Thumbheed

Amazing what 1 bad game can lead to. Not sure this discussion ever exists if he played like normally does.

Aye, don't completely disagree with that all tbf, but Dubs also spends a fair bit of time out and the alternative to him is Darlow who we know seems to have a negative impact on the team, whereas we've ground out brilllaint results without Wilson.

Not 5th (no particular order) but slightly lower importance than the first 3 because I think improving in those 3 positions makes the biggest difference to us as a team. Improving on Wilson seems slightly less of a priority than improving on Murphy/Fraser/Almiron, Shelvey and imo Dubs. GK is an underrated position and can have the biggest influences on the defence as we've seen ourselves with the clear difference Dubs makes when he plays over Darlow, improving on that seems to make sense to me, whereas injuries aside, Wilson will always bang the goals in given the chances. Edit: I do want a striker.

RW, GK and CDM are my 3 priority positions. CD and ST after that assuming Targett signs.

"football hipsters"

Rui Costa and Guti are criminally underrated. Which reminds me, Guti he held his own in a team full of Galacticos that didn't really achieve much and yet Zidane of all people manages to pull plaudits for being one of the worlds greatest and yet someone like Iniesta never gets into that conversation, and I don't understand why. Zidane was obviousuly an amazing player and deserves to be in the conversation of greats, but not near the very top like he always is. *tin hat firmly on*

Would be fucking delighted with a £90m spend tbh

Poor mistake but he shouldn't have needed to be defending in that area of the pitch in the first place vs 10 men. Poor play all round from us.

The intensity that they played with. They pressed all game and stopped us getting a foothold in the game. We had a few players who played poorly who were rightly replaced but for the main part the majority of our players weren't exactly Bruce era levels poor were they, we just couldn't settle and get into any real rhythm, that was because of hoe they played from what I saw.

Personally thought he was really good tonight but I'm not sure that role is the right one to get the best out of him.

Aye, Everton won't keep that up for the remainder of the season whereas we'll continue with what we've been doing the past few weeks, some huge players to come back into the fold as well.

Tbh I think they've just inflicted on us what we've been doing to other teams on our run. They seemed up for it from the get go and were pressing pretty well all game so I don't really play into this notion we played poorly, we were just made to look poor, especially in the second half. Stupid goal to concede though, cardinal sin conceding against 10. Perhaps we should have changed shape a little to disrupt the momentum Everton had, but not gonna lose sleep over this loss. 9 games till bliss.

Forum and Twitter economics is wild

The thing is he's always up there with the pressing stats and seemingly up there with the tackles as well and we know or knew at least that he had real quality on the ball so unless injuries have absolutely robbed him of that quality there's surely still a brilliant player in there? It's not like he didn't hold his own against 2 of the very best midfielders in the world.

This is why I'll always think there's something there with this lad.

Hmm, he's definitely not slower than Shelvey but I'm not even sure pace and acceleration is the type of quality you'd hope for in that type of midfielder anyway. As for Jo and him in midfield, honestly yes, I don't envisage any problems at all with whatever type of football we decide to play.

Do you think they have the freedom to speak out against the regime and MBS?

Eh! Slow?! He's not slow at all, he's just not quick. Those are 2 completley different things.

We have ourselves a special manager here.

Said it in the match thread but if you were watching closely you'll have seen him constantly covering passing angles to Jorginho from the centre halves. He played a vital role today and deserves credit despite being really poor on the ball.

Woods been screening off Jorginho all game. He's playing an important tactical role from I can see but ultimately been poor in the ball.

Debating the merits of these executions is probably not the path best trodden, considering the only info we have on the "crimes" commited by those excuted is from the Saudi media.

"Saudi Arabia beheaded 81 people today?" is not really opening gambit of a sensible discussion, is it? No issue with the discussion of our ownership, but we don't have to result to petty swipes in order to agitate that discussion, a lot of this board are openly uncomfortable with the ownership as it is.

Coming into a footballing thread to try and infer questionable moral integrity of the fans on a forum which already had a specific thread in chat on the very subject which long preceded our ownership is not the hot take you think it is. Show me how many football forums had the moral aptitude to even bother discussing the heinous actions of KSA before they were even a dot on the footballing horizon and I'll happily walk this comment back.

Dunno if it's been mentioned but was at the game apparently.