Sir Joel Inton

Do wonder what he would look like in the Gordon experiment up front. He’s a finisher. Not sure he’s got as much tenacity as Gordon in the press though.

All four of our starting defenders last night (Trippier, Burn, Thiaw and Hall) individually have more goal involvements than Elanga this season. The fifth defender who came on, Livramento, has an equal tally to Elanga. Astonishingly bad. He should have scored in the first half when played through, that wasn’t offside either imo, although it was very tight, but I think it would have counted. I do think starting him and getting him running at the full back all match before bringing Murphy on is the best option. But neither of them are anywhere near good enough for where we want to be. The fact he is only 23, soon to be 24, is the only saving grace. We have time to hopefully make him look semi ok before flogging him in hopefully an inflated market and getting our money back.

He’s played the most football of anyone, in a calamitous defence at times. It’s no surprise he might be tired, physically or mentally, leading to something like this happening. He should never have been put in the position where he needed to put his foot in, several other players failed before he did.

He’s getting the typical Howe treatment that we’ve seen with the likes of Hall. Sadly, he’s not 21 and we don’t really have the time for him to adjust to Howe’s expectations and standards. I do think we’ll see better from him next season, if he’s still here.

Just an incredibly tidy player.

Without knowing anything about him, having seen him during his first interview it was so clear he was going to come in and kick arse and upset a very mentally fragile team Literally couldn’t have picked a worse interim. He will never last the season but hopefully he stays long enough to do enough damage that nobody else can recover.

Disagree, to be honest. Wissa would never have pressed as much as Osula did for 60 minutes. That kept Barca at arms length and under pressure for long periods. I think he got that decision spot on. I would have bought Wissa on instead of Gordon though or bought him on for Barnes after the goal and put Gordon on the wing. That said it probably wouldn’t have made any difference as we were all over the shop trying to hang on. He got it right again tonight but this is vintage Howe, at home against a good side who will attack us. These games have never been his issue. His issue will be the mackems, Bournemouth, Brighton and West Ham at home. We can’t really afford to throw the Chelsea game at the weekend, win that and we’re 6 behind them and won’t be far off Brentford in 7th. We desperately need European football and anything other than that will be a disaster.

Still very much Adama Traore. His pace makes him look a better player than he actually is. Murphy came on and changed the game by putting the best ball in the box we’ve seen all night, in an instant. Combine the two players somehow and you’d have a cracking player but individually they are nowhere near what we need.

European teams don’t know how to play against us, imo. They attack and leave us the gaps we need to play. Similar to when Leicester were in the CL and got to the QF(?), teams had no idea how to cope with Vardy or their counter attack. By this time a lot of PL teams had worked them out and their league form was terrible. PL teams have worked out they just need to sit in and give us the ball. Barca tried this to an extent today but their natural ambitions to play football left them vulnerable.

It looked like he kept touching his ear piece. Might be wrong but I thought the same as you until late in the game when I noticed him doing it and saw his hand was actually on his ear.

A sucker punch but when I get over that, I’m genuinely more positive about us getting through at 1-1 than I would be at 1-0. We’d go and try and sit in on that 1-0 lead and get torn apart, imo. Man City away on steroids. At 1-1, we can go and PSG them. Reckon we have every chance.

He got it completely spot on yesterday from start to finish. Usually his in game management is an issue but his reaction to the red and late changes (both personnel and tactically) got us the win. Sorry to break your heart but thanks again for thinking about me.

Can anyone tell me how this was given as offside this evening? Is it even possible for your head to be ahead of your knee when you are running in that manner, without your upper body being completely bent over? Would love to see the testing of this semi automated offside because decisions like this and many others this season just seem totally bizarre. And why does the graphic they show always have the player in a different position to the real life one? This one from yesterday in Villa v Chelsea, the Chelsea player’s foot is in a completely different position on the graphic to the real image. Mings is also leaning away from the goal but appears stood up straight in the graphic.

I won’t carry on the conversation as it’s boring, but just to set the record straight I would’ve stayed (and will do) ‘disappeared’, but only commented as you asked where I had gone, assuming to make a lazy point like you have above that I had stopped posting purely as things had got better. If you want me to send proof of Whatsapp messages of my praise for Howe and the team over the last few weeks, ping me a message Your point is also ridiculed by the fact I haven’t logged in to post any criticism, despite the performance and result today. Anyway, get outside and enjoy your evening rather than thinking about me x

Still here. Just stopped posting as I was fed up of being hounded across the forum by people on the internet because my opinion didn’t align with theirs. If I wanted to spend my time doing that I’d post on Facebook.

I’ll send you a complete list when home from work and able to cross reference

I think because of the defence we need to out score the opposition as much as possible. We were fortunate last night imo that we came up against a truly terrible side. Burn and Trippier were extremely vulnerable and exposed with the same difficulties in the last 3 games but as soon as Odobert went off, they gave virtually no threat. Our options at the moment are to try and fix the defensive shape or outscore the opposition. Think we’ll see a lot more of the Leeds and Brentford game scores (either way) until we get Miley/Livramento back. As for the striker situation, I still hold a vague hope both will come good but cannot blame him at all for dropping both as they’ve not been good enough. We still have loads of issues to address but hopefully this gives us a bit of momentum to build upon. A win on Saturday would be a massive lift too but equally not the end of the world if we do go out as it’s tough opposition and will free up some fixtures

Have they? Most of the people I’ve seen have all commented on this thread in the last 24 hours.

Just realised they don’t have a single academy senior player in their squad. Ben Davies the closest but he was from Swansea initially. Whilst I’m not going all Brexit and suggesting teams need local lads in the team. I bet it does have an impact.

What’s Ryan Mason up to after getting peddled by West Brom? Bet he’s waiting by his phone.

Agree. Players also a big part of the issue. Team full of self indulgent tossers like Maddison, Richarlison, Tel, Simons etc. Can’t see anyone in their squad who would grab the team by the bollocks and pull them up to standard in the same way a Bruno type would. Romero would be that guy but he’s too busy getting himself sent off every week and making the problem worse. Who is going to listen to him?

I dunno They’ve only won 2 games in the league since the end of October and haven’t won a single game in 2026. Their next game is Arsenal so every chance that record extends into March.

I’ve not seen it back yet, but was he blocked? Looked like he was too busy trying to pretend to be fouled.

Didn’t watch most of the game obviously but I assume as Man Utd scored in the 96th minute they added a shit ton of time on for no reason?

Can these cunts actually go down? Fuck me. Inject every bit of that into my veins.