Erikse

Last season we had a midfield crisis, whenever Joelinton was available we would've had a huge problem if Gordon was also out. Isak can cover LW, but I have never been impressed by him there. He seems wasted there. On top of that Wilson is never fit, so if Gordon is out aswell, Isak can't just cover both. Relying on playing players out of position is only really viable if you can afford to have less depth in other positions.

The problem then becomes depth at LW. Last season Gordon played an incredible amount of minutes, partly due to the Barnes injury, but if Gordon would have been injured we wouldn't have a natural LW to cover. We can use Joelinton there, but then we're just moving the problem to midfield instead. It seemed as if we had to sell ASM to buy anyone, and that left us short in that position. The ideal thing would have been to get a young but ready LW for a cheap price on top of an RW, but we couldn't even get a reasonably priced third choice striker for this season.. Indeed we are weak on the right, but atleast we have a couple of players who are natural right wingers. From a depth perspective an LW made more sense, just not from a first 11 perspective. Added games from CL was definetly a consideration. Maybe we should've tried to find someone cheaper than Barnes for that role, and save the rest of the money instead, as I think Howe still had a lot of faith in Gordon.

Don't forget that he missed a chance last weekend. No way anyone will be in for him now.

Look at it this way. We made some big signings, and they turned out to be a success. But, we end up with an unbalanced team of stars and mediocre players, with not enough depth, and PSR hitting us harder than ever. Our star signings have increased in value by a lot, but that only matters if we're selling one. Currently as a team we rely on players who are being held back by the players around them, and the big increase in value doesn't count for anything atm. If Isak wants to stay, then great, we will not throw him out unless the bid is right. But it's becoming more clear that we can't build a balanced and deep squad by being shit scared of losing someone who can actually play fotball. Some would argue that we should have taken a more depth oriented approach from the beginning. That can still be done, if we take advantage of the success we've had with the bigger signings, by securing that big profit. Gotta love what PSR does to us fans, btw.

I think Tonali still hasn't completely adapted to the PL either. From what I've seen, he often looks better for Italy. Might also be chemistry involved there. He needs to play as much as possible as long as he's playing fine, and then we can judge after some time.

We need players who can give us that little bit extra. Longstaff can do a job, but it's very rare that he does something extraordinary. We have enough of the Longstaff types in the team. Offensively we've been missing players with that little bit extra sometimes (when Isak is not fit and in form), and it's what makes the top teams win games where the opponent tries to defend most of the game. For example, I don't think Longstaff would be well suited for the gamestate of the last 2 games. We would have been even easier to defend against with him in there.

What a performance by Paul Mitchell! Rescuing Gordon from the claws of Liverpool. A true hero. Eddie can't thank him enough!

The one player who didn't let Pardew drag him down, so he had to put him in the stands.

Almost as easy as smashing PSG.

Still have to monitor Sons injury situation now. Son is out tomorrow. Think he will be fine aswell for the weekend though. Edit: apparently just sore, and they didn't plan to have him involved anyways.

Wait, I thought his head was in Liverpool and he couldn't wait to leave?

Sign him up!

Had a look, points taken last 20 min for the entire 23/24 season: Apr 6 vs Fulham 1-0 (81) March 30 vs West Ham (77, 83, 90) 4-3 Feb 17 vs Bournemouth (90+2) 2-2 So we took points in the last 20 minutes 3 times all of last season. We've actually done better on that this season, I guess. But we killed a lot of games last season, and also had fatigue issues, so ofcourse there are reasons for it.

Yeah, I realised after I posted that we've scored some late goals this season. Mostly long distance shots I think, but still fine. Last season we mostly lost points at the end of games. Partly down to players being too tired at the end. So that's what I remembered, but in the last couple of games I think due to the visible frustration, lack of confidence, and the gamestate, you just have that feeling that there's such a low chance.

I thought about this last game. How often do we equalize or score a winner in the last 10 min of a match? And even worse, how often do we do it in stoppage time? When we passed the 80 min mark, it felt like the game was over already. Not just looking at this season, but 2024 overall. Edit: We've actually rescued some point around the 75-80 min mark this season, so my recollection was a bit bad here.

I find myself caring less and less. Was somewhat interesting with Messi and Ronaldo competing for it, though.

Apparently it's leaked? Or?

That's why I said "for an okay price" in my post, and that this is easier said than done. I assume that if we had been able to bring in good players for a decent price in previous windows, we would've done so. Mitchell coming it doesn't change the price of players, unless he somehow is an amazing negotiator.

Well, apart from the first window we haven't been able to find that after the takeover. We were able to get Gordon, who turned out to be great, but he did nothing in the first 6 months.

Problem now is that we rarely want to spend extra to get someone in january. If we don't, that will be 3 windows of selling Minteh and Anderson, while signing Kelly and Osula.. Really hope we can manage to get someone that can do a job immidiately for an okay price, but that much easier said than done.

It's hard to tell, as someone has pointed out on the forum we are really unbalanced, probably the most unbalanced team in the league. That makes us even harder to predict imo, as we are relying a lot on a few players.

We can still hit form, like any other team. It's so unpredictable. I'm hoping some of the teams in Europe will encounter some of the problems that we had last season. It would probably start happening in december in that case.