Nine

Wait no one’s actually calling for Miley to start PL games yet are they? In the league cup maybe yeah, I could see it. PL absolutely no way.

To go away to that ground against a side like that and take a point in our first CL for 20 years is amazing work and I think most of us would have taken that before kick off. It had to be said though, the performance tonight was slack in many areas. We were fortunate to come away with that point, there has been a lot made of this game and perhaps the players went in nervy because even after we shifted to the mid block in the second half there was hardly any composure that you’d expect from certain players. We lacked mentally tonight imo. Maybe we grow into this competition and maybe not, either way I’m here to enjoy every single game we get.

A long time coming

Who knows what he could become, but he has 12 in 30 for us after one full (injury included) season. You wouldn’t get 100m for Isak today. I know, I know - Caicedo and the like. But I don’t feel Isak would demand that kind of fee yet.

While I’m not saying that story is true, I feel it’s a matter of time until we sell one of key ‘untouchable’ players if the offer is right. Not only would it be hard to hold onto a player that is wanted by a Madrid or a Barca, but a big fee would open up so many doors FFP wise and long term could make a lot of sense.. imagine how well we could reinvest 80-100m? If you take the emotional attachment to our best players out of the equation then it feels like it could be very good business for us. Be ready for that eventuality is all I’m saying, wether it’s Isak, Bruno or whoever. It’s going to be a real possibility that we cash in on one of our consistent high performers at some point.

Wouldn’t judge until he has a left back behind that he can benefit more from

One of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen

The first 20ish was sloppy but we’ve been fine since then, albeit lacking that creativity which is very hard to come by anyway against a low block of Brentford quality. I think we’ll get a goal from somewhere.

That does not mean he is fit to play 90 PL minutes at all, hes also a young kid who only just arrived at a huge club in a new country so it could be careful man management as much as it is fitness related. Twisting about that substitution is just looking for an excuse to moan imo.

One will always impact the other, not sure you can be to picky over Hojlund being taken off as he’s clearly not up to required fitness to do 90 yet. McTominay was subbed for a 21 yo 6th appearance for you, and Casemiro for a 20 yo 5th.

So was it the missing player list or the selection that was the main issue today? Can’t really have it both ways.

Think his style as a winger is the furthest thing from what we have in the likes of the direct Gordon, Barnes and Miggy. Not what we are looking for.

If only we could play Bolivia every week

No chance he leaves now imo

That means dropping Gordon who has started the season well, just potentially creating more issues.

Bullet dodged

Brighton exploited his weaknesses yesterday, they pressed and closed him down quick whenever he received the ball in our half because Joe is weak at those short intricate passes to get himself out of trouble. I can think of maybe 2 or 3 occasions where he had 3 of their players on him and he ended up losing the ball in a bad area. An absolute physical unit as we all know but always has been technically limited.. he’s been off it for a couple of games so far this season. Needs to get back to his best.

If you think that because we managed to achieve top 4 last season that should mean we do again and anything less is failure, you are a clown.

Some football fans are embarrassing

There will be some very emotional children on this thread tonight. But this is the worst performance I can remember since our resurgence under Howe, worse than the Villa 0-3. Poor performances all round and well and truly done today, we have work to do. All our good work is nowhere near undone by this and the Liverpool game but we need to really to get going after the break, we can’t go into the CL games in poor form as that is suicide. As for ‘believing his own hype’ that’s ironically what a lot of our fans have done, we had one very good over achieving season and many fans expected to continue the same trend. Today was dogshit but we had 4 difficult fixtures and we were especially terrible today, we have a very long way to go.

Our worst performance since February 2022

Just poor from the get go today, they were simply on their game all round. No way back from here.. we have work to do.

Joe has to be carrying that knock from last week a bit, not right at all

This was always going to be a scrap in midfield, can’t expect to dominate Brighton away but we need to get some kind of hold here second half.

Stupid, sloppy.