Matt1892

He looked good going forward but defensively he has poor positioning and is lazy to get back from being in attack.

I have dug out the highlights from us beating Chelsea at home last season and Hall’s positioning is all over the place when we attack.

I didn’t think he was that good in the last game of the season against us, his positioning was poor as was his work rate in getting back when Chelsea lost the ball. When you consider he was marking Miggy who doesn’t have the most dynamic movement off the ball, then he has a lot of work to do to be considered a £40 million footballer on ability alone.

The issue with someone like Hall is you are buying potential when he hasn’t really done anything of note in the first team apart from a few bright appearances, so any deal would be based on huge add ons which is why Chelsea are unlikely to sell and instead push for him to go out on loan for a season to drive his value up. I agree with Kaka on the fee, I can’t see anyone paying £40 million for someone with half a dozen appearances in a position that doesn’t usually attract a high fee anyway. It would be a Chelsea thing to do.

Chelsea will need to sell again next summer and I think they will be open to selling Hall then, they probably want a straight loan deal for 12 months first to try and raise his fee before they do sell.

The article doesn’t really say anything and is a pain to copy due to the having an advert between every sentence.

I’m not sure but he’s predominantly a left back.

Chelsea also have Ian Maatsen who is potentially ahead of Lewis Hall too at left back.

What Man City do with their memberships is they have it so you need to have attended five games before you can get a ticket for the opposition who they think are likely to try and get in the home end, including us.

The whole ASM and Barnes thing has been done to death and is irrelevant now. People wanting to use every goal or assist by Barnes as a stick to beat one of our former players with is embarrassing and petty. I was fully onboard with the swap too. If you want to compare Barnes to someone then compare him to the likes of Grealish, Martinelli, Rashford, Diaz, Son and whoever Chelsea play on the left. These are the sort of players he should be compared to if we want to compete with the best in the league, not someone who carried the team through the dark days but ultimately we outgrew on the club being transformed.

I would be happy with either of Tierney or Cucarella on loan, Tierney is the better player but comes with the issues of having a number of serious issues which the club is unlikely to be concerned about considering how much they have just dropped on Livramento. I read somewhere that Tierney is the second fastest defender in the league after Walker. I know Howe is saying one more but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t sign a LB and a RCB, I think they might want to get the loan out of the way first if we are pleading poverty as the reason for us not signing a LB outright this window.

I don’t know how the players sold column works in full as while you can book it all this year you still have to deduct what is owed on those players, although the argument then would be we would have budgeted for that anyway. As an example if we sold Wood for £15m then we only book £5m as profit as we have £10m still against him as amortisation, yet we would have budgeted for that £10m when working out what we can afford to spend. A proper rabbit hole.

Over the moon with 7 points. Edit: I was thinking after the Brighton game, 10 points I would be over the moon with.

I thought Disasi looked good at the back for Chelsea. Shame we didn’t go for him.

It would be great if Salah went to Saudi.

I think he’s capable of playing in a bottom half Premier League side this season on a regular basis so it doesn’t have to be the Championship. Playing against the top teams in the league on a regular basis will be much better for his development than sat on the bench in the Champions League, if he can’t see that then he hasn’t got the mindset to reach his potential anyway.

Anderson should be going to Howe and telling him that he wants to go out on loan. Despite being one of our best players pre season he was only brought on in injury time so Tonali could get a round of applause. I feel sorry for the lad.

The issue for the club is that he is in the last 12 months of his contract and we need to convince him to sign an extension knowing that he isn’t going to be the main man up front unless Isak is injured.

Tactically it reminded me of the game against Brighton at home last season where our style of play is almost perfect for the opposition but Howe being tactically astute meant that the adjustments were made to close that the best we can. To be fair to Villa they still played well and created chances, it was when they changed formation with 25 minutes to go to try and get back in the game that the wheels really came off for them. Up until that change we were the better side but it wasn’t a one sided game.

Former Everton and Scotland winger Pat Nevin, analysing for BBC 5 Live, was impressed with Tonali, who Newcastle bought from AC Milan for £55m. Nevin likened Tonali, who slotted in alongside Bruno Guimaraes and Joelinton in an industrious and progressive engine room, to one of the icons of modern midfield play. "Newcastle fans are going to like Tonali if he keeps on playing like this," said Nevin. "If you look at him and Guimaraes in midfield, that is a spectacular partnership. "Tonali was absolutely everywhere. He has a confident arrogance about himself. Just everything he does - his cross-field balls, his comfort and confidence on the ball - he has the arrogance of [Andrea] Pirlo on the ball. "He looks like the absolute complete midfielder. Everyone else was running around at top speed and he just seemed completely in control at every moment."

It would be good to keep a comparator of the same fixtures from last season, with Leicester being replaced by Burnley, Leeds with Sheffield United and Southampton with Luton Newcastle 5-1 Aston Villa ✅ Same points and goal difference.

Thanks all. I am completely reassured now that we have no issues when attacking and that we won’t have the same problems as last season.

Both.

It wasn’t though, there was a number of winnable games that we struggled to break teams down and put it away. A number of draws that were considered points dropped.

I still have concerns about our attacking ability and breaking teams down when they park the bus, which I would expect more of this season. Barnes will help with that with his goals and ability from distance but I’m not sure how much of an attacking threat Tonali will offer in the circumstances described above, so I would have hoped for another to help unlock teams who would play down the right.