Erikse

Yeah, I'm not sure how literal he's being in that statement, and to what extent he wants to use that philosophy. I agree that consistency is important, but sometimes flexibility is important aswell.

Just saw the interview Howe did on talksport. He said: "I allways believe in time you'll get the results that you crave if you keep being consistent with what you do." What we are doing works really well when we have the energy levels to do it, plus a bench. What if we are back in Europe and/or get another injury crisis? Our players will go through fatigue (and injury problems) again in future seasons.

We do lack a little bit of pace overall. I think Almiron is actually one of our better players for stopping counters.

Not really a surprising heat map or anything, but this is the heatmap of Man City against us: It's quite clear to see where they were operating. I checked their heatmaps in other games, and they usually don't look like this. Could also be partly because we were 2-1 up and defending for most of the 2nd half however, so I'm not sure how much we can read from this.

I was so hyped about Willock and his potensial before the season. I thought he would end up being a world class player, because he is still young and he was showing glimpses of magic last season. He could still become world class, we just have to hope that he won't be injury prone in the seasons ahead, and that the achilles injury doesn't affect his pace.

Drinkwater and Fofana aswell. Rodgers made some comments about FFP when the Man City case came to light again last year. “I don’t think FFP has worked,” Rodgers said. “That’s my honest opinion. "If you look at clubs like ourselves, where our owner could spend more money but he can’t because of the restrictions, the size of our ground, commercially... that holds teams and clubs like ourselves back, while other teams can financially exploit that. So I’m not sure that really works to be honest.” They were in trouble with FFP after a failed window where they spent £55m on Daka, Soumare and Vestergaard, while having the 7th biggest wage bill in the league. Not really anything crazy. Being in trouble with FFP caused the owners to make a decision to pull the handbrake and stop spending for a good while. They probably wouldn't be a top 4 regular, but they could've potensially stayed as a top 6 contender. Kind of like Everton back in the day maybe?

Leicester is a good example, they were competing for top 4 for some years but eventually they just couldn't keep up, and ran into issues with FFP despite spending half of what some of their competitors in the top 6 had done. Eventually they couldn't even spend enough to replace their goalkeeper and got relegated. Like how do you break into the elite in a system like that and actually manage to stay there? You gotta be 10 times smarter and run the club 10 times better than the top clubs, who can just correct their mistakes by spending even more money. Just look at how many flops Man United have bought in the last 5-10 years, and they can still spend a fortune every year.. Imagine if a mid table club fucked up several windows, eventually selling some expensive players for half of what they bought them for. It would be a death sentence.

I had Saka as captain and De Bruyne in my team 2 days before deadline. Read online that de Bruyne wouldn't start, so I brought in Foden for De Bruyne and gave him the captaincy instead of Saka. This move probably ruined my gameweek, if Saka gets a big haul it will be a disaster. I have a feeling he will because he has gotten a much needed break, and Palace are not very good.

I can see that, but the media was making it seem like we had to sell a key player BECAUSE of that £74m loss, and implying that this loss has a huge impact. Not sure if that loss in isolation would be the reason if it's nearly 3 years ago and will get dropped in july.

Hmm. If it drops off at 1st of july, why does this potensially cause us to have to sell a valuable player in the summer? I get that in general selling gives you a lot of wiggle room sometimes, but from the news that dropped the other day it really seemed like that loss was going to hurt us in the windows this year (including the summer).

"Under the league’s PSR, clubs are allowed to lose a maximum of £105million ($134m) or £35m per season over a rolling three-year reporting cycle." I'm one who hasn't really studied the FFP rules that much. Does this mean that our £74m loss is nothing to worry about, since a new cycle will now begin and the calculation will start from scratch?

Liverpool at home, PSG away, Chelsea in the cup, Milan at home and now the Man City game.. All heartbreaks at the end. Gotta love this season. Atleast we had some memorable moments like PSG at home..

Oh Werner.. I've missed watching those finishes.

I know Arsenal fans are talking about how they should sign him. Good luck with that. They are already near the limit with FFP. It's not like we would sell him for the same price as we bought him.

Honestly we don't have many pacey players in general, except from the forwards. Midfield and defence are all either slow or medium paced, except from Willock who has been out and possibly big Joe (who is also out). We struggle to keep up on the counter sometimes (although not necessarily today). Atleast our forwards like Isak, Gordon and Almiron are really quick.

Ownership skyrocketing like crazy.

Last season it looked like he didn't have an end product. People were criticizing him for lack of g/a (which was fair), and barely scoring goals at all. This, along with other parts of his game, has improved so much. His shooting and crossing ability is actually really good at this point. Lovely. Also, I have a feeling that this guy will stay with us for several years.

Yeah that's my point. They are making it seem like City did something special. They played against players who couldn't even run anymore.

The thing that annoy me the most is that everyone is raving about what an incredible comeback it was and how insane it was to win it at stoppage time. I mean... If you had been following us the last couple of months then you would know that it would be way more surprising if that didn't happen at the end. Doing a comeback on us in the last 15 is nothing special right now. Couldn't be less surprised about it.

Remember when we went from 19th place halfway through, to finishing 11th, and to then finish at 4th place next season?

No unfortunately we are not in the top 6 position on the table. We are 10th which means we are the 10th best club in the league. Not good!

Damn. We went from being a top 6 team to average in 1 month. 3 months ago we were superior to PSG, Dortmund and Milan. Things really change quickly, huh? Man City went from being the 3rd best team in England to being the 2nd best. In just 1 game. Crazy! But after tomorrow they might go back to being the 3rd best team..

Sorry guys.. My bad.

There surely has been some close calls after Trippier slipped up defensively last season. Some of them ended in a goal against, but many of them were cleaned up. So it's not really something new. People were commenting that he was not really good defensively last season. I think the slip ups has definetly been happening more frequently lately though.

It's unlucky, but that's what often happens when we are under pressure for so long. Not that we can start attacking them when we are out of energy anyways.