Nine

The early goal is so, so huge for us. If we score early you know it’s going to be comfy 9 times out of 10. Duran royally fucked them over to, so stupid

On Christmas night..

He never has and never will be telling the truth about what we are actually planning to do, don’t know why anyone reads into it at all.

I was very wrong about not expecting Howe to move Bruno up, as I didn’t think he saw him as physically capable of being an 8 for extended periods of time. Its great how integrated Tonali is already, where would we be if the ban never happened? Mental how one player in and one position change has seen us go from looking like a badly coached mess to very solid performances.

This guy is so good at the moment.

Mourinho in

Pep’s done a good sort of management 101 job of this terrible run and made it all about him taking the focus off of the players, but some of these individual performances are terrible this season. Somethings gotta give.

Does anywhere track post hits? I’d love to see his numbers on that

I’m with you, at the start of the season I’d expected us to lean back to full on press we had success with but we arnt heading in that direction anymore. We need more creativity in wide areas. Olise (although never likely) would have been a perfect signing for this season.

Not many I’d suspect. He’s not a system player, so he’d be useless to Howe.

He is the furthest thing from a system friendly player, I don’t see any serious side wanting him. Like others have said, PSG seems to be the move. They can carry him in that league. One of the sole reasons Man United signed Weghorst when they did was to cover for Rashford off the ball imo, says enough really.

Deeming Grealish shite is obviously on the more extreme end of hyperbole but he has dropped off massively since their treble His whole persona and attitude never seemed a great fit for a top side to me

This is a fair point, when you consider his size also. Not an easy injury to recover from.

There isn’t much chance he lost that much pace over a single summer. It was far more to do with Popes injury and not being protected by Joelinton on that side, and being a mainstay in a largely unchanged back 4 for 22/23. Edit: something I forgot to add that others have mentioned, the back injury was a massive part in him looking like he’d lost something physically.

Surprised there hasn’t been more posts in here recently, he is consistently solid

Leicester were absolutely useless but we did what we had to do today, not much else to say really.

It was a bit of a broad comparison I’ll admit, but my point is they are both best used as pressing wingers.

Especially since we have evolved from our ultra press. Its funny we are linked to the likes of Elanga and yet we have phased out players of similar profile like Almiron, the journos don’t pay enough attention.

His careers pretty much over at this point

I don’t see how Elanga fits now, he’d be incredible in the 22/23 side and maybe even last year but I’m not convinced hes the right profile anymore.

A good, confident display with possession of the ball would go a mile right now. Unfortunately Leicester is the type of opponent that tend to expose how badly coached we look at the moment. They will let us see plenty of the ball so expect a poor performance as we usually are when allowed possession, but if we can manage to go ahead early enough we should do okay.

People need to realise how big the implications are with replacing the manager mid season especially under our current circumstances. A lot of moving around happened during the summer in terms of management, a lot of change. A shitshow of FFP calculation led to forced sales and then even worse - no serious incomings. No refreshing of the squad led us away from the high press as it’s not sustainable without consistent and intelligent recruitment and this is where we find ourselves. We are heading for a reset next summer with the new set up, personally I’d give Howe that IF he can co exist with less power than he had that contributed to Staveley getting the boot. I’d like to see how Howe functions under a serious recruitment team, because no real club aiming to establish themselves as part of the elite lets the coach 100% build the team. We have to be more fluid in terms of incomings and outgoings and that includes management to. Oh and people put far too much weight into league position finishes.

That’s probably the most football managery kind of post I’ve read on here, top work

First half was decent. Besides all the noise, we have conceded 7 in two games and I’d say 4 or 5 were very soft/due to mistakes/individual error. Been saying it since the start of the season and it hasn’t improved - we really do look poorly coached 80% of the time. The negative emotional tide is truly turning against him, replace him now with who though? Not sure it’s the answer, but after the shitshow of a summer we had who knows. It’s all felt a bit toxic since Howe lost the majority of his power behind the scenes.. usually that means the clock is ticking regardless of what happens on the pitch.

Redeemed