Mhsc

Imagine what would have happened to us if the fixtures WEREN'T this easy. We might be bottom.

And that's that. Poch has bottled that one big time I'm afraid. I'm sorry but we 100% had a squad available that could win that game if managed properly. He's got to take that one on the chin and learn QUICKLY. I still think he is going to get us there but he needs to very quickly stop doing strange things with his XI.

Poch just been writing off the first half in most games so far, trying to get us to play and win everything in a ~30 minute section of the 2nd half. Puts so much pressure on the players. Baffling but lets hope he learns.

We are playing pretty desperate chasing the game here but if we had started the game with this group on the field I really think we'd be winning tbh

We've bought a tonne of expensive risky strikers and it has never helped, usually makes the situation worse. But ok, if you are convinced Vlahovic would have been a decisive difference then that is a fair opinion but not one I could share confidently. Just as likely we'd have been all sitting here getting really angry that we signed him after he had a terrible game...

If Poch does anything other than take 100% blame for this I will lose a lot of respect for him tbh. I am ok with people making mistakes as long as they own them and learn. If he acts like he made the right calls and we were unlucky I will lose a lot of faith.

We didn't want him for £45m + Lukaku + 250k pw wages given serious injury problems but ok

Spending more money is not the answer. We have the squad to be far better than this.

Amazing work by Sterling. NJ with a tired swing at it :(

? He's touched it loads in the opposition half (dribbles/passes) but not done anything decisive, he did try a hard pass to send someone through but it got intercepted. But yes he is very Kai Havertz like stylistically imo, we'll see if he has the same flaws in time

Poch needs to come out after this and be a straight up man about the mistakes he's made with the lineup and be clear he has learnt and he reassure he knows what needs to be changed going forward.

Amount of times you can see NJ making a run in behind and someone taking the safer pass

He was in our final 3 shortlist with Poch if I recall. Decided it was better to go with someone with a bigger reputation I think after risking it on Potter + Lampard.

Hopefully Poch is proactive with a ~double substitution imminently

Honestly hard to take premier league seriously as a competition with the state of refereeing & VAR. Everyone knows it is a broken and corrupt system which is abused flagrantly by a biased group of referees but no one has the power to do anything about it. On our side, imo referees turned against us after the Clattenburg / Mikel incident and have never been fair to us again, completely blatantly and systematically. But it is the double whammy of seeing that and seeing Man Utd, Man City & Arsenal repeatedly get insane decisions in their favour. It is virtually every week one or the other of them gets points they don't deserve from a ref.

Chilwell could have had assist already

Personally think we would have walked away from Caicedo when it became obvious it was only going to be for silly money if we had been in a position of strength already with Ugarte in. Could be wrong but honestly would be REALLY surprised.

Bit Graham Potter-esque some of the personnel decisions Poch is making, aren't they? He's much better than Graham at talking to the media and I think there is a lot of value in playing a consistent system instead of tinkering all the time but boy playing people in weird positions is really hard for us fans to get our heads around isn't it? Like seeing Sterling being asked to play as wingback all over again.

Fair point. I mostly feel bad for Noni here, I didn't see it but he apparently played well midweek and I'm of the mind that you should always give a guy another game immediately after a good performance if you can. Would probably have preferred us to roll the dice on Noni RW and Sterling LW but I think we should remember to be patient with Chilwell as I said above. Lets see how the game goes.

It IS baffling if you play people based only on in-game form, but I guess there are two other considerations: he's our captain, and Poch is seeing him in training not just on match day. Like I said above, 99% of us also wanted Sterling sold or benched but Poch gave him the run of games and now he's found his form in the system. He could have scored in pretty much every game he's played so far I think and been not far off, honestly he might score a couple today and we'll all look dumb complaining about him being out there. Lets at least watch the first half before slamming Poch on this one, imo.

Deivid Washington straight onto the bench along with 2 GKs. Heh. I would have swapped Chilly for Palmer, Mudryk or even Maatsen but otherwise pretty much the lineup you would expect. I guess though to be fair to Poch he stuck by Sterling when most of us didn't want him to and then he hit some form so...

Maatsen refused to leave though. There was a rumour that we were trying last minute to get him to West Ham but didn't have time (perhaps he wants to stay in London or be at a club definitely staying in PL). But it seems likely he simply wants to leave on a free at the end of his contract and pocket the £31.5m via getting very good contract terms in his next gig. I did not realise Maatsen is not actually really an academy player but a Dutch player that grew up at Feyenoord we picked up for free as an 18 year old and put on a cheap contract. I really doubt he feels any loyalty to us and if we want to keep him we would have to offer him serious wages given he knows he can get plenty if he waits as the savings on transfer fee for a new club will go to him in large part via sign on fee and higher wages. IDK what is going on with Washington, feels like a real waste for him that we're keeping him around, feels like we just had 1 too many situations to sort out...

The highlight for me is the sheer number of high wage older players we've replaced with younger versions on lower wages who are better than those they replaced. But there have been loads of highlights tbh, finding Nicolas Jackson for a bargain price for example. We did fumble Ugarte (which probably would have led to us not having to panic buy Caicedo for £115m) and I think we pretty clearly ignored the main thing Poch was asking for (experienced players to mix in with the youth, especially in midfield). We are still in a slightly dubious situation up front if NJ gets injured, and we didn't get rid of all of the players on the deals we wanted but of course that relies on other clubs. Still a solid 8/10 tbh super optimistic about what these directors + Poch will achieve after several years of squad building, finally feels like we might be on a long term path to reach City's level and displace them if they fumble.

Exactly, our defensive shape is 4-2-3-1 but we are attacking with 3 ATB which is the same thing we did for all of preseason too and the same as lots of top teams play (the 3-2-5 type setup). It is just the personnel in the system that is different to what we were seeing before and we don't look anywhere near as fluid or dangerous without Nkunku and with the introduction of Chilwell in this advanced role, he's good at some things but he's also fundamentally quite a limited player and it stifles us sometimes. Colwill makes sense as a LB in these tactics tbh, as Poch is only asking one fullback (the RB at the mo) to really push forward, and if you want to pick a player who can defend 1v1s in the 4-2-3-1 shape but also help us build out from the back in the 3-2-5 then honestly Colwill is way better than Chilwell for that, as it really isn't a role for bombing down the wing in support like Chilly would excel at. I do not think that Lavia coming back or any players coming back will change the 4-2-3-1 / 3-2-5 setup we have, this is literally Poch's system and he's going to stick by it & his principles and try to bring the players to a good level in it IMO. I actually do not know how he will play Enzo, Caicedo and Lavia together but my guess is that it will be by one of them playing somewhere we consider quite strange, like perhaps Caicedo playing a bit further forward like Kante did and being a pressing machine and winning the ball high up for us (e.g. the right side of the 4-2-3-1)

If you think this was a 6 then how are you rating the past ~10 years of transfer windows? All under 3 I assume?