Erikse

I think Arsenal will hit form with Ødegaard back, they are even much better defensively with him in the side. But I doubt they will catch Liverpool regardless. I can see them getting another 2nd place finish this season.

Spent 12 points on these subs last 2 gameweeks. Last round it was -4, but my subs earned me 13 more, so net 9 points. This round it was -8, but it has given me 11 more with Hall still to play (net 3 so far). Sometimes it works. (don't ask me about Gabriel out and then back in please)

I think it was @Ronaldo who suggested that we should have beat them that day, considering how they played. That started some heat, but I quietly agreed. We weren't at our best, and yet they were even worse. Obviously facing them now would be even better for us though, that's for sure.

Imagine if Pep quits or gets fired a few games after the contract extension. Would be something.

Just got that new contract.

I wonder how many City need to lose in a row for people to realise that they are just a bad team now..

What a bad signing Nunes was if he wasn't good enough to start today, considering their lineup.

I think it just got better, it did for me without logging out. Edit: nevermind.

It's true, but Man City are just not very good lately in general. Isn't this going to be their 5th loss in a row if they lose? Kovacic being out was just the tip of the iceberg. Their midfield has barely any defensive power at all.

Lewis, Gundogan and Foden as the midfield 3 today. Seems pretty weak defensively..

Not being able to score at home with 11 vs 10 for an hour against a team who has conceded 2 goals per game on average so far. Another Dyche masterclass.

I have Cunha and Jackson, so I can't complain really. Would have liked for Palmer to score that incredible miss that Madueke saved, though, as that would've given me 10 more points.

I think there was a bit of a new manager effect in the beginning.

Yeah, I think it was this exact time last year where the injuries started to ramp up, and we lost twice to Dortmund. At the time we were in a better position in the league than what Villa is now, I think.

Their shit run even started earlier than ours. They could be in for a pretty disappointing season. They haven't had that many injuries yet, but december will be brutal.

Not being able to bring in Pedro was allways going to terrorize me, wasn't it? I guess I'll regret more and more each round.

Knew it would turn around after those first few games. I wonder what excuses he has in his locker now. He's had some time to think out some new ones in his time off. Is it still the fans, the players and the media?

Ødegaard starts for Arsenal. Shock. Not.

Wood on the bench, I guess they want someone quicker for counters? I remember Wood destroying us on the counter last season, though. Maybe that was just completely out of the ordinary.

I think the media has some blame in that. Fans trying to turn him into a villain also won't make him more comfortable. Sure, he shouldn't really care about it all, but I don't he's really letting it affect his work. I can agree that maybe he could've done some things different in that first interview to calm down some of the noise, though.

What was weird in those quotes? The only thing I can see someone finding weird was the joke he made, but not everyone will like the same joke.

Sounds promising to me, even gives credit to the work that was done before him. Pints for PSR was just a small joke here. I thought it was funny tbh, maybe that's just me.

At the time the treatment methods probably still wasn't as good as today, which makes it even worse.

As Howe talks about relating to injuries, he keeps repeating that we need to learn from the past. The injury problems last season was seen by many as sheer bad luck and we were forced into do everything we did, but Howe clearly feels like they could've done something differently, even when every decision had a reasonable explanation. Where I'm going with this is that we can look back at players like Almiron, Trippier and Wilson, and think about how selling them not so long after their last good spell would potensially have been great. Maybe the club wanted to, and there were no good enough bids, and in that case there club wasn't really at fault. But it's atleast something to think about, especially if they were fixated on someone having had a good patch, and expected it to come back. An important context here being that all of them are past 30, so a sudden drop off isn't uncommon. You'd think that we'd have a mindset of "what will probably happen tomorrow?" rather than "what happened yesterday?". I understand that it's hard to identify when someone has a high chance of dropping off the next season, but I think it's possible. The 18 goal season for Wilson was highly unusual for him, it was unlikely for him to avoid injury problems for another season. The biggest issue would probably be to afford a replacement as we wouldn't have gotten that much for any of those. That's where we need a good scouting network.

Well, if they were truly trying to get even more for him, that means we were miles of each other. Strange how we kept trying then. Maybe they wanted to make the price seem that high for other potensial bidders.