Thumbheed

We're always playing down our positions. It's par for the course tbf. They might bring summer business forward but I dont actually think we're that limited, especially with the new commercial deals in place.

Big fan of Philips. Would give us some much needed positional discipline in the centre of midfield but also give us some technical quality too. I still would like to see Bruno allowed a little more freedom in the final 3rd and Philips would give us that option.

I don't know which one of you had the foresight to know that we'd have the below injured or out on near enough the same period of time and should have recruited accordingly but whoever you are, you're wasted on us simpletons at NO. Pope Burn Targett Botman Longstaff Joelinton Willock Wilson/Isak Barnes Murphy Anderson Tonali Out of interest, to those who think we are paying for less than ideal recruitment; what or which positions could we realistically have recruited that would have negated the impact of the above? Second question would be if we started the season with the available squad we had now, then where do you think we would/should be?

Didn't Arteta finish 8th twice? EDIT: yes.

There's not too many teams who press like we do as well. That requires even more physical effort.

I still can't peel myself away from the beleif that these injuries are front and centre as the reason we're playing the way we are. There's certainly questions to be asked about selction and lack of tactical flexibility at times but when your game is built primarily upon intensity and you can't maintain that due to lack of options off the bench then something will give. Our form will not fully recover until we have people who can come off the bench and help maintain that intensity for the full 90 minutes.

Said it earlier in the thread but it's funny how no one's now complaining about Howe making almost the same subs at bang on the 60 minute mark because he hasn't had the luxury to do so and our performances are suffering as a result.

I mean, I'm very much not being sensitive, odd characterisation of my question tbh. So far I've read you say "I can see how Howe got Bournemouth relegated" and how you can see how he's "streaky" based on a ludicrously small samples of poor admittedly poor performance. I just think they're really shite opinions tbh. We all have them sometimes, some more than others though?

You're characterising Howe as 'streaky' based on 9 away games in an unprecedented injury hit season. Seems rational.

Oh! So 9 games out of nearly 100. Got it?

We've had champions league form since January 2021 and are currently 7 points adrift of CL this year round. What 'streak' are you exactly seeing that others aren't?

I don't actually think there's much to turn round tbh. Our success has been almost entirely down to our intensity and ability to win the ball in the opponent's half. When you lose an entire team of players to injuries then fatigue will 100% cause that intensity to drop off, affording the opposition more time and space in possession. Not being able to keep that intensity up by virtue of not having the depth in key positions is ultimately what is costing us. Players like Almiron, Gordon, Bruno, and even Isak (until recently) have been playing none stop for the best part of 2 months, some through injury. Does no one notice how no one's now not complaining about Howe making the substitutions at the 60 minute mark? Anderson, Joelinton, Willock, Murphy and Tonali are big big misses in key areas.

We're certainly short of confidence at the moment at not playing anywhere near the standards we've been blessed with the past 2 years but there's not a single atom of me that sees this as any of Howe's doing. No club could plan for the sheer number of injuries we've had this year and no club could sustain the quality of football we've played historically with those injuries. We have a really big January window coming up.

I would probably recognise the mistakes he'd made at worst and move past them pretty quickly seeing as he's scored 30 goals in each of his last 2 seasons for us. Perspective and context is important.

We'll win them in the future. We need to get the finances and prestige to get to that point though.

Very much up for debate. Don't think we should risk missing a single point in the tightest race for CL in years.

I worry about how an injury to Bruno would impact us. We desperately need someone who like Bruno, is press proof and able to open up the game, it's such a key part of our success. Miley may have it buts it's still far too early in his development to give him that responsibility imo and Tonali doesn't have those same qualities from the little I've seen of him.

Big Miggy fan but I'm not sure what Gordon did wrong to be taken off instead of him. Thought he was sloppy throughout the game.

Proud of that effort. Not the result we wanted but my gut feeling before this game - and I know it was potentially only 2 more games - was I'd rather put all our energy and resources into requalifying than having an extended run at the expense of it.

18 months down the line and I still can't process or accept how good we actually are.

Maybe I was a bit complacent with this.

He was excellent today and I don't want to take anything away from how good he was but their right back was turbo shit.

Would like him to continue a little further up the pitch, he's just got a knack for getting into good goalscoring positions.

There's about 5 clubs in the world that can afford a £100m player and he's gonna have to play spectacularly well for someone to trigger it. It's not an ideal scenario but £100m would make a HUGE difference to our long term prospects were it to arrive in our bank accounts. I'm happy to have this ticked off tbh.

On a side note, I don't think it's too far fetched to say we haven't played well as a result of the quality of the opposition we've faced. How many times last year was it the other way round for opposing fans who claimed they were shit and we just caught them on a bad day when in reality it was because we made them look bad? Same thing's happening now.