Holmesy

I genuinely think you could fix it in an hour. 1. If there’s contact anywhere on the pitch, and you choose to go to ground rather than the contact taking you to ground, it’s a dive and a booking. 2. Handball rule goes back to deliberate handball only. None of this silhouette shit and players playing with their hands behind their backs. They have fundamentally changed the handball rule and it doesn’t work. 3. Immediate yellow card for any ref intimidation 4. If we have to keep VAR, use it for offsides only. Give them 15 seconds to make a decision and if they can’t, the benefit of the doubt goes to the attacker like it always used to 5. Mandatory half time strippers

I think Palmer is already as good as Madison and he hasn’t hit his ceiling yet, whereas you could argue Madison is as good as he’s going to get. Palmer is also a fair bit younger and more versatile. To get a player of his quality for just £40m was always going to be great business. I doubt he’ll be on £75k per week for long.

Unless the keeper throws it into his net or has an absolute howler, it's unfair to blame them for stuff like that. They are the absolute last line of defence. He never even thinks about coming out for that if he has faith in the back 4 to get back. The fact that we have the slowest defence in the league is the cause of that goal, both physically and mentally. Saying Dubs should've done this or that is bollocks - if he had stayed on his line and Elanga still scored, people would be saying he should've come out. If you watch it again, he actually closes the chance down really well and limits Elanga's options, he just leaves his legs open to the nutmeg - if you want to criticise him for anything, it would be that and even then it would be extremely harsh. We consistently play a high line against pace, with one of the slowest defences in the league. The blame for that doesn't lie with Dubs.

There was a little interchange of passing between Livra and Barnes during one attack, that gave a real glimpse into what we’re missing with Livra sitting on the bench all the time. Such a shame.

?

Yeah, that’s exactly what it is pal ?

Just the one today. I suppose we should celebrate any small improvement since he’s going to start every game here until the day he retires

Yeah, that’s nonsense. He’s up to speed a bell of a lot quicker than Burn and if necessary is in touching distance to foul him. But I don’t think it would’ve come to that because his anticipation is better than Burn’s as well. Just a totally avoidable clusterfuck!

I think you’re going be disappointed

True, but small price to pay for financial freedom for the rest of your life. And also, it's very easy to discount how much football fans know about the game of football. Just because we've never played it at professional level doesn't mean we know nothing. There are plenty of professional managers who have never played the game at senior level but have had successful careers. And some that have played at the highest level and know fuck all eg. Steve Bruce. Some lad got a professional manager job after doing well on Football Manager FFS! We’re not talking about rocket science here. Do we know how to set up a training session to best instil a style of play into a team? No. Do we know how to coach individual players to improve certain aspects of their play? Probably not. Eddie Howe 100% knows infinitely more about these things than us. Can we spot certain things that consistently aren't working tactically and personnel that aren't performing? Yes, and they are valid observations. What we generally don't take into account is maybe the manager doesn't want to drop a player to keep his morale high, maybe he wants to play him into form etc. Maybe he just has an ultimate preference for a natural left footer in left sided defensive roles or maybe he just really likes certain players as people. These are the bits we fans generally don't take into consideration, but simply discounting how much we know about the game is generalist lazy bullshit - exactly the kind of crap you’d expect to be peddled by the likes of Ray ‘party’ Parlour and other ‘I played the game, therefore I know more than you’ morons.

Getting paid £5m per year for managing a team playing the game you love. Yeah, sounds wank!

This is spot on re: the points, however, it ignores the things we witnessed with our own eyes. There were clear reasons we were 2-4 down and those reasons have been apparent in other games as well. It was to a large extent self-inflicted. You have to give credit to Luton because they executed a game plan almost perfectly. It was good management on the part of Edwards. But, regardless of the 4 points, we now have a situation where if Forest do a number on us and during that number, Dan Burn in particular has another stinker, dissenting voices will start to grow in numbers and volume. Football has never been a game where fans look at points in isolation. We examine performances in detail, whether the result is positive or otherwise. Nature of the game.

I'm assuming AndyCap and ATB's posts are sarcastic

So what's the answer? Keep playing the system even though we know it doesn't suit the current available personnel, and just accept getting battered at home by Luton? Or change the system and personnel to suit our current circumstances and give ourselves a better chance of winning with a depleted squad?

I'm definitely not condoning criticism from the stands but everyone knows football stands aren't full of Mensa-members and half of them will have had a few, so it kind of goes with the territory. People pay good money to watch the team in person and you could argue that gives them a right to voice. There is literally nothing Eddie can come out with to legitimately defend us being 2-4 down at home to relegation fodder after persisting with a setup that has blatant personnel and tactical issues. When the damage is self-inflicted and you don't heed the warnings from previous games, people will start to question your judgement and suitability.

He never really got a consistent run of games at Chelsea from what I remember. Seems he’s the type of player who thrives from playing regularly. Average is a very harsh assessment. He’s always been a talent. He absolutely ran the show yesterday, surrounded by a lot of very average teammates

Yes, and end product is the reason. His versatility would be a massive plus as well

But he also had an absolute mare against Forest, in similar fashion to yesterday. It’s becoming harder to pick out his decent performances - the Villa one is fresh in the memory because it was recent, and remember he got mullered in the last quarter of that game. It was only Tino coming on that saved his blushes. The more other teams see these things, the more they will focus on exploiting Dan Burn, and the bigger the problem becomes. And it won’t just be ‘run past him’, it will be ‘give him room to come forward then press, steal the ball and run into the space he left, and can’t get back into’.

Tim?

I think we need to hear this full story ?

Sorry folks, I was pissed last night when I wrote that. Not my finest moment.

Christ, are there any lengths people won’t go to, to defend Dan Burn? Livra and Barnes came on and managed to salvage some small rewards from the wreckage of the Dan Burn car crash. Yeah, ultimately, they should’ve put that away and we should’ve lost, but we should never have been in that position in the first place

Has he though, genuinely?! Bruno has been brilliant, Gordon, Botman, Isak, Schar, Trippier mostly. But Burn at his best is useful and at his worst is terrible. He doesn’t have exceptional games, he just doesn’t have that in him. Even last season when we were on the whole excellent, Dan Burn wasn’t standout. He did a mostly good job but folk were still frustrated by him. I do think people are blinkered by the fact he’s a Geordie and a great lad.

I fully expect to see Burn in the starting lineup and Elanga tearing him a new one.