Kid Icarus

Was gonna say like. Jesus.

We've seen that Howe quite often has one of the full backs attacking with the other being more cautious and making up part of an effective back 3. I wonder if that factors in at all.

The posts talking about it earnestly. Is it honestly real?

That's a collective whoosh surely? No way that's real.

Not that I think we were really lucky or anything, but I think we've been 'owed' a match like that for a while. Earlier in the season we had a few matches (Brighton, West Ham, Everton) where we could so easily have won but due to luck, poor finishing, and sucker punches we just couldn't get there. Last night could so easily have ended up being a match we look back on with annoyance, so it's nice to see us win one like that where it was ground out.

20 points (17 if it includes beating Chelsea) from the 30 available gets us 5th imo.

Canny interesting this. The devil's in the details but it really underlines us needing to refresh our defence. Mad to think that if we were having a 22/23 season now we'd be 2 points behind Arsenal.

I thought the same. You hear some terrible atmospheres but that was beyond belief. At times it was like the Covid-era, you could hear what the players and staff were shouting.

Glad to be wrong.

So you'd prefer to win the cup than finish 5th? Obviously it's a daft hypothetical where the answer is 'both' not one or the other, but I'm interested to know your preference because I've been posting on the premise that you'd prefer CL or have them both on the same level.

From my perspective as a fan yeah. I understand your argument and I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, I just think it's sad that we're at this point where fans would prefer finishing 5th over winning a cup.

I understand the crux of the argument but a football fan with aspirations of success citing Spurs because of their commercial position is unbelievably depressing.

Reminds me of a couple of seasons ago when the mentality with some boiled down to "not sure if we should qualify for the Champions League, it'll harm our ability to get into the Champions League!" I don't think people truly appreciate what winning a cup would do for this football club right now. We're already on an upward trajectory, it would get a huge monkey off our back, increase the liklihood of it happening again, and galvanise everyone. We're not going to do a Swansea or Birmingham, that's idiotic.

He'll be fine and I didn't think he was bad tbh.

One of those performances he has minus the goal. Expecting big things from him on Sunday

Loves pushing West Ham defenders

Very steady. Loved that punch at the end.

Very good and needed win, albeit not entirely convincing, but who cares? Until we scored the best player by an absolute mile was Areola. Don't normally mention the other team but they were so half arsed it was crazy and their atmosphere was borderline Covid-era quiet. Pope: 7 Trippier: 6.5 Schär: 6.5 Burn: 5 Livramento: 7 Tonali: 8 Bruno: 7.5 Joelinton: 7 Murphy: 3.5 Isak: 6.5 Barnes: 7.5

Put £40 on a West Ham win. I'm yet to 'win' one of these insurance bets so let's hope it stays that way.

Yeah. His ability to pick a pass is very good, he's had a couple of matches where he's been good going forward and a couple where he's been good defending and is generally always good on the ball, but he hasn't hit the heights or consistency of Jose Enrique or Beresford just yet. I'm confident that those performances are in the post though.

Am I right in thinking that that gives potentially up to a £240m budget?

Waaaaay less mental than the As.

The As are absolutely mental.

I think he's great, but I also think we're (understandably) getting a little bit ahead of ourselves with him. For me at the moment he's a C+/B- and very much a work in progress - for me he's still a step below Jose Enrique and Beresford who'd I'd say were solid B/B+s - but I'm still very excited about the player he can become.