Erikse

Sounds like us.

I think Gordon was also through on a 1v1, but the defender had dived, and ofcourse they got the free kick. Gordon would probably have missed that one aswell, mind. There were 2 penalty situations aswell. These three situations were all more clumsiness on their part, but that game was the most one sided refereeing I've seen in ages.

Nice to see that we get a weekly update on Wilson even after he's fit. We need that.

I wonder what that number would be without Gordon.

If he's not going to start on a regular basis this season, then yes, he's basically a flop. I'll give it a bit more time, but if he doesn't break into the team as a regular before the end of the season, then it has been a massive waste of money relative to our allowed spending power. Unfortunately that hurts 100x times more for us than what it would for any of the "big six". Maybe we would still get the fee back in that scenario (atleast close), but we are paying some hefty wages over here.

I thought he was crazy good at time in the last world cup. Atleast in terms of output, scoring 8 in a single World Cup and a hat trick in the final is wild. Ever since that I haven't really been all that impressed. Currently I'd rather have Haaland in my team, despite Mbappe being better in the build up. I wonder though, Mbappe himself has stated that he wants to play LW. Maybe he's just better there? Did he not play LW for France in that World Cup?

Miss the start of last season where both Gordon and Trippier was a huge threat offensively, one from each side..

I agree, I've noticed the same. We go for an early goal, and miss our chances. Leave ourselves exposed in the process, and the opponent scores theirs. Steve Bruce would call it "naive". (sorry, couldn't help myself) Tbh we've also conceded a lot of big chances that the opponents have missed. So it's probably just a case of being more exposed when pushing for that lead.

Isak is a streaky player, and as you say, several of the best strikers are. Those types of players that can win you a game on their own when they are in form. Haaland has had atleast 3 of these bad patches in the 2 and a half seasons he's been here. But when he's in form, he's breaking records.

Prior to this season Isak was on par with his xG for us, which is quite good relative to other strikers. This season he has underperformed his xG quite a bit more percentage wise. Not many strikes overperform xG by a meaningful margin, though. Even Wilson has underperformed his xG for us. Haaland has actually underperformed his xG by 6 goals in the last 2 seasons. A bit off topic, but I sometimes get surprised about how he misses some really big chances. He's just extremely good at being at the right place at the right time, and I think he overperforms xG when he plays in a more direct system like he did at Dortmund.

Atleast he's better than Gerrard.. Not the highest of bars though.

Here comes the usual Wilson and Isak injury swapping.

We need to stop making it difficult for ourselves in the first half. I'm tired of watching us chase a comeback in most games.

I think the real problem this season is that we very often concede the first goal. Statistics time. In 8 league games we've conceded first. We've scored first in 3 of them. One ended 0-0. We've been down by a goal at half time in 7 out of 12 (2 down vs Fulham). We've been in the lead 3 times (won all 3 by 1 goal). Historically under Howe our gameplan has worked best when we've taken the lead in the first half, and then punish the opponent when they push for an equalizer. We've had none of the bigger wins that we used to have. I think part of it is missing chances in the first half, then conceding simple goals, and the rest of the game gets really affected by that. Whereas if we score early it's a different game. In a way this season is a bit different in that we've keept the lead by not conceding more rather than scoring lots of goals. Also we've actually bounced back from a losing in the second half in 4 out of 7 games (taking 8 points from those).

Indeed, but I doubt we'll hear footballers calling them tourist club after the game, even if it's true haha.

They could just bring in those speakers Arteta used to play You'll never walk alone in training.

Honestly, I need to check it. Can't trust twitter haha. Not sure he would say "tourist club", that would be wild. Yeah, seems like it didn't happen.

Edit: Was fake quotes

I remember a quote from last summer, which I just found now. It was from Eales after we had signed Livra, Tonali and Barnes. “We can be creative, and will always be opportunistic — if the right deal comes up at the right price we will always be open for business. I understand that’s what fans want to know." I wonder if the Barnes deal was something they saw as opportunistic, meaning they thought the player for that price was a good deal, instead of focusing mostly what position we needed to strengthen the most. I mean, in hindsight this theory sounds a bit silly, but we did after all put our money on Barnes instead of a right winger. The real reason was probably just squad depth, as we still saw big Joe as a CM and therefore thought that we had just 1 pure LW after selling Maxi. But we could have signed an RW who can cover left, and clearly Big Joe is pretty decent out wide anyways.

Personally want to be a little more patient here, I'm sceptical as usual, but overall our form has been good the past couple of weeks. Lets say we take 10 point from our next 5 (should be doable with the fixtures), that will give us a lot of confidence going into the next ones. If we see more of that performance against West Ham (or just more of those results), I think many will start to lose patience. It will probably be something in between, and then we will have the same discussions over again.

I agree that the crisis wasn't necessarily self inflicted, but when several of our players comes back for a week or two only for the same injury to reoccur (some of them twice or more), then I think Howes words means something when he talks about learning from the past on the topic of with being patient with players returning from injuries.

No, but the timing of the appointment and his purpose wasn't a coincidence either. It was definetly a response to what happened last season.

They appointed Bunce for a reason, and Howe talks about learning from the past when it comes to managing returning players. If Botman was the only mess up, why would they think that measures needed to be taken, and that lessons were there to be learned?

We saw it with Hall. Shaky start to the season, but became increasingly more condident through trust and building momentum. You also don't build relationships with teammates by sitting on the bench.