Holmesy

You clearly have the expert’s eye, STM. Quite the analyst.

Pep has constantly evolved his teams and ways of executing his plan throughout his entire career. His Man City team now looks nothing like his dominant Barca team for example. It’s such a poor reference mate. You’ve literally done the opposite of what you thought you were doing by referencing Pep. We’ve seen the need to evolve this season because what worked last season is a point of vulnerability this season. Injuries will have played a part for sure, but you have to adapt your system to the personnel you have available, right?

And it was great while it lasted. But it doesn’t work now. Whether we’ve been found out, the fixture congestion has fucked all of our players, Joelinton being injured etc. People keep pointing to last season. Last season isn’t this season. We have the 5th worst defence in the league. That’s the reality!

I don’t think I buy the Trippier argument -each time he’s been forced to play two actual fullbacks we looked more balanced and more effective as a team.

All fair points. The Burn one feels a bit like he’s trying to be too clever and not wanting to back down. The concept of having a CB who drops into a back 3 is ok - it works for City and Arsenal but the difference is they’re not doing it with the slowest player in the PL. They’re executing it with mobile CBs who could feasibly play as conventional full backs if they wanted to. We’re shoe-horning a guy who isn’t suited to the position in any way into the position and making ourselves defensively vulnerable in the process. If we weren’t shipping 3 goals a game, it would be harder to argue against. The Lewis Hall thing has just been baffling to be honest. I understand he’s a work in progress but when you’re watching your setup ship relegation levels of goals, there’s no risk to trying something different. I’ll never understand his mentality through that run of games and I hope it never repeats, but if we end the season in the European places, hopefully we can just put it behind us a bad chapter and a learning experience.

I think there were posts suggesting it even further back than that. At times it has felt like stubbornness was the only thing stopping him from doing it because it blatantly wasn’t working - conceding 3 goals per game is absurd! Who knows, maybe he just wants to see a couple of top Geordie lads living out their dreams before they’re moved on for better players. I would say there’s no room for sentiment in football but it would at least make sense of the situation and I could get on board with it more if that was the case.

Yes I am. The former cost us a lot of goals in a very poor run, and Longstaff needs no explanation. We haven’t necessarily had the players available to swap out Longstaff until now, but with Burn the performances from Tino and now Hall (and then Burn being a rock at CB last night) raise legitimate questions about some of Eddie’s decision making.

The one area he definitely needs to be more ruthless is dropping his favourite players when they play shit, which they have for large parts of this season.

Amazing what happens when you play players in their actual positions. I’d genuinely started to dislike Dan Burn because of his nightmare performances at LB but he was top drawer tonight, absolute warrior!

Thank God we don’t have to play the shit fuckers again this season. That fucking song they sing with the high pitch noise is one of the most cringeworthy things I’ve witnessed from a group of football supporters. Fucking weirdos!

It’s 1000% a penalty. The guys a fucking moron.

Dubs is terrified and terrifying in equal measure. Just come for the fucking ball you plum!

Is this Longstaff’s worst performance so far?

Darras?

Always been a big fan of the 12 man formations. Seriously underrated!

They must have some of the highest commercial revenue in the PL with that new stadium? If that's the case they'll be less hampered by FFP than we are i guess. It'll take a few years for us turn that around

Could Anderson do a job at RW?

Injuries you say?! Fuck me, why didn’t anyone mention them before?

I’m too pissed to know either way. I’ll revisit in the morning. 😂 This is the video of your pal Elon though: https://youtube.com/shorts/WY73exaVpyw?feature=shared

Well, if you change your mind and you need a hand…

It wasn’t an example of good management. It was an example of some normal bloke/girl bringing something to the attention of a genius, that they themselves hadn’t considered. And it turned out to be a great idea by all accounts. But us normal folk know nothing apparently 😉

Last season we had the best defence in the league, this season we have the 5th worst. Eddie’s PL record suggests this season is nearer to his norm than last fwiw. And I know, injuries (before you say it). Honestly, belittling the knowledge of football supporters is such a cliched shit thing to do. We get enough of that from Parlour and other brain dead cunt pundits who think because you haven’t played the game you know nothing. Supporters know football. We see the game, we dissect the game, we fucking play the game and we understand it more than prick pundits and Joe bloggs on football forums give us credit for. If I say to that Almiron always cutting inside is really predictable and makes he easy to play against or Jacob Murphy’s decision making in the final third is mostly shocking, is that meaningless because I’m not Eddie Howe? Or is it true, even though I’m just a football fan who said it? Look, Eddie is a fantastic manager and clearly an unbelievably talented coach but there are things he does that could be improved. He’s just a bloke doing a job at the end of the day. He’s great at certain bits of it and clearly need to improve in other areas, just like any other bloke doing a job. And like anything, when you’re deep in something, sometimes you can’t see the obvious. Just to highlight this, did you see the interview with Elon Musk in front of one his rockets, when a student asked him a question about something he himself hadn’t considered and he then implemented it?! I suggest you watch it. If you genuinely think the following is good management, let’s just agree to end this discussion: - Dan Burn knows that regardless of how bad he plays, he will start every game. Every game!! - Conversely, Tino knows that regardless of how well he plays and how badly Dan Burn plays, he will not start. - Lewis Hall knows that it doesn’t matter what he does, he will not start. He could have the game of his life, make Maldini look like Paul Dummett and score a hat trick of worldies - makes no fucking difference to his situation at all As I’ve said all along, I want him to stay but he’s left me with serious doubts this season. I’d hate to see him go before being given the chance to put it right though. and yes, I’m now pissed

It is, it’s very frustrating

Dude, have a look at that photo and tell me you can’t find a simple solution for a fucking opposition player running unopposed the entire length of the pitch from our own set piece. How’s about leave the full backs on the halfway line? Fuck me, sometimes my tactical genius astounds even me! Tough one though! Had me stumped for a while

They couldn’t afford me