TheBrownBottle

My avatar should confirm that wouldn’t be the case No, I’d play three up top

Yes, the 99/00 one with the Brown Ale badge was decent, it has to be said

For £69m we could’ve bought most strikers on the planet. I’m pretty sure that someone vaguely competent could’ve found a player for that money who could’ve scored 7 league goals - I mean, Bobby Shinton did finish top scorer with the same tally of course, but that’s not usually something to shout about. Callum Wilson - who we realised on a free having decided that an ageing player made out of paper mache couldn’t hack the PL anymore - has scored 6. On average, Woltemade needs 70 mins more to score a goal than this version of Wilson. Woltemade has been poor, and I’m not convinced at all that this is solely down to Howe’s tactics. Every time Howe moved the lad further back, he’d drop further back again. He doesn’t appear to have a striker’s instincts; worse, his vaunted technical ability isn’t close to being high enough to justify the half-arsed strolling about he does during a match. He’ll likely go back to Germany at some point to pootle about for a top six side over there.

Have to say though, I think it’s good they’ve paid tribute to great teams of the past with the design. In this instance, the heroes of Notts County’s Anglo-Italian cup finalists of 1993/94:

It just seems impossible to actually knacker up B&W stripes … but adidas know how to give it a right good go. I still think the misty-eyed stuff re adidas really was down to the 95-97 kit - most of what they produced was utter shite. ASICS, Umbro, Castore and Puma all produced consistently better kits designs.

Woltemade was in his mid-20s and a full German international when we signed him - Tomasson was coming off a good season for Heerenveen. The German top flight is a harder one to excel in. That’s why there was a massive disparity in transfer fees - Tomasson was misused and thrown in when he was raw. Woltemade should be far closer to the finished article.

Tomasson was much younger, was cheap and was thrown in far too soon. There aren’t any real similarities.

Yep, that’s true. They never started moving backwards at a rate of knots though. I’m struggling to think of any examples of a manager recovering from a nose-dive like this. My suspicion is that a combination of PSR and ownership incompetence are the only things keeping the manager in his role at this point.

Also, unless I missed a season I don’t remember Arsenal ever looking close to this shite under Arteta

Yeah, completely agree - nowt wrong with non-technical forwards as long as they’re good; our forward line is fucking dreadful

A little from column A, a little from column B

Yep, at least Elanga - unlike Wissa - appears to be a good pro

Plenty did predict that it wasn’t a good signing mind. I can remember writing on here that I was relieved when Howe’s interest in 2024 didn’t end up amounting to anything. It was completely foreseeable - it was an unimaginative signing carrying massive amounts of risk given the fee. Howe and his nephew don’t get off the hook on it.

Gordon and Elanga aren’t technical footballers either. Elanga is just a runner; Gordon is a more effective runner. That we’ve played more crosses into the box than any other side and have fuck all to show for it speaks of the footballing intelligence in our play, our wingers, and our coaching / coaches. Just endless, aimless lobbing the ball into the box with little to no outcome. It’s like watching Franz Carr all over again. Bruno and Hall are the only two really adept technical footballers in the side. Woltemade is more like a technical footballer, but not a particularly good one. That’s not close to being good enough given just how much money has been spent.

I don’t think Howe’s current style is similar to pre-25/26 Howe. There’s almost no ‘intensity’; the gegenpressing has been dropped. There is no discernible style of play at all; we don’t play a passing game nor a pressing game. It all looks flat and frankly we don’t look like a coached side.

He might be better, but it’s definitely not a ‘no brainer’ that he’d be great. I seriously doubt the lad has it to be great in the PL.

As someone who did exactly this more times than I can count (with my dad and my uncle as a kid in the late 80s / early 90s, then with mates through the 90s), the football this season has been shite - expectations are geared around investment in the team. We’ve spent the money and this is the net result. It’s not good enough.

Technical players to me are about ball control and vision tbh - all our wingers are ‘head-down’ footballers. They have neither the control nor the vision to be good technical footballers. Tackling is more often than not the consequence of poor positioning. Shooting is a mechanical function.

I’ve never seen an NUFC as mentally weak as this one in terms of closing matches out. We’d have dropped points last week if old Minty didn’t miss an open goal. It’s went beyond being annoying and arrived at being hilariously expected. It isn’t bad luck, it’s bad coaching. If Howe’s here next season, the first priority signings should be new backroom staff - get some new ideas and new faces into there. Whatever is happening on the training ground and in the dressing room isn’t working.

They played their biggest game in forever two and a half days ago and still had enough in the tank for a late equaliser. At some point that ‘Eddie needs one game a week’ added benefit should be kicking in.

He shouldn’t be criticised for not picking him - he should be criticised for buying him

The fact that this team can’t score goals makes it easy to judge him as well, mind. It’s his job.

I’m going to touch wood, but we look a lot more like ‘us’ so far

I do like Osula’s directness. Not entirely convinced by the lad, but he does drive the ball well.

Happy to agree to disagree - just to add I agree re this, I think a lot of it has to do with level of control he wanted to exert at a club