Erikse

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.

Basically the amount of key players they rely on have gotten less and less. They use to have like 9 or even 10 key players. With Rodri out they have like 3 or 4, maybe? Even Kyle Walker is looking awful and has done so for a while, and Lewis doesn't seem ready to yet. Atleast not ready to play in a struggling side.

Missed that, but not sure whether he will start atleast.

Yeah, well he came on for the last 20 (they also scored in that time), but probably didn't have a big impact.

The fairness of the financial play is through the roof.

This will probably have the effect of replacing more locals with tourists? Potensially hurting the atmosphere.

Just saw that Kovacic will be out for atleast another month, so their midfield is screwed for another 4 league games + the CL game vs Juve.

They're without Eze, Olise, Wharton and Anderson from those who played against us last time when we faced them. Should be a different game this time around..

Oh my, I completely forgot about that. I just remember that they were much better before that Arsenal game, and they seemed like their usual self until that game. That difference obviously didn't have anything to do with Rodri then.

Bringing in value was a pretty small point, but I think some of our fanbase tends to underrate our team of players a little. I think it's more than reasonable to expect atleast 7th without Europe. Finishing behind Villa with all their added games would be underperforming imo. I don't think that their squad is really that much better than ours, if it's even better in the first place. Personally I think our depth is decent aswell, it just seemed worse than what it really is last season. Most of our backups are ageing at this point, though.

And then he appoints Howe as his assistant. I think that might be the soltion.

I can just imagine the lack of atmosphere aswell, though (didn't watch today). Them being next level worse is probably a mix several smaller factors piling up on top of the existing ones, so I get your point.

They were fine before his injury. Winning every game, some of them by a margin. Beating Chelsea 0-2 away from home. A draw against Inter, but they dominated them, and Inter is currently nr. 1. After his injury they haven't had a single good game, apart from smashing Sparta Prague. Huge difference before vs after. Obviously the first few losses also leads to a loss in motivation. Their team just isn't that great without Rodri, key players are ageing.

They also sold Alvarez and replaced him with Savinho. Alvarez would've been very useful for them this season.

I'll do it. Right after our game vs them: Their next few games were telling, because they barely beat bottom placed teams. Allways thought they would probably struggle a lot without him, it's not even hindsight. Ofcourse noone expected them to be this bad.

Yeah, I'm writing them off of winning the league. Can't even beat Feyenoord at home. This is a completely different Man City.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same, the only difference being that you play on the 29th while we played on the 1st of jan instead. From 1st of december to 15th of january we had 11 games, the exact same as you. But I agree that the added games right after that are painful.

I think we had the same last year.

"You don't just suddenly heal" - Ødegaard when pulling out from Norway, right before starting twice a week for Arsenal

I don't really know myself, but look at the last discussion in the NUFC specific FFP/PSR discussion thread. It's apparently about amortization from old transfers and wages being about even with our income, and that we would be relying on selling if we got Guehi in the summer. Also there were some talk of us actually bidding less for Guehi than what was reported. Didn't someone inside the club state that? Don't remember tbh. Not sure how much of this is true.