Erikse

They were actually pretty poor in certain periods, it was a bit up and down as far as I can remember.

Maybe he can be our set piece coach for now

Okay. I meant discussion. Just wasn't sure what squads you think that people are overlooking the quality of. Guess I should've just asked. I don't think anyone here are overlooking the squads of the top sides.

Hmm. What was the argument about, then? Sorry, maybe I didn't read back far enough. I doubt someone would claim that our squad is on par with the "big six"? Personally I've seen people blaming it on the squad when we're struggling against lower sides, or talking about how competitive the league is, and how every team is good. In that case all you need to do is to compare our squad to the lower opponents we've been struggling against. Before last game someone made the argument that we don't have any players who can hurt the opponent at all. We have a £100m+ striker who just bullied VVD.

Lets look Palace for instance. A squad expected to be around mid table I'm no expert on Palace, admittedly. And yes, the have a couple of good ones. But isn't this a real gap in quality overall? And I don't believe in things like Bruno and Gordon not actually being good players, because that stuff is just short term memory like we had with Isak recently.

But what other squads are we talking? I mean we were getting mid table finishes with Bruce and the squad he had. Imo mid table teams are miles away from our squad, so a mid table outcome like 10th would be pretty bad. The problem is just the gap between the heavy hitters and the rest. Can't compare ourselves with them, obviously.

You can make a case for atleast 10 teams being title challengers through what ifs if you frame their games like this.

Yeah, I'll keep him, no doubt. Just a feeling I have that he won't return much despite the fixtures, but maybe this will look foolish.

No doubt Howe has transformed some players, but likewise I think Steve Bruce made some players look worse than what their real level was. Schär, Longstaff and even Almiron looked pretty good under Benitez. We just had the idea of them being Championship level due to them being Bruced.

Wolves are horrible, I'm already not so happy with owning Cunha anymore. Will give him some more time, but I'm not expecting too much atm. I think many were late to the party with him, luckily I wasn't. Brilliant player, but Wolves doesn't look that great. This might be a bit reactionary from my part, though..

1 in 17 was a bit simplistic, but it was quite common that his assist count coincided somewhat with the form of his general play (especially in terms of set pieces). At his best form he would allways produce lots of assists, because he would be unstoppable in every part of his game. I looked it up, and if you go back to the start of november and throughout the month last year in this thread, you'll see that people were commenting on his horrible performances through weeks. It started more than a month before december, in that "1 in 17" period. Some put it down to fatigue, which is very possible, mind. I recall that his last "peak performance" game was in october last year in that 4-0 win vs Palace, and after that his form plummeted. He just wasn't actively losing us games until december.

The Premier League is extremely competitive, and because of that small changes for the worse can have a massive impact. On top of that there's an increase in injuries, and each one will impact you more and more.

Sure, he was essential for us until October ish. Maybe some games after that aswell, but we had strong indications that things were about to change with him back in jan.

I agree, I made the comment since some are using the "10 assists" argument like they were back in jan. So in a world where it's all about the assists, he also dried up on those months before january.

Must say I love that banner! But I hope Joelinton doesn't read it. He'll commit murder.

He was still making defensive errors while not contributing much offensively in the second half of last season.. Also, his assists had dried up already from October. In mid january he had 1 assist in 17 games.

Took him out for a hit, I'll enjoy a Pedro 2 pointer tomorrow!

I actually read it back. He went from "Tonali is the greatest player alive, you're not getting that" (overexaggerated), to "well most of our fans thinks you overpayed".

I don't really mind Longstaff myself, but to me there was also a pretty strong Longstaff narrative not so long ago, almost to the point of him single handedly winning every win where he starts, so it goes a bit over the top both ways.

The thing is you start calling people out for saying that Tonali needs to play after 2 very good performances. If Longstaff performed like Tonali has, and someone said that he needs to play, what if someone replied with "the Longstaff narrative needs to stop"? Would you agree?

I did that because you literally made the same arguments about Longstaff, as if he was the silver bullet to our form some games ago.

"We win more when Longstaff is playing", wasn't that sort of framing him as the silver bullet and giving him all the creds when there were several factors involved?

Just 2 weeks ago Longstaff got the creds for us turning the game around after he got subbed of and Tonali had come on. After we had an awful first half with Longstaff on the field not doing much. And all of a sudden Tonali getting some creds for a good game is just a narrative? Maybe we should hold both to the same standard, that would be less of a narrative.

You're right, Longstaff is the answer to winning every match, as we've already conluded some weeks ago! And that wasn't a narrative right?