Nine

Longstaff played decently at 6 with Bruno out at the start of the season, if Bruno is so great at 8 why doesn’t he play there when Longstaff is available? It’s crazy to me that after a poor game against the second best side in the league people start saying he plays in the wrong position

Does Howe play him as an 8 when Longstaff is available?

His best position is 6. His biggest quality is how unpressable he is, his awareness and ability to make the most of whatever space he has makes him a natural 6. He’s also probably not athletically gifted enough to play in the front 2 of our 4/3/3 for any lengthy period.

He’s been carrying it long enough that it would suggest it’s going to take a longer, more serious rehabilitation than just a rest.

He’s been clearly carrying a (surgery needed) ankle injury for 2 months at least. Get ready for the over reactions though.

With Isak and Wilson starting together I’m not sure what we had on the bench would have been any better? Is ASM even fit?

Just better than us on the day and our heads dropped early on imo, mentality is questionable today. They have failed to take chances but just not as badly as we have. Fair game.

We look second best at everything so far, but that’s a credit to how good these are this season. The manager needs to pick their heads up at half time, it’s getting scrappy and certain players are losing their cool. They set up well to exploit our weaknesses, we will adjust.

We need a good response in the second, much like we did vs Southampton

We will sign a CB in the summer without doubt

I stand corrected then, I thought he left Man United earlier than that. He’s one of those players that feel like he’s been around forever and still only 32.

He was, he joined Arsenal when he was 21 I think. I didn’t mean specifically academy players just their younger players in general. Diaby is another good example.

Arsenal got so unlucky with that generation of players injury wise, the likes of Wilshere and Welbeck careers ruined before they even got started

It’s absolutely barbaric behaviour, and he did that in what he thought was a formal meeting. Imagine what he gets up to when he’s out on the lash man.

I get the feeling Allardyce has been hitting the bottle pretty hard for years now, when he got stung as England manager wasn’t he pictured with a pint of wine?

Such a random link

And yet people are doing the same thing in the Gordon thread right now, some just never learn.

People actually click on that shit man..

I wonder if we adapt our strategy this summer to targeting more non PL players, we take on more risk that way but the upside is also potentially far higher not to mention the absurd value that can be found outside the PL (think Bruno and Botman). It will come down to who the targets are and the confidence management have in each individual one but I feel we might break the trend we have seen so far of the majority of our incomings having prior PL experience. The fact we are in Europe likely won’t change the planned financial outlay in terms of fees/wages, but it will change the targets and amplify the need for depth across some of our key positions. Dipping into the European market may be a way of balancing that out.

Yes Bruno will surely be around that figure on his new contract, what I mean is I don’t expect we’ll bring in any new players that will match his wage this summer. Bruno and Isak (if he carries on at his current trajectory he will get a new contract) will be our top earners for the foreseeable imo, with the rest of the core of the squad a step below that. I don’t feel we will take the approach of ‘let’s agree to offer player X 200k because Bruno earns it’, players like Bruno and Isak will remain outliers for us. Real elite, 200k> players won’t be coming through our doors like that yet and I’m not convinced we will ever actually adapt to the buying already established elite approach. The core of the wage structure will be linear with the rest of the squad and not the most valuable assets.. that being said if a player steps up to the level of our best players there’s no reason they won’t be rewarded.

Yeah no chance we push our wage structure north of 200k at this point, the top end will remain around 150k I expect.

Imagine this place if we are ever top of the table with 4 games to go.. holy shit

Botman?

Yeah, everyone expects us to sign a LB but to me RB is far more a priority. There is just no depth in quality there at all, if Trippier goes down the other choices are of an unknown quantity where as LB is far more consistent between Burn/Targett.

You’re right, but their high press has not been working for some time. Their players are burning themselves out for no return, and a passive style is easier to execute than an intensive press. But they don’t have the time to implement a new style anyway, I expect Allardyce will try and find a happy medium between what they already know and what he would like without changing to much. Oh and then getting his pay off.