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2 minutes ago, Tsunami said:

I think what is most disappointing is that when they went down to 10 men we didn’t put Trent under any pressure. He was 1 foul away from a 2nd yellow (albeit he should have been sent off before VVD). I’d have pinged everything to Gordon and looked to have used out extra man in and around Trent at every opportunity.

 

Poor day at the office, Howe had his head in his hands when the winner went in. Have to learn from this. 

 

It helps TAA when they go down to 10 men as if changes his role completely.  Instead of being an attacking RB he's there's simply to defend.

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4 minutes ago, joeyt said:

 

The subs cost us the game

 

Gordon had just pulled up with cramp and was blowing out his arse and Isak was anonymous. The Tonali seemed strange though, he was playing well.

 

Individual errors cost us the game though.

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10 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

Thought the setup was fine, as were most of the subs. Potentially could have done with Tonali's quality later in the game, but no idea how he was doing fitness wise.


Madness. 

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I don't think there was any need for us to make 3 subs all in one go.

 

Before they introduced the new 5 subs rule you'd never see a manager do that unless they wanted to completely alter everything about the game's flow. And any flow we did have was compeltely lost with that triple change

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10 minutes ago, Big Geordie said:

There will be crackerjacks among our lot who expect us to go and challenge for the PL, this season - that's really unlikely to happen. It's more about targeting a top 8 finish and having a right fucking go at the cups and the CL, IMO.  Nothing to lose on the latter.

 

Nobody at the club will be targeting a top 8 finish, and rightly so. 

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Just now, El Prontonise said:

 

It helps TAA when they go down to 10 men as if changes his role completely.  Instead of being an attacking RB he's there's simply to defend.

There were 2 occasions in the 1st half where he couldn’t challenge Gordon in case he mistimed a tackle and Gordon simply ran past him. It didn’t happen again as we started playing the ball in front of the Liverpool defenders and perhaps unintentionally we stepped off the pace.

 

Eddie won’t sleep tonight and rightly so.

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2 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

They should be - it’s about right.  Top 8 minimum, then as high as possible above that. 

I would have thought top 8 would be exactly what our 'target' would be?

Last season was obviously way ahead (maybe, and don't shoot me, maybe way too soon ahead) of what our trajectory would have been targeted as.

But I would think given the decent investment, then a top 8 finish would be seen as about par? 6/7 very good, anything above delirious again.

We must be aiming to be better than most sides in the league surely (Take out Man City, LiVARpool, Manure, Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea) then up there with Villa as best of rest, with pans for more investment in January and next summer?

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4 minutes ago, Alberto2005 said:

Why would we aim to finish 4 places lower ?

 

Yeah expectations need to be managed, but what sort of message does this send out if we're aiming to do worse than the previous season.


I tell you one group of people who certainly won't be targeting 8th and that's the Saudis. Absolutely crazy people saying we should be aiming for 8th 

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7 minutes ago, Alberto2005 said:

Why would we aim to finish 4 places lower ?

 

Yeah expectations need to be managed, but what sort of message does this send out if we're aiming to do worse than the previous season.

Expectations aren’t being managed if you’re aiming to finish higher.

 

This is likely to be a much tougher season than last year.  Some players are likely to ‘return to the mean’, other clubs will be used to our players and style of play, there’s more games (tough ones), other clubs now view us as a big game, etc etc. 

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9 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

They should be - it’s about right.  Top 8 minimum, then as high as possible above that. 

 

It's a losing mentality, progression and momentum is the name of the game in elite sports. There may well be circumstances where a lower finish is acceptable but it certainly shouldn't be the target. 

 

"Once we're in the CL, the point is to stay there" - anonymised quote from one of our higher-ups from an Athletic article this summer 

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20 minutes ago, Jagten said:

Mostly OTT takes in a game where we weren’t great but were still unlucky not to win. That said, we have doubled down on Eddie – hired his family and gone to the limit FFP in pursuit of his style. I hope it does not become relevant to ask whether we could have hedged our advantageous position better.   

Hmm, it's an interesting discussion to have, I just don't know if I can see the other side of the argument. 

 

They tried for a more 'pedigreed' option in Unai Emery and were rejected. I don't remember who else was available at that time, but you'd have to consider the first 18 months of Howe's tenure an success. 

 

In terms of transfers, it would appear from the limited exposure on All or Nothing, that deals require full alignment from the recruitment team, and I can't think of any that have been total failures (Wood is probably the worst, but was a desperate, temporary, solution). 

 

That leads us into the topic of his style. He wanted us to bridge the gap as quickly as possible and has clearly (if somewhat ironically) seen a blueprint in what Liverpool did under Klopp. No system is infallible, and Howe's next obstacle showed itself today - how do we break through teams that sit deep. We'll need to figure that out and we'll need to do it promptly. 

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2 minutes ago, et tu brute said:


I tell you one group of people who certainly won't be targeting 8th and that's the Saudis. Absolutely crazy people saying we should be aiming for 8th 

No one is saying ‘aim for 8th’.  8th at a minimum.  Anything less than that is a bad season. 

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1 minute ago, Barnes23 said:

 

It's a losing mentality, progression and momentum is the name of the game in elite sports. There may well be circumstances where a lower finish is acceptable but it certainly shouldn't be the target. 

 

"Once we're in the CL, the point is to stay there" - anonymised quote from one of our higher-ups from an Athletic article this summer 

Probably need more commercial deals to secure that - FFP effectively capped our spend at around £100m.  They can talk it up as much as they want - money is what really talks in football 

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1 minute ago, TheBrownBottle said:

No one is saying ‘aim for 8th’.  8th at a minimum.  Anything less than that is a bad season. 


I disagree with that, 8th as a minimum for where we are now shouldn't be accepted. As I said I'm quite certain the Saudis won't accept it either 

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