Matt1892

A good point for Forest.

Pope could have let that run in to his box.

Slow motion dive from Pope.

The Brighton vs Bournemouth game was excellent, I don’t think I’ve seen a game played at a tempo that high this season.

Quality goal by Kluivert. This is a great game.

I have only seen the stats for women’s football but I think it is 23% of forward throws retain possession for longer than 5 seconds, compared to 82% of throws that go backwards. It would be interesting to see what ours is compared to the league average.

I think it happened early in the game. He couldn’t have any complaints if he was sent off, he was helped by Murphy being honest and not falling on the floor holding his face. Anderson had a good game though, he looks more controlled in the deeper role.

Nobody from 3rd to 10th is in decent form on paper, a couple of wins on the bounce could see any of that lot take up a strong position for Europe.

The throw-in was fine and was set up for Murphy to either play it back to Burn or to carry centrally, instead Murphy tried to play a blind pass back to Livramento and was caught out. The bad decision making lies with Murphy.

I wonder how much of our struggles is down to Trippier’s decline, as he was a great leader and organiser on the pitch. It wouldn’t be the worst thing bringing in an old head or two in the summer to boost the squad who can organise the rest of them if they are subbed on. It is a shame Brentford have the option of extending Norgaard for another year as he is the sort of squad player you want to bring on, who can slow the game down and is comfortable retaining the ball.

I think teams make adjustments at half time when we are on top and we struggle to make a counter adjustment when the game is underway, when you mix that in with having players that do not excel at possession based football then you are going to give the ball away a lot and face wave after wave of attacks. We used to have Pope go down with a fake injury so we could get the rest of the players together to make adjustments but we don’t do that any more either. The other issue is our midfield shape and nobody playing in the #10 position, which means when we are pinned back that Isak drops in to this position and we have no outlet on the last man, which again results in us giving the ball away.

I can’t say I noticed us looking any more comfortable when Tonali came on.

Must win is an overused statement but if we had lost today then I don’t think we would have caught Forest, so the result was what mattered. If 5th is going to get Champions League and Man Utd and Spurs have imploded, then there is no better opportunity to qualify, we just need some consistency to be the best of a pretty average bunch. Such a strange season.

Bournemouth playing well with 10 men, the more they push the more space for Wolves on the counter.

Man City will aim higher than Trafford.

Dubs is only signing a contract so we can get a fee from Saudi in the summer. Probably the same terms as January.

Our short term aim over the next few years should be to constantly finish inside the top six, which isn’t an unreasonable aim. Then once we have done that we are in a position where the profile of the club globally should be raised and the commercial gap should close. Catching Arsenal in terms of commercial revenue is pie in the sky stuff unless we can either manoeuvre related party deals or we can grow the club to match their global appeal, which will be done on the pitch over a number of years. If Chelsea qualify for the Champions League next season then their figures will jump up a similar amount, there isn’t any point in beating yourself up over it.

£45 million minimum I would have thought.

More likely to sign Zabarnyi than Huijsen if we do look at a centre back from Bournemouth.

Burnley keeper James Trafford has only faced 21 shots on target in achieving his 11 successive clean sheets - including saving two penalties from Sunderland's Wilson Isidor. No team has had more than three shots on target against them in any of those games. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cq8kle2x81do

If we don’t leave ourselves high up the pitch exposed for counter attacks then we should win this one quite comfortably.

I had us finishing 6th on 66 points, but there was only 2 points separating us, Chelsea, Bournemouth and Forest in the 4th - 7th positions. My first attempt had us at 5th on 66 points, but randomly Villa only had 55 points so did it again.

I’ve just looked at Bournemouth’s run in and of the 7 home league games they have left, Fulham are the highest in the league out of the opposition. They are 5 points off last seasons total, which was the most points they have earned in a Premier League I believe. Iraola is another level.

Could be ahead of us in the league before we play Forest.