Nine

Good player, glad to see him settling there.

This place is hilarious sometimes

I’m on this side of the fence to, however he has work to do on the defensive side of his game. Time on the pitch obviously helps but Howe is always giving Barnes a lot of direction mid game, I just hope he becomes more coachable as he’s getting more minutes because if he can adapt a bit and take on more responsibility he will be a great asset for us.

We’ll know the answer next year. One criticism that is justified is that we were not ready to move away from the press as quickly as we did, but the injuries of last season may have forced Howes hand in that respect. Now we are down to watching Schar and Burn try and play out from the back, well mainly Burn as Schar gets pressed first.

The one he gave away across our own penalty box was criminal

Funnily enough, even though we all slated the fee we saw quoted for Guehi - he alone would have fixed a lot of the issues we are seeing now.

It’s never getting overturned.

We cant play a high line and press because our back line is to slow, so we attempt to play out but we don’t have players who are good enough with the ball to do so. Most teams don’t even bother pressing Burn because he’s no good with the ball, so they’ll press Schar and cut lanes and most of the time it works for the opposition. Schar has struggled with it. With Bruno at 8 we attempt to play make higher up the field but he gets shut out a lot against better sides because he’s athletically lacking and can be exposed. Leaves us looking flat and toothless. The crowd sit on their hands because our crowd has always been one that feed off the team and not the other way around, when we don’t start quick the place gets so anxious. It’s not Howes fault, he’s doing the best he can with the tools he has available (most of the time anyway). We havnt signed a upgrade to our first team since summer 2023.

Another half hour of this, great

Fucking retarded

Remember how this side used to feed off the energy of the crowd? Feels like a long time ago now.

Our back line is painfully slow

Awful defending, pretty flat performance all round tbh.

That finish man

Brain dead

That’s the most American thing I’ve seen today

The fickle nature of football fans never ceases to amaze me

I think the issue with Barnes is he’s a great direct finish player, but you don’t get as much in terms of overall work rate from him. I wonder if Howe felt when signing him that the defensive side of the game could be coached into him more than it has been up to now.

This. The fact he traveled and was pitchside suggests it’s nothing to serious.

What would you have done differently? I don’t think he got it massively wrong in any area, they are just a far better side than us right now. Isak would have likely scored Wilson’s second through on goal chance.

Nothing to pick at tonight, with Isak in we could have a result here

He’s rusty in front of goal no doubt, but in terms of his overall game he’s looked far sharper than I expected. It’s still there.

Don’t think Wilson has looked bad at all tbh, his finishing is rusty but overall game has been decent.

Bruno’s lack of athleticism gets exposed in games like these

Wilson looking rusty as you’d expect