Kid Icarus

I think we have a chaos season on our hands

Brighton 2-0 Southampton Brentford 2-1 Leicester Palace 1-1 Newcastle Forest 2-1 Ipswich Wolves 2-1 Bournemouth West Ham 1-2 Arsenal Chelsea 2-1 Villa Man United 1-0 Everton Spurs 2-1 Fulham Liverpool 2-1 Man City

When Lampard's inevitably sacked within 6 months can we actually send him to Coventry this time?

Villa Juventus a good advert for continuing to not bother with the Champions League this season. Incredibly boring.

A great/good Tonali game hasn't really happened here yet. Not beyond the odd match anyway. A lot of this is reminding me of Viana at this point, clamouring for what could be rather than what is.

I think there are two possible answers. The first and most likely imo is that because it was a top-down decision made above Howe's head but Howe will nigh on always tow the line and take responsibility on these things (providing no one steps on his toes), regardless of his true feelings. The second is because there's a huge amount of difference between a few instances of the wrong decisions being made in a wider injury crisis of 41 seperate injuries and putting injury crisis in quotation marks and implying that it was all or largely self-inflicted.

We had 41 separate injuries like. To my mind the only one that they fucked up on, apparently based on dubious medical advice, was Botman.

I can't really get past what is undebatably the worst injury crisis the football club's had in my 30 odd years supporting it - the worst of any team last season in terms of days, one of the worst in terms of numbers, first team members, seperate injuries etc having injury crisis put in quotation marks.

I don't even know where to begin with that like.

Might be an agree to disagree but Tonali doesn't suit playing there for me. Whenever he's there our midfield seems to be wide open when the opposition win a turnover.

Think he's in because we look an obviously much better and more balanced team with him in vs when Tonali's in that position tbh. Tonali's pointless at RCM to the extent that his competition in midfield is now more likely Willock at LCM than Longstaff at RCM.

Burn for Kelly and a fire up Gordon and Isak's arses imo. 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, 0-1 written all over it though I think.

Longstaff scored more last season than any of our other midfielders, despite having a really poor season. A bit of Longstaff blindness maybe? Scoring goals is one of the things he's actually shown himself to be very capable of under Howe.

2 shots on target all night is the point, we can't finish and aren't making the right decisions. Maybe I just see it differently but in those moments the creation/pressing stage is complete and it's about decision making and finishing. Isak half volley, Gordon straight at the 'keeper/skied it/skewed wide, Willock missing from the edge of the area, even Hall in the 2nd half. I agree that it was Brighton allover again, we can't keep being wasteful, expect the chances to keep coming and rely on the opposition not taking their own chances.

100%, it's natural to examine everything and that's what the forum's for. It just feels a bit can't see the wood for the trees to really get down to every possible problem we might have but kind of skip what to me seems to be the most glaring problem we have. As great as he's still been, Isak's had 4 or 5 "I cannot believe he's missed that" moments this season and that sentence has basically defined Gordon’s. I get that you can't over rely on players, but all of your front 3 having the same issue and Barnes seemingly only being useful from the bench is a real problem that needs addressing before even thinking about anything else imo. I think we've seen how when we do put chances away all of our other perceived issues melt away.

Do you mean Isak's xG is lower, or that there's a specific 'created for...' metric? Just that xG on its own doesn't really cover how chances come about. We've had 3 matches now where we've massively underperformed our xG. As I've said Isak can excuse himself because he has hit some form, but Gordon’s has been shocking and both of their decision making hasn't been great either. Harvey Barnes, the player who seems to get the most flack, is the only one really upholding his end of the bargain as an impact sub.

All the fine tooth comb soul searching we do after a defeat: - Howe's getting it wrong - Tonali should be starting - Bruno's been crap since getting the armband - Barnes was a waste of money - Murphy put in the worst performance ever - We can't cross - We need a #10 - Our midfield isn't balanced - We don't create enough And somehow still barely anyone talking about how by hook or crook we do create chances only for Isak and especially Gordon to keep missing them. I don't get it, it's like we're pointing at every possible problem except the glaring one.

Why does Barnes continue to keep getting mentioned like he isn't doing what he's supposed to? Baffling

Pfff, we wish. Our shithousery began and ended about 2 years ago.

What's wrong?

Honestly, the match still bears that out for me. They gave up so many chances. This wasn't a resolute defensive display or some incredible counter attack trap, we missed huge chances, they took what they had then played well at 2-0. It might give them the confidence to go on a run but there was no sea change in most of that performance.

The point is that it's not about getting all the best players into the team, it's about whatever works. He does need to find a way that works with Tonali, but while the system works without him or anyone I don't think there's any reason to care in the short to medium term. Tonali has a responsibility to force Howe's hand too.

Really not sure. He did seem like he was tiring a bit, but we definitely lost something when he went off regardless.

How about this, even very good teams have unfashionable players that are more important than you might think.