Holmesy

If our scouting is good enough, and we raise our risk profile a bit, we could get three quality players for that £75m. If we can unearth the next two Rayans for example (one left, one right), we'd have money leftover to buy a keeper. Big ifs but this is where the DoF earns his crust.

And his daft trousers

Ramsey might turn out to be a decent player but he wasn't a good signing for £45m. I'd say we overpaid by probably £20m.

Sounds familiar

Bayern have seen more of him than we have and were interested in signing him. They're not going to look at him now and think he's turned shit overnight - if the national manager recognises he's being badly deployed, i'm sure Bayern will too. They'll probably just come in with a low ball offer, take him back to Germany and use him properly.

Pre-Ashley, that's probably the worst decision I can remember as a supporter. Going from the highs of Keegan and SBR, and the way they conducted themselves, to that melty-faced prick was a gut punch. He's just an angrier version of Steve Bruce and everyone knew it.

He might have lost belief in his own ability as well tbh. There could be a crisis of confidence going on.

There was an Arsenal fan on Talkshit yesterday saying he can't understand why everyone wants them to lose, and it doesn't happen to other clubs when they challenge. Firstly, it does. But perhaps not as intensely as with Arsenal because their fans are insufferable, their football is turgid, their manager is a colossal wanker and they get away with murder. They're like the ManUre of old but without the good football.

A good number of Arsenal fans still want him out despite what they're on the cusp of achieving because the football they play is AIDS

The whole transitional season is a myth. Transitioning to what? A team that did have Isak to a team that doesn't but still plays the same football? That's not transition, that's adaptation. People are just using 'transitional season' as justification for us being wank.

The teams that have been humiliating us in the league have smaller budgets than us. We're not going to be able to compete with the likes of Barca and Real Madrid any time soon but we shouldn't be routinely losing to teams like Bournemouth, Brighton and Sunderland. If it's a one-off fluke, fair enough but it's happening all the time. And if we ever want to compete with the big boys, we have to start by putting the right foundations in place to do that. That's the kind of transition season most of us would accept - a drop off in form as we openly move to a different playing style. It's not just that we've been crap (we have), it's that the teams that used to be below us in the league play more progressive football than we do and buy players that suit that style. Players with good technically qualities that don't cost a fortune are out there, we just don't seem to be interested in them.

That's where our style of football hits its ceiling and why people are crying out for us to move to a possession-based approach. Our style is small club overachieving mentality. We can occasionally overawe some of the bigger teams in a one-off game with our intensity, but more often than not they will beat us with their superior passing, movement and control. And now that teams have worked us out, and some of the smaller teams have started adopting possession-based football, we find ourselves behind them in the league. Possession-based football is what all the most successful teams in Europe play, so if we're not transitioning to it, we're also going to be stuck in small club overachieving territory.

Ot just do what other managers do and make the tough call - Botman or Thiaw alongside Burn at CB. He's his own worst enemy at the moment.

I'm convinced we could've got someone fast and who can sort of cross a ball for £10-15m from somewhere in Europe but we seemed determined to spend big money. There is nothing outstanding about Elanga, and £52m should get you a proper gamechanger. You could argue Gordon is that to a degree - at least he supplements his pace with some end product but again, he's hardly what you call gifted. I think some of it is a product of modern football but it's also due to Eddie's preference for work rate and pace over technical qualities.

This one is appropriate too: "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern." We've conceded late how many times?

It's such a weird take - we've lost more points from winning positions that any other team this season, and have what, 1 clean sheet in 22 games. But yeah, it's down to individual players. Seriously?! Strange that is seems to happen regardless of which players are on the pitch isn't it. And t's not for us to say what training would prevent this alarming trend because we're not football coaches. More of a focus of ball retention, shit-housing and defensive shape would be a start. Or ask the analysis department to study every late goal we've conceded (shouldn't be hard, there are fucking loads of them), understand the correlation between them (fatigue, too many men forward etc), and then focus training around doing something different to stop it happening again. And if that's already being done, it points to a poor job being done in trying to stop it.

Nailed it.

🥁 😀

Sorry pal, I’ll keep things more simple for you in future. If you try hammering a nail with your wrong hand and keep smashing your thumb, would you change to your other hand or keep doing the same thing that injured you? And no, I’m not suggesting we should play football with hammers.

Are you pissed? Are you actually bothering to read these posts before you reply? I didn’t say we play long ball football anywhere in my post. I said long ball football is still long ball football regardless of what formation you play - it was purely an example of where it doesn’t matter what formation is played when you only have one style of football in your locker.

Bournemouth fans were saying he religiously played 4-4-2 there, with the very occasion change to a different formation and then right back to 4-4-2. It’s like he goes into a club with a playbook and that’s the playbook for the whole time he’s there. Then he goes away and works on a new one. So, I doubt it. But we need some more flexible options in midfield for sure. He just seems to prefer the box-to-box type.

Because the system we play running/press/cross football in doesn’t matter, it’s still running/press/cross football. Just like you can play long ball football in a 442, 451, 433, 119 - it’s still long ball football.

It also works the other way round you know. 😀

I’d quite like him to play as a striker seeing as he’s a striker. Think that’s fairly reasonable.

There are more positives to take from keeping a clean sheet and not conceding late (again) than scoring and failing to hold onto a lead (again). Surely that’s obvious?