Adam P

Does it really need explaining that a sustained high intensity press is now not part of the majoirty of our game plans? Its only implemented in sections of games and only in certain games. The bigger game plan is called the season plan which involves lower intensity game plans due to sqaud size and depth. Implementing these low intensity game plans has been one of our problems. It may be the main problem, hard to tell with e.g. Tonali's passing accuracy.

Garnacho sounds like an exotic nut. Coincidentally so does Froggy right now.

The only feeling of winning owt you'll have for a while.

Thats a fair point on Pogba, the one thing you cant criticise Froggy for is he always defends his club well. And the cleanliness of his ring piece. So two things really.

Hanging on Kenny, like the winnets in your arse crack.

Hanging on Kenny, like the winnets in your arse crack.

The sit down stand up debate was done to death on here in the mid 2000s. It was firmly established that stand uppers had filthy arse cracks.

So Eddie makes decisions based on how scared he is of pissing off individual players? He's such a bitch.

His 23/24/25 highlights show some excellent touches, great crosses, goals from angles and distance. The set up at Forest was tactically easy, they were underdogs for most of his time there so they played a low block (a more limited range of movements for an attacker) and were primed every training session to work the ball into pace exploiting breaks. His highlights at Forest are nearly 100% long balls / on the break. The set up here is different and is also in flux this season, to the extent that how we should play from game to game from a season / squad / injuries management perspective is not even clear to Eddie. For me, we have struggled with our 'season plan' not our game plans. If that sounds contradictory, its probably because it is but the two are in tension. What makes sense from a season long perspective this year, clashes with our identity and optimal gameplans where intensity has to be managed. Elanga unfortunately is clearly not experienced enough to adapt easily to this complex environment. Its not control of the football, its information overload primarily. Eddie constantly talks about it, being careful to manage it and also praising players for their ability to retain large amounts of instructions.

I'd have expected us to play him on the break in games like at PSG. A successful start would have seen the team aligned on how to work the trigger for the break against elite teams. Not seen any evidence we are near that yet like but i assume something like this is how we want to use him.

I am confident Elanga will come good with time. Its obviously gone pretty badly so far, given his premier league experience. However, the mitigating factors are; we signed him to play with Isak and our system has changed; the plan B system involved starting Wissa, who got injured; playing with Woltemade required even more adaptation (even though his good moments come with Wolte), the team overall is lacking confidence and he seems to specifically be lacking that too; the team has looked disjointed in attack overall and when multiple players are giving the ball away during a game, it makes it hard to integrate for a new player; more teams are setting up deeper against us and his game is best when we are playing on the break; Eddie has had very little chance to focus on him since September; we play a much more complex set of systems and game plans than Forest did and so he has had a lot more to work and think about, if he is overthinking what he is doing this is a performance killer. He needs more time and given how things have gone so far, the 'it took Gordon half a season' defence is not sufficient in this case. It may be the latter half of this season before he integrates and puts some actual significant output on the board and i do think that he needs a goal to get his confidence back. Long way to go from here but watching his G/A vids from 23/24/25 is still exciting, some great moments.

If Harry Kane plays Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Spurs or maybe even Villa (although i have got a lot of time for Villa) i'm 100% a Bayern fan. I love Harry and want him to be a success at Bayern. I might be an outlier.

Nice little article in L'equipe yesterday about Harvey Barnes, going over his form in PL and CL. ''L'OM are warned'' it concluded.

Plenty of tickets available in the home end. I did Union in the home end but dont fancy it with that lot.

Scored just as many as Isak in the PL so far so 'waste of money' doesnt feel like the right phrase.

Italian temperament and culture is different to our own. A lot of Italians probably thought it was weird that we had hundreds or thousands of people protesting a football team because of their religious identity. Each culture has their own quirks.

This i disagree with fundamentally and i believe (on just assumptive terms) that Eddie agrees with me. We are attacking the CL this year and rightly so, as this will raise the profile of the club significantly more than winning the Caraboa cup. We didnt qualify for the CL last year which is one of the main reasons we qualified this year. Qualifying every year isnt neccessary to qualify. Qualifying every year requires a massive high quality squad.

Was probably overstating it. Drop him for Brentford without doubt but the form of our wingers in the PL has been largely shite apart from Murphy. There’s an argument to say that is down to adapting to a new style of play in the league with a different attacker. He’s got less excuses than Elanga on that front. Anyway, he could go equal with Kane and Mbappé is he gets one this week. He needs a performance to rectify for Sunday.

He scored against Barcelona.

Because he is 3rd top scorer in the competition. Howe may drop him but his performances in the CL have been good.

It wasnt a long sentence. It had this bit at the end that said 'if Eddie rotates him out for the PL'. Not a huge amount of words i admit but the fairly obvious implication was that 'if he plays well in the CL and we sack him off for the PL that would be fine for me'. That was just the tease for the set up. Would you and the other people criticising him specfically about yesterday, drop him for Bilbao. That was the real part of the comment, not the flippant rhetoric about him being shit in the PL. No one of course will back up there ridiculous singling out of Gordon and actually say drop him for Bilbao. As that would make no sense.

Not even close to our worst player on the pitch first half yesterday. If he wants to save himself for the CL / big games i am alright with that as long as Eddie rotates him out for the PL. Anyone reckon the 3rd top scorer in the competition shouldnt start against Bilboa?

He did for the goal against Fulham. However, fully agree, his confidence is not there yet.

Problem yesterday was that everyone was thinking about the CL game. Eddie's game plans are not just tactical they are physical too. Saw it last season around the Caraboa cup games as we were attacking the cup. Shit perfromance at home against Fulham before the 2nd leg of the semi. We weren't 'at it' because the game plan was not intense, there was an element of enerrgy conservation. To speculate, i think Eddie is attacking the CL as he really wants us to progress to next phase. Our game plan yesterday lacked intensity as we all have an eye on the mid week game.

Aye Elanga was the wrong signing because despite qualifying for the champions league and attacking domestic cups, we are going to play all our games against a low block. Was obvious when Barcelona came to SJP and parked the bus. To really progress this year, we should have signed a creative genius for 50m. Also technical skills like crossing the ball are very different depending on whether the opposition player is pressuring you from a defensive strategy or from an attacking strategy. Hence why you can ignore his crosses and passes from last season as evidence of his technical abilities.