Erikse

I think we agree for the most part. The only part I was reacting to was bringing in league position, which is based on all games, and then we should also consider whoever deserved the points in all of them. Ofcourse we deserved to win the last 2 and it's looking better performance wise.

Thanks for bringing it up. I thought the 3-0 loss to Everton at the start of december wasn't just down to fatigue. I was probably wrong, but I also said at the time that IF it's down to that, we're in for a horrible december. People like you refused to accept that, saying things like it varies from game to game. We all saw what happened.

The actual big picture is that performances has been pretty bad so far overall, and we were fortunate to not be in a bad position. In the last 2 games we have been much better, but have been a bit both ineffective and unfortunate. As allways, margins usually goes both ways and evens out a bit. "We could've been third" if luck just kept going our way like it has isn't the big picture to me.

Yeah, I know there has been an improvement. But talking about how we could be third is a different matter.

Just to clear up any confusion. What I was responding to orignally was: "It's such fine margins , Gordon scores that penalty against Everton and Isak scores that chance to put us 1 up on Saturday and we are sat joint 3rd with Arsenal and Villa." Now if this would've happened (winning both and being 3rd), we would've been the luckiest team in the league so far. If it wasn't for fine margins, we wouldn't even have a chance to go joint 3rd in the first place. Far from it.

Our league position is not determined on the last 2 games.

But you get the point.. It's pointless walking about what position we would be if margins had gone our way in the last 2 games, and just ignore all the margins we had on our side in the other games. All in all we've taken more points than what the performances would suggest, so how can we complain about margins? You understand this, right? It's pointless.

Feels like he needs some time unfortunately. Which is understandable. Hasn't played much since the start of last season, and is probably not mentally there yet either.

The defender had an easy job of avoiding to put an arm to it. Falling or not, it's not like anyone shot the ball into his arm from close range. It was just rolling on the ground. It's his responsibility to not intercept the ball with his arm in that situation, you'd think..

Not sure about the decision itself, but he has some very good points. I saw the situation that he's talking about, and it's really similar in my eyes.

If all luck had gone our way, and no bad luck had happened to us at all, we'd be 1st! But if all luck had gone against us we'd be bottom 3.

We were by far the team that overperformed our points tally the most before those games. According to xPTS we should have 9 by now, which on the current table would put us at 13th behind Brentford. So far this season we are high than we should be, thanks to margins (as you call it).

Neto, Felix and Nkunku can't get a start lately. Mudryk not even on the bench.

Seeems like he did cave into the decision of VAR though. I was watching it live and thought maybe the ref had given offside, because the players were arguing so much with him before the VAR decision. Seems like it was the case.

I think the ref made the right call, but I just sat there thinking "are City really going to get a dodgy decision against them??" You almost never see that. Obviously it didn't happen this time either.

Said it when they (City) played against us, can't remember the last time I saw them this tame. They are just a different team without Rodri.

Could you elaborate? I'm a bit confused as to why he did (unless there was a knock), but he must have had a reason for it. I just don't see how benching our best(?) and most efficient player so far this season is the solution to anything. I would almost go as far as benching Gordon over him considering current form. Obviously I'd just play Gordon right instead.

Which is also why I get a bit annoyed about the standard "isn't elite enough" type of comments everytime we are after a player in the £20-30m price range, just because the player wouldn't be a starter for the top teams. Sometimes there's some truth to it, but it feels like there's very high expectations for what type of signings we can do aswell.

Can the recieving defender even be inside the box when the kick is taken? I thought players (apart from taker + gk if he's not taking it) had to be outside the box.

Thanks, I was genuinely asking because I didn't know if I had missed something. Seemed like such a strange decision from the outside without any real context.

I was starting to wonder if he was trying to hard to avoid home bias.. Can't remember the last time I saw this many "small" errors all go one way.

Not sure what to think of our strategy so far. In one way it seems like we should have been more concerned about depth, but at the same time some of the top signings have been a great success for the price. It seems like our (allowed) spending power has gone down way before we were finished building the team that we were trying to build, but you could put that down lack of sales aswell. Feels like PSR is making it tighter and tighter for us in each passing window. If we go for a big money signing in the next 2 windows, and it doesn't hit the mark, it would be a disaster with PSR. I think the biggest worry for me is the aging squad, like we're going to have so many players to replace. We're still struggling to adapt to playing without Trippier alone, and we can't even get a fee for him. Getting a little bit off topic, but here we are.

Talking of injuries. I think I saw some talking about Isak and Gordon not being at perfect fitness today. Getting pretty tired of that stuff, no team has every player in perfect fitness. Interesting how we never look at the injuries and fitness of the team we're facing. They were missing Pedro, Webster, Adringa and Minteh, with March and Enciso having been out for a year. Mitoma was on the bench, presumably because he has travelled from Japan. I suppose Bruno has travelled far aswell, but the point is that we never talk about the problems of the opposition. As if we are allways worse of than everyone else on injuries and fitness. If we had the levels of injuries and fitness to key players as they had today, and we had lost in that condition, many would put the loss down to that factor alone as if we were completely crippled. But noone is saying that Brighton were crippled.

A mate who I'm playing against is not having the best of weeks.

This is the only likely explanation I can think of aswell. The alternative (Murphy in for Barnes) just seems so much worse regardless..