Erikse

Isak is at the very top at his best, but Woltemade wins hard on stamina and availability, which is massive for us. Last season we allways had to worry about whether Isak was fit or not, as that had such a huge impact on our form. It was really annoying. When it comes to which skillsets that Woltemade excels on compared to Isak, I'd say playmaker attributes, strength and headers.

It's probably quite a bit easier to play with Livra behind him than Trippier aswell.

Getting a fullback in january would be mint. This just highlights the need for it.

Last season we had 20 points after 15. Now we're at 18 in 13. The catch is ofcourse that we went on an epic run from there last season.

For sure. The point is lets not sacrifice the best talents if we ever end up needing to sell again. Doubt we would even think about sacrificing Miley though.

This guy we need to keep. No more Elliot Andersons.

What a strange goal.

I thought Elanga did fine there. Wasn't that easy to score from there.

Bournemouth are so leaky..

They almost scored right after the whistle..

That was an early whistle.

So Isak comes back and Ekitike gets injured immidiately? I see that the Isak/Wilson curse lives on.

Could play him at CB then.

I think signing a right back would have made sense, as Livra can cover left. A bit naive to think that a 35 year old Trippier would be good enough as the main fullback cover in the case of just 1 injury to any of the 2 fullbacks. On top of that he was allways going to start a good chunk of games as we weren't going to start Livra and Hall 2 times a week for the entire season. However we only signed Elanga early on, and later in the window we had to solve a number of issues all at once, so it became difficult to prioritize signing a fullback. Not that we were ever linked with any fullback anyways (I believe), but who knows what players we were after.

Howe showed willingness to start both Ramsey and Elanga very early on. For me it seemed pretty clear that we intended to use them a lot early on, especially with the fixture congestion. Elanga started the first few games, and then was dropped when it clearly wasn't working. I think this was kind of obvious with how it all happened, rather than a case of easing him in allways being the plan. You don't ease someone in by starting them the first few games and then drop them for a long time after that. As such I don't see why the plan would be to ease Ramsey in, if we didn't plan to do that with Elanga. Ramsey started his second game in the league and got injured in that game. In the cases of Gordon, Hall and Livramento it seemed more like the plan was to ease them in, as they were all younger players, althought Gordon didn't really perform when used.

I keep thinking about how good Woltemade would've been for them in their system had they bought him (behind Ekitike or even just upfront supporting the wingers and scoring headers). It's hilarious when you think about the fact that they spent 3,5x more on Isak and Wirtz instead.

Savinho was never it by the way. Massive step down from Mahrez.

Oh yeah because Howe had scouted Vlach at Forest and wanted to shell out £20m for him. They were clearly 2 separate deals with the fees being representative. Can't believe we thought Vlach was worth £20m!

People were happy with 35m until they learned that the fee was effectively 15m. Is this hard to grasp?

We were happy with the fee until we learned that we were getting Vlach for £20m the other way.

Atleast mid/late december might mean we get more out of him than if it was late november.

3 points behind Liverpool.

Was sure that was going to be given.

As much as I hate Isak, not sure he can do anything about that.

Imagine if it was Woltemade playing like this. Even despite the fact he came from a different league, they would be all over it.