Erikse

In other words, you don't have him on FPL?

Seems like we would need to sell someone valuable for that to happen, unfortunately. If we've maxed out our credit card, then excellent recruitment won't be an option.

Which is also crazy considering how much strain he was put under last season vs this. Might be a hangover from that, mind..

When I see comments about our squad not being good enough, I start thinking about the squads that Burce finished 12th and 13th with.. Our squad is miles and miles better than that, and Bruce was a terrible manager. Ofcourse we can expect way more from the current squad of players, like I don't exactly feel sorry for Howe for having to work with decent PL players like Longstaff and the Joes when he also has Isak, Bruno, Tonali, Gordon etc. at his disposal.

I look at the next 7 games and I fear 5 of them. We won't lose all those 5, but we really need to step up sooner rather than later.

Basically if you your opinion that 19 in 13 is a good or acceptable score, that means that your standard is that 55 points is a good or acceptable end result. My expectation for this squad without Europe is a little higher than that.

No I am saying that we need to step up our game and take more than 1.46 points per game, because that is only good enough for ~9th come end of the season. Us being x amount of points behind someone doesn't change our results. Let me get this straight - we are evaluating our own points and results up until now, right? 3rd place come end of season will 100% have more than 67 points. That's the only reason I brought that up. What we, a specific team, are going to do is more guesswork, and doesn't matter in terms of evaluating our results or points so far.

The only reason we're 4 points off third is because the current 3rd place is on course for 67 points. We've not had a 3rd place finish as low as 67 points since 19/20, so it's a fluke, and someone is going probably to pull away eventually. The more teams in the mix, the more likely it is for some of them to go on a proper streak. If we are going to judge our points, as mentioned, it's all about how many points we have on average and look at what that average usually gives come end of season. Talking about 4 points off 3rd it doesn't really evaluate our points that much, but rather the unusually low score of the 3rd place, which will change over time.

Tbh if he keeps getting injured like this, letting him go would for a hefty fee wouldn't be the worst thing ever. The problem is finding a replacement, and that's going to be very tricky.

I think average points is a better way to judge. Right now we are on course for 8th - 10th in terms of average (55 pts). However 5 out of our next 7 games looks kind of tough on paper, but that also depends on the state of Villa. Brentford away after Liverpool isn't looking like an easy one at the moment, they are scoring goals for fun.

Was consistenly top 2 in the league in chances created. I remember us even tricking opponents to think we were going through the middle, just to quickly switch over to the right, so that we could set him up with some space through a few quick moves. It's like our entire attacking setup often revolved around making sure they couldn't stop him from doing his thing, because when he could, we would have a big chance every time. The biggest problem now would probably be his pace and stamina. He used to do so much running in our setup.

Saka more points than my entire team of 7 players.

All he had done before we signed him was watching him play on television, or at the stadium, or whatever. You think managers never have second thoughts about someone they thought would fit perfectly prior to signing?

If Tonali becomes as huge for us as I think he will be, I will give creds to Howe for wanting to sign him in the first place. I don't understand how anyone can think Howe didn't want him, that scenario is just completely unrealistic due to several reason. I think Howe was running the show last summer, and also the january before when we got Gordon. We saw in the documentary how much Amanda and the others cared about his opinion on the transfers back then. The Tonali transfer is the most obvious Howe signing of them all (apart from Gordon), because he started him from day one coming from a different league, and unlike many of our other transfers he even stated that it was him who wanted him.

Lets act as if managers never ever bench someone they truly wanted to sign, as if that has never happened before and is an impossible scenario.. Cmon.

You really think the club under Amanda went on to spend £55m + high wages on someone that Howe didn't really fancy? And yet Howe went on to start him from the very beginning, something he barely ever does?

Exactly. It's not what we did to West Ham. It's basically the same as saying Palace should've beat us by 2, 3 or 4.

It's also what Palace did to us today, minus the finishing.

Yeah, fair, but look at Arne Slot for example. I had never even heard of him myself. Not sure our board has the same "creativity" or know the market well enough, though.

Do we actually know that there aren't any proper replacements out there?

We talk a lot about margins, and we were lucky to get a point today. Despite the late equalizer.

Liverpool next.. Ironically we've been better against the best sides.

Some will probably try to tell you that Tonali is playing like this because Howe had him on the bench last few games, so this somehow proves that he managed him perfectly. As if he wasn't a good player before he was benched.

His first goal for us. Happy for him!

That's what the squad of ours should be fighting for, but we're not looking like we will be atm. If the squad is equal to mid table sides, then that means we've been awful on the transfer market, so take your pick. In terms of not having players who can hurt the opponent. This team scored 85 goals last season, and Isak got 21. Not sure what's going on this season. Edit: Well, there's one. Just as I wrote this.