Holmesy

Where will it end?!

Ah, ok. I haven't seen any of it. I'm sure the Commercial Director (who seems very smart) and his team understand that the ones who shout loudest on social media are usually brain dead. I don't think the club is going to sack EH because a handful of drooling, online degenerates

How are they damaging the club? All they're doing is riling up people on a football forum

In your opinion....

I largely agree with the sentiment of your post, but if we keep criticising people voicing their opinions on a football forum, we're going down a really shit path. You've got to take the rough with the smooth, as difficult as it can be sometimes to bite your lip and ignore them. Even the most moronic people are entitled to their opinions - it's what keeps this place and others like it interesting

I totally agree. I know there's a lot of love for Burn at the club and among the fanbase but i've never been convinced. I guess Almiron earned himself another shot after last season but it was a huge gamble. One purple patch in what, 3 years?

I think that's where EH has earned the leeway. Look at our performances this season and it's easy to see who the weak links are in the squad. And yet last season every player was exceptional, performing well above levels we thought they were capable of. Based on the quality of our squad, we had no right to make it into the Champions League. It was a monumental achievement. The likes of Longstaff, Burn and Almiron are arguably lower to mid-table PL players and they are performing to those levels this season. Last season they all tore up trees (maybe that's over-selling Burn a bit tbf ). Longstaff's replacement, a young, dynamic Italy international isn't available. Burn's long term replacement is totally unfancied by the management team and Almiron's has a life threatening toe injury. I remain critical of what EH and JT are doing this season. We should be doing better and our performances are awful, but trying to manage a season with sub-par, very tired players who are now performing to their actual levels and who massively overachieved last season is making the situation look and feel a lot worse than it probably is

God knows! I suppose what i mean by smokescreen is not us releasing the rumour, but us not denying the rumour when it does surface. It doesn't do us any harm at all if other clubs, whose players we might be interested in, think we're considering other high profile options as well

Would the league have gone to the trouble of having all teams vote on whether or not it was ok, if there was nothing in it?? Just playing devil’s advocate. Seems like a lot of trouble for something with no reasonable basis

It makes a load more sense when you consider the FFP tightrope we're constantly walking. Given how careful we have to be, £40m is a serious chunk of change to pull out of an already tightly management squad transformation budget. It's also arguably more exciting signing players with potential than finished articles. I wonder if there's an option to bring Minteh back from his loan early?

That's why the Saudi loans seem to make more sense. I don't know how realistic Neves is on a straight loan but it would surely be a more attractive option, if available

I think we're probably allowing the Philips rumour to act as a smokescreen while we work on other deals. Philips as a player makes sense to us but his profile and price tag don't, and I don't see the board sanctioning the £40m purchase of a player we might get 2-3 decent seasons out of. I just can't see us deviating from our transfer blueprint to that extent. I'd like to see him here and it's not my money so i don't really care about that, but it would feel very out of character.

Maybe it's old habits dying hard or maybe Eddie is telling the players to do stuff that they're too mentally fatigued to do consistently, but even when we sat deep, we undid ourselves by everyone piling forward like school kids in the playground. Could we just be too engrained in our old way of playing to effectively do something different for 90 minutes?

Team's analysis departments are so good these days that what you did one season rarely works as well the next, hence why a number of tactical approaches, multiple game plans and effective in-game management is so important. That's where some of this criticism feels warranted. Liverpool, Arsenal and Man City can get away with largely doing the same thing season in, season out because their resources in terms of player quality are so much better than everyone else's. But even then, City have changed a lot over the years though - they now combine that technical tika-taka football with a more direct approach when needed. That's why Pep is the best in the world. We don't have the luxury of fantastic quality in depth, so we have to be smarter. To an extent, what we're seeing is other teams having identified our weaknesses and negating our strengths. Any unknown elements eg. Tonali/Barnes have been taken away from us and obviously the intensity that was so effective last season can't be employed to the same degree this season. But that's where EH has to earn his stripes. We've been worked out to a degree, so go again - find a new effective way for us to get results with the resources and energy reserves we have. We can't just have one tactic in our locker - that's only one more than Steve Bruce had. I've no doubt he's capable of it but where are the signs Eddie is learning from his mistakes? Where are the signs we're looking to employ a different approach to manage the players' low energy levels? It seems we spent the entire summer working on one game plan, that revolved largely around what we did last season, and now we can't use that approach we look clueless.

The naivety of our approach, given the current circumstances around player availability and fitness, is concerning. It's like EH is stuck on one setting and everything we do has to be based around that setting. We continually push everyone forward, despite a chronic lack of pace, and leave ourselves vulnerable to the counter attack 4-5 times every game. That isn't a difficult thing to change and yet, it isn't being addressed. Dan Burn at left back is a disaster at times. Every team knows to target him and gets plenty of joy out of doing so. I appreciate the Hall transfer hasn't worked out but Livra at left back and Krafth at RB would've been a comfortably better option last night. The ease with which teams play through our midfield, with one simple pass, leaving us on the back foot is embarrassing. When we're so one-paced as well, it's just tactical suicide. And yet, game-in, game-out nothing changes in this regard. I'm definitely not in the Howe out camp, but watching this shit happen every game and getting dominated by the likes of Everton, Forest, Luton etc. is wearing very thin. None of us expected to win last night but we lost exhibiting the same glaring weaknesses that cost us against those lesser teams. 'Fatigue' has so far let some poor management off the hook, but how long will it be before that forgiving attitude changes?

Hopefully we don’t have to endure Almiron in the starting lineup for too much longer.

Hall must be really really shit!

Still pissed from Christmas?

Caught on the counter from our own attack again. It happens multiple times every fucking game! This is simple shit that should’ve been addressed by now. It’s so fucking naive!

This has nothing to do with fatigue. It’s just utter crap all over the park. As good as Liverpool have been, we’re just gifting the ball back to them time after time.

That’s being kind

One again a simple pass takes out our entire midfield. Its too fucking easy

Longstaff’s having a shocker so far!

I totally agree. The injuries have been mental and it’s clear our intensity is nowhere near the expected levels. I do think the fatigue argument has papered over some poor management, but EH has earned a shitload of leeway so as long as we come back strong and he and JT learn from it, it could end up being a long term blessing.

Eh?! What’s that got to do with the question?