Kid Icarus

If that's how you're looking at it that definitely makes a lot more sense than what I've seen centred around our new signings. I think a new 'keeper is a dead cert in the summer, so I'm not worried about that one personally. Might not be a particularly popular opinion as well, but if the money is right I'm not overly worried about losing Tino. Not to the extent where I think he would be irreplaceable anyway. Tonali is a bit different, but I think the midfield needs work regardless of whether he stays or goes. My hope is that for all the attempts at floor raising in the summer, we get back to focussing on ceiling raising targets next.

I do think that at one point we did (the league, don't remember anyone saying the world), but it was largely due to a superior physicality across all three of them that other teams have since caught up with, stamina, and a good but not great level of technical ability.

I think the importance of time and circumstances is really being underestimated in our fanbase tbh. In some cases you could call it impatience or entitlement too. Seeing loads of stuff about how we need to do this, that, and the other in terms of player recruitment to get to where we need to be. All fair enough if that's your view, but at the same time, we've just done that and it's only half a season later. A fixture packed, initially disrupted, and injury hit half season at that. One where the time to get the new players up to speed has been limited by games themselves. Say we overhauled in the summer again, is that how long you give to decide on whether it's worked or not, regardless of the circumstances? I just can't get my head around witnessing what we've had under Howe - not least the amount of times he's made people jumping to early conclusions on everything (but in this case player recruitment) look daft - and still coming to the conclusion that this time it's different.

Correlation ≠ causation tbf, their incomings with the Bale money were pretty terrible aside from Eriksen.

I think so yeah. Howe has said many times that his ideal is to bring in one new player every window, partly because too many at once disrupts the group. We went a few windows signing no one, got in a good PSR position then signed 6 players, which I think is a lot personally, and sold both of our strikers which I don't think can be overstated and is still the root of our issues imo.

Squad overhauls like the one we had in the summer can rarely be judged in full this soon. I have big issues with the way it was handled, the position Howe was put in, and the players we fumbled, but I have absolute faith in Howe's ability to coach players providing he's given the time.

I'm a broken record but Villa didn't handle it at all when they were playing in the CL.

Every passing chart looks like that with much fewer passes in that 10 position. You can't expect to see even anywhere near as many passes there as you would elsewhere on the pitch.

As well as But you'd think we were the only team in the league who are inconsistent. People cite Villa despite them playing like shit purely because they're the only plausible example left.

'Transparency' is the method of our era for all manner of obvious corruption and bias. All of it can be hand waved away by ensuring it's declared - even if that just means it's brazen. This is just another example of how football is political, that you can't escape it, and half of the stuff we hate about football all comes back to politics and capitalism, as daft as that might sound.

That should be jail time tbh, absolute scum.

It lies constantly. Today we were a win away from 5th and a point off 4th.

For me my big gripe is the amount of times we work good opportunities, a perfectly good ball is played across the box and no one's where they should be, it's baffling.

They nearly always are.

They weren't completely shit, it was our new striker's debut, and we did win. Their results and points total have been atrocious, but they're nowhere near being 8 points bad.

They have been unlucky though, I'm not just saying this now, I've been saying it for months. 6 of their points are from their last 4 as well. I don't think you can really ignore the fact that they've finally hit some form just as they're playing us.

Find it mad that a team can be on 8 points at this stage having not really been thrashed that much. Weirdly they look worse now but are picking up points.

Never seen anything like it. Ref after ref does the same thing.

Be honest, how many of the people saying this is unacceptable, Wolves are terrible etc have actually watched Wolves this season and especially the last month?

I think teams have our number defensively like. Until Woltemade and Wissa especially find some goalscoring form it's going to be tricky like, we're really having to rely on Barnes and Bruno for goals, which is no good.

I'd personally give offside there.

It's really bad like, last season was as well at the very top.

Do you think that's what's happened? From what I watched the problem was that we couldn't score. They didn't offer anything beyond backs to the wall defending really.

Do your own ratings

Go and have a drink Rod.