Erikse

I can see them getting better technology in the future for offsides and ball out of play. Things like hawkeye and semi automated offside technology. That should make it more effective and accurate, maybe with time VAR can confirm or change these decidions in an instant. We could just scrap the subjective decisions from VAR? Maybe apart from the most obvious ones. Don't feel like we need to scrap the entire thing.

If you mean the viewing experience, then maybe. In terms of refereeing mistakes in key situations there are definetly way less of them after VAR. There's no doubt about that. The mistakes are just being talked about way more, because people hold them to a way higher standard when they can watch the replays.

They're either rushing it too much or they're taking to long is another classic complaint. Sometimes it feels like whatever they do they will be heavily criticised. I get VAR isn't perfect in the PL, but sometimes they just can't win. You have some situations where nomatter what they do, even if they do the right thing, they will be critcised like hell.

Well this has been a rollercoaster, hasn't it? Kinda like our season so far.

Had a dream that we tried out the 4-4-2 formation against Spurs, but they beat us 7-6. Somehow Wilson had 3 goals and 4 assists despite us scoring just 6. The game before that he had 3 goals and 3 assists, but I don't remember the opponent or the result in that one.

Faced just 1 top 8 team in those fixtures to be fair.

"On 26 May 2017, Manchester City confirmed the signing of Silva on a five-year contract after passing his medical tests. Although the transfer fee remains undisclosed, it has been reported to amount to €50 million (£43.5 million), which could reach €70 million with add-ons." Prices were also lower back then, this was a huge pricetag at the time. The rest of the players that you mentioned (except Alvarez) are defensive players who were not competing with Cole Palmer. Alvarez is worth a lot more than £40m anyways. Also, right now your £100m signing is also not getting that much gametime now, is he? Maybe he's better right now, but Palmer is 21. I'd rather have him for his potensial.

You paying £50m+ for nearly every player on your team is also subjective bollocks? Personally I'd rather have Palmer than Grealish, considering that Palmer is 21.

Can't believe a £40m player at 21 years of age wasn't starting for you guys. You literally paid more than £40m for every non defensive player in your squad except Kovacic, Alvarez (now worth £80m) and the academy ones.

We should be getting Kalvin Phillips pretty much for free then.

Our possession this season hasn't been amazing, but also not really that bad in the league. Not that it really proves anything, because there can be different reasons for that. For example facing low blocks. I think our possession was worse last season. Edit: last season we were 5th at 52%.

Sheffield United usually counts as Leeds in here (19th vs 2nd), which makes it +2p in that game.

I mentioned this in the match thread, but one thing that I've noticed about Liverpool in the recent years is just how many games most of their key players have been able to play in all tournaments without getting burnt out or getting injured. Their key players (Fabinho, Hendo, Mane, Trent, Salah, van Dijk, Robertson etc) consistenly played around 3000 minutes per season in the league while also going deep in the cup and Champions League. Salah played more than 4200 minutes last season in all competitions for Liverpool, and he was still performing at a high level towards the end. They had this one season where their 3 best central defenders were our injured at the same time, but other than that they just never really had this problem. If you look at their bench from 2-3 years back, it was nothing like the bench of Man City for example, so the didn't actually rotate that much. My point is, how can we have so much trouble with fatigue and injuries when Liverpool have been able to play all their key players in so many games for years, and they also had an intensive style? Added games matters, but we can't just blame it on the added games as if this was bound to happen. I wonder if it's just bad luck or if something else is at play. Probably a mix of bad luck and some other things.

Yeah that's why I said it's not a real worry to me, but saying that we're just 2 points off of the same away fixtures last season as a reason to say that our away form is not really that bad is just a bit misleading when you think about how many points we now need to take to replicate last seasons away tally. It's as if our first 5 fixtures just happened to be the 5 games we lost last season (would be impossible, but just an example), and then when we lose all 5 it's like "yeah but we lost them last season too", but then we need to be the invincibles for the rest of the season to not lose more than last season.

That's a good point. We didn't take many points in the away games we've done so far this season in the last season, but if we want to replicate last seasons 32 points away from home we would need to take 27 points from the last 13 away games.. That's more than 2 points per game away from home.. I think it's fair to say that this will be very difficult now after taking 5p from 6.

This guy is mysterious.

I did the same, but clearly he's in decent form and Man City create even more chances now with Silva back.. Have to sub him back in.

That's like the main reason that I quit. The hangxiety can be intense and some people get that pretty much everytime. Especially those who are prone to blackouts. When you can't remember, you just assume the worst.

I get that, but I'm not saying it's like a big worry or anything, I'm just saying there's a clear difference so far this season in terms of away vs home. Out of all teams (except bottom 4), no other team has taken 75% or more of their points in the home games like we have. None of the other teams playing in Europe has such a large difference either, only Villa comes close. Yes, we have more games this season, but we have still improved at home from last season by 7 points despite the added games. Seems like improving that away form will be key going forward, because we're doing amazingly well at home. Also, we've played Villa, Liverpool and Arsenal at home, so it's not like the difference can be explained by the level of the opposition.

We've taken 2 points less from the same fixtures, and this also includes an easier fixture (win vs Sheffield rather than u vs Leeds). While at home we have taken 7 points more than the fixtures of last season. There's clearly a change so far from last season where the difference between home and away seems a lot more significant. Also I thinks it's even more relevant to look at it in relation to the other teams as each season is different. We're 15th in the away table, last year we finished 3rd. Ofcourse the games were tough, but most of the away games in this league are tough for any team.

Paqueta, Maddison, Szoboszlai. We've really been heavily linked to some mint players.. Hard to tell if any of them were realistic, but Paqueta probably was.

The thing that makes me so confident in Howe is his willingness to develop and learn. We have seen this before when we were looking too predictable. It's his first year in european football, and surely he will be trying to figure out how we ended up in this situation with the injuries. It's not like some certain previous managers who would keep repeating the same mistakes over and over because they were too ignorant. If Howe should've rotated more, and that's why we are in this situation, he will figure that out and try to do better in the future.

The reaction from the other fans around is brilliant.

Everyone keeps missing my point. Originally I was just replying to someone who said that our squad was nowhere near strong or deep enough to play twice a week. Then I was pointing our that teams of similar squad depth has done it before without even getting close to this amount of injuries. Look at our bench for the first fixture against Villa. It's not that our squad is nowhere near strong or deep enough, there just happens to be some kind of injury freakshow. I don't know why, maybe it's just bad luck, maybe there's something about training or our physio team. I can't believe I'm getting so much stick for this.

My point is, it's not just that we're not ready for Europe and that this is what usually happens when you're in Europe. It's crazy to have all these injuries at once. We would be ready for Europe if this freaky thing didn't happen. Is it just bad luck or something else? Something about training or our physios?