Nine

Need to see him and Wolte start together again this weekend

He’s defo being carefully managed, he must have had a difficult recovery for sure. He will be getting the mins in asap though, he can’t be far off now. But yeah, Howe will never drop his big tall Burn. Fortunately we have a lot of football to play.

We paid about the same fee for all 3 of Hall, Livra and Thiaw. I don’t think we paid a premium for any of them, we paid for potential which as we know is the way the market flows these days.. due diligence was obviously done on all of them. That’s Howes way. I can’t see how a £30m base fee is bad for the potential return on investment you get with these guys, I believe they will make up 3 out of 4 of our starting back 4 when all fit and firing. £90m on base fees isnt bad money for 75% of a potentially pretty elite back line.

Reminder that Semenyo played for Bristol City until 2023 and he’s 26 in January, defo one of the best late bloomers of recent years.

Ramsdale has it in him but Pope has been pretty immense again to start the season. I’ll always go back to it though - we will eventually need a keeper with feet on the pitch.

The injuries obviously made it difficult, but the mentality has just become lacking over time. As others have said, the Ramsey signing was probably the nail in his coffin here. And if Howe has gone public, yeah he’s done. He was so, so good during our first CL qualifying season. A unique midfielder in the way Howe utilised him in that he did most of his damage off the ball making runs and did it well. Hes one of those that I don’t see much of a resurgence for either, slack mentality and ego along with declining physically/accumulation of injuries. Best bet is going serie A or something.

To evolve and progress we eventually need to become more an in possession side, currently it’s like 80% of our thesis is out of possession. We don’t have many players who are comfortable retaining the ball to fit in with a possession based game, going forward I’d expect our signings to all fit in with this. It feels like we are at that tipping point now, and Thiaw was actually a great start as his ability on the ball is pretty elite. Developing the team into a in possession monster will be Howes biggest test.

And yet if he never got injured you’d never be posting this hindsight rubbish. We got fucked by lady luck on this one, there was nothing predictable about it at all.

He will be getting minutes asap, no reason at all it has to wait until Christmas. He wont be starting this weekend though if last night is anything to go by.

Go and read the posts, a lot of posts were saying ‘he’s got a bit of Titus in him’ and such along those lines before he ever kicked a ball for us. A lot of complaints about the fee. My only point is this was another young player written off and deemed not good enough to start here before he even attended a training session, I just don’t understand it at all.

Hilariously at the time he was instantly labelled an overpaid ‘titus’ by far to many. Never change NO.

If that was the other way around

He’s literally the reason we are winning 2-0

As clean a half in an away CL game as you’d hope to see, very solid. Elanga got his reward from running that right side ragged in the end. Commentators are awful, didn’t seem to pick up on Woltemades flick or realise that Elanga got fouled inside the box.

Partly because Hall won’t be totally fit. It will also be because with this CL schedule minutes need to be managed, and this will have been indentified as a game that Burn at LB should be okay.

Totally disagree, it happens time and time again and will continue to do so. Trippier was finished not long ago, Murphy was dogshit, Joelinton currently needs replacing most weeks, Popes head went after the Liverpool red and so on. Just have a little faith is all I’m saying.

His career never needed ‘saving’, there was never any reason he couldn’t be capable at CB. Him being washed because he got done a few times at LB was well overstated on here.

People forget how good he was there, if we are going for the 2023 style of dropping into a back 3 with him tucking in when pushing forward then it should be absolutely fine against the side we are against here. Do you think Howe has not taken anything into account? And just gone, fuck it - Dan you are LB tonight and whatever will be will be.

He’s just always been so fake, he doesn’t even try to be convincing. A master of attempting to deflect personal responsibility but also useless at it at the same time, he’s quite the enigma.

Didn’t much of the forum convince themselves that Wissa had done his ACL only to find out he hadn’t just a couple of weeks ago? Lets just wait and see

Signed for the clobber like

Sunderland have been really impressive, think Xhaka is probably the best signing they could have made. I had them down as struggling week in, week out.

Ah man wasn’t that beautiful

It’s in the script at this point

How are Liverpool still in this