Erikse

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.

And apparfently we will still have problems in january, seemingly having to sell if we buy.

True, but Howe isn't known to rotate all that much either. He often prefers to stick with the same team. A bad performance could ofcourse change it.

My use of "currently" was meant to mean right now. I guess next weekend will be quite telling. He might make changes after a performance like that.

Howe currently prefers Willock, Joelinton, Bruno and Longstaff over him in midfield. Him getting 30 minutes each game is indicates that it was a bad singing. It can still change, but it's hard to not lose patience. Judging by price and wages he's supposed to be a key player.

You're pretending to not get my point. Ofcourse his skill level matters to some degree, but do you think paying £55m + £200k per week for our 5th choice midfielder is great business? Because in your post you made it sound like a fantastic signing, which atm just looks silly.

I also thought that Tonali was a brilliant signing at the time, even though I didn't know much about him. His actual skill level doesn't really matter though, as long as he's basically being used as a £55m squad player, rumoured to be on like £200.000 per week. I don't doubt that he's our highest paid player, most definelty in the top 3. He's our 4th (or even 5th) choice in the midfield atm.

The idea last summer was to get us ready for CL, but it didn't work that way because of all the injuries. In hindsight it's fair to argue that it might have been short sighted to buy expensive players for squad depth, but we were ofcourse very unlucky with Barnes and Tonali. With our current situation those signings doesn't look that great anymore. Maybe there was a bigger picture to be seen last summer.

With PSR very few clubs can spend £150m per year though. So it is a lot in this day and age. And obviously that has had a huge impact for us, both on this years and the next few windows spending power.

Not that it means that much, but transfermarkt has our squad value at 7th, despite having an ageing squad. The thing is our weakness, accoring to many atleast, was supposed to be squad depth. We have some very good key players that most other teams don't have. We're not in Europe, and we don't have that many injuries currently. So this is supposed to suit us perfectly, as we can field most of our key players each week without suffering too much from fatigue or having to use too many mediocre backups.

I'm a bit surprised about it myself. I thought he was great going forward at the start of last season (from the right), but haven't seen that much of it since he got back in to play regularly this year. He's a completely different player than Trippier, seems almost like the polar opposite atm.