Thumbheed

Aye just the mere half a billion pounds spent since 2021.

Wasn't their talk of Nickson moving on soon?

Some fans set their expectations and get riled up when we're exactly on course to achieve those expectations.

Ignoring the historic lack of investment in the squad, ignoring the lack of infrastructure, ignoring the shambolic training facilities, ignoring the significant improvement in a large number of the squad, ignoring the unprecedented injuries and absences, ignoring the imprived style of play, ignoring the position we were in when he took over and ignoring the 2 years of CL form, then yes, you'd be right Howe isn't doing as good a job as people are lead to beleive.

One more season of SBR.

Seen this mentioned a few times but I'm not actually sure what it means in relation to our counter press strategy. Lots of teams have maintained the exact same tactic throughout multiple seasons and not been "figured out" so what makes our press different? From what I can see we always seem further away from the ball when it's been turned over fro us, and more significantly I don't feel like we win as many duels as we perhaps did in previous seasons.

Our counter press doesn't seem as effective nowadays.

I can't defend this.

I dont disagree it'd be disappointing but I'm willing to attribute a significant proportion of the blame for that on our injuries. If you accept players have performed poorly then surely you must accept the limitations on a managers who's physically unable to drop them? As for people coming back and form, prior to yesterday we were unbeaten in 5 and who exactly has come back thst changes the dynamic of the situation we find ourselves in? We don't even have strikers who can string 8 games together.

Of course but not surprising considering the injuries is my point. If you can't physically drop poor performing players because you don't have a viable alternative then what can your expectations realistically be?

I always expected a drop off this season because of the extra fixtures so at the beginning of the season I'd have honestly said 7th would have been a realistic target, and that would have been with a full squad. If this team was in 12th place I'd have been majorly disappointed but honestly, not surprised. What about you? Do you think there's team above us who are overperforming and we should definitely be ahead of?

We are most certainly overperforming this season. Which team above us has a poorer squad? And which team below us has had worse injuries?

I dunno how you can look at our injury list and not say it's almost exclusively the reason for our poor showing this season. Man City's win rate goes from 75% to 50% when Rodri is out injured - that's 1 single player out, in one of the most expensively assembled squads in Prem history, who are managed by one of the greatest managers of all time. Pep's career win % is about 74%. A win % of 50% puts him on Pochettino's level. I don't know what more context is needed other than to say inspite of that we're still 8th, practically a couple wins away from 6th. There's no doubt there's been some mistakes made by Howe this season but if anything, he deserves credit for still keeping us within touching distance.

If you're expectations were for us to be 6th or higher minimum then I can understand why you'd ben questioning Howe's future both short and long term but I'm going to question how grounded your reality actually is, especially with the injuries we've had this year. If you were happy with us getting 7th this year and felt that was a realistic acheivment, then you have to accept the performance that come with getting that position. We're 8th.

Meh. If the club employed him (and Howe) in the first place they'll find someone just as good.

Things I think are spoiling the game: Fan ownership rule: The club belongs to the town, city and people it's in. Having private owners do whatever they want to a club against the wishes of the local fans is crazy to me. The 51% rule would kill the strength in the PL but as a concept its miles ahead of anything we have. If not 51% then some other sort of meaningful accountability to the fans. Scrap FFP: Owners are to provide collateral to offset any financial mismanagement which jeopardises the future of the club. Scrap VAR: It's hard to ignore the obvious benefits of it but it's made the game so sterile and not being able to fully celebrate a goal is just ridiculous. I also enjoy the controversy of sports. Keep offside and goal line tech though. Diving: I want more leniency in the game. Tired of the stop start nature of the game and how the most minimal of infringements are deemed fouls which constantly ruin the flow of the game. Handball: I just don't know how to manage this. People say penalise deliberate handbills only but who actually deliberately handballs? And how can you tell the difference between an accidental one and a deliberate one? The rules changes so much for a reason. Maybe make it more objective and say any handball is a penalty on the basis that irrespective of intent any ball that strikes the arm changes the potential outcome of a phase of play and should warrant that penalty. Only exception to this would be if it bounces of a body part onto your hand. Harsh but fairer than the current mess.

I think him playing Miley in that role in order to free up Bruno to play further forward suggests a significant shift on the matter from Howe.

Think a dedicated number 6 is our most important requirement next season, followed very closely by a RW.

Let's let him carry on doing do all that, just further up the pitch?

Can understand why our press has been poor in recent games but no idea why we've become so sloppy with the ball. Almost feels like we've forgotten our basic patterns and are just making it up as we go.

The worst 8 goal game I've ever seen.

His movement looks excellent. I reckon he'll have knack of finding space in tight spots too, plus he basically played up front for England and I imagine alot of teams sat deep against them.

I'm convinced he'd be just as affective up front as he is out wide.

Just want a random South American tbh

Hadn't realised it was still 6 weeks but we've been in this situation before with Shelvey. If anything there's more cover in the wide areas than we there was after we sold Shelvey, from memory.