striker being shunned is incorrect imo.

Increasingly unpopular opinion I'm aware, but Howe wasn't able to bring in players to refresh his squad for 2-3 windows and yet in that time moved mountains with his achievements. This season has been littered with a mixture of mistakes and misfortune but it seems chicken-hearted to me to get rid of him after his first real blip knowing what he's done for us in difficult circumstances. I don't mean that to be offensive to anyone in any way, I understand why people are frustrated and losing faith. For me it just doesn't feel right to sack him considering the wider context. It would be a real miserable day if it happens.

Beating the mighty Bologna and Lille along the way. Our cup win is a more impressive achievement than an EL these days, although what I like a lot about Emery is his ability to manage the midweek games in Europe. I think he's superb and probably the second best manager in the league. Villa fans have levelled the same criticisms at him as our fans have with Howe though, that being a diminishing quality of football each season.

Even something quite basic like this, we just haven't seen this season. Longstaff would make that run continuously, which leaves Trippier with so much space to deliver a good cross and gives Almiron space in a dangerous position to either shoot or look for a pass onto goal. So often because of our aimless final third and build up play, we end up with players in each others way, not creating good angles, no real movement and it just looks like a haphazard mess.

It's really the key issue for me, which if solved has an enormously positive knock-on effect. Having more obvious patterns of play in build up and attack instills confidence, unsettles the opposition, relieves the defence, lessens the chance of losing the ball cheaply, preserves energy and allows space for the players to start expressing themselves. It's the biggest failing of Howe's coaching this season imo. That said, I know he can coach those patterns of play, we've seen it and they were devastatingly effective and quite creative too.

To be fair to Elanga, it's not just him, that was happening all over the pitch. There's no flow to our game at all at the moment.

That's not true like, he held the ball up quite well, fought for everything, linked up play and pressed non-stop all game, often alone. He's by far our best forward option at the moment.

Quality from Van Hecke like

Hint of Shearer v Villa to that

Beautiful goal

I'm sure Spurs wish they stuck with Pochettino those years ago. You have to get the next appointment spot on and that's not going to be easy. We're more likely to end up like Spurs by sacking him.

Great run and a beautifully composed finish. Nothing chaotic about that really, just fantastic forward play. That's why he plays over Woltemade at present.

Great work from the front 3.

A frustratingly expensive mistake imo, for all parties.

What part isn't true? Do you think he was performing well as a striker? For me he was showing massive physical limitations and was on the periphery of games for a long time before being rotated. It wasn't working and we needed to try something else, just because that something else hasn't worked, it doesn't mean Woltemade is the answer imo. It's a bit tiring to read so many using it as a weapon against Howe, what's he meant to do with a striker who is both simultaneously one of the weakest and slowest in the league?

And he was terrible up top for a good 2 months prior to that Everton home game. Last time he scored was Chelsea at home before Christmas. He was taken out of the team for good reason.