Tomo

I initially/lazily assumed Werner would be a LW but now i'm pretty sure he will play up top, if nothing else the progress Pulisic is making see's to that.

Couldn't disagree more, he holds his own against talents his age (as those graphs below show) and this is despite coming back from a serious injury that has ended many a career. I'm happy to do a Redknapp stick my neck on the line and say unless he's blighted by injuries he's going right to the very top.

I would maybe experiment more with Ross there as i kind of like the idea of a Jorgi/Gilmour, Ziyech, Mount midfield in certain games next season. I think Frank may be thinking similar but unfortunately Kante instead of Jorgi/Gilmour. So in that sense Barkley is playing Hakim, so to speak.

By that same logic Greenwood has done nothing notable yet United fans are rightly going gaga over him. If it was between giving him 120k plus add one even this early or potentially seeing him at a rival, it's would be a short conversation. I'm not exactly sure why paying our biggest attacking academy talent for decades money which is in the modern day squad player level wages is deemed so controversial, not one club in the world would think twice if it came to it. Also he was a big part of our Europa win, wanted by one of the world's biggest clubs who were prepared to lay out their at the time second highest ever fee on a player, Pep was so worried about his introduction in the LC final he immediately ordered a double up. This season he returned from a serious injury and for about a month was top class. Came on Vs Brighton and layed out a beautiful assist for Willian to finish the game, then four days later comes on for his CL debut and within a minute assists the winner had a very good spell from that point followed by a meh winter but from Christmas onwards upto his injury he was fantastic including creating about 6 clear chances in our game against Arsenal. His general decision making is very mature for his age and a lot of his assists and key chances created have happened through moments of intelligence and awareness that Willian is known to lack. There's every chance he's going to be a world class player and all the metrics back that up. Also you mention Sancho, if we sign him he'll command wages in the 300k region, which kind of backs up my point.

Define, anything of note.

120k plus add ons is hardly outrageous for an elite prospect. If say United have to pay that to keep Greenwood do you really think they wouldn't?

Usually after a bad result has particularly annoyed me I eventually look at it in a bit more context and feel a bit better on refection, not today, if anything it's got me even more wound up. The main reason being it was totally avoidable, I have got a bit of stick for being critical despite the three wins last week but I was doing it for a reason and that was because I could see a night like this coming from Mars. Even if we got away with it last night (which we nearly did as Giroud should have scored near the end) I still would have felt down as it was only kicking the can down the road, make no mistake this was coming, if it didn't happen tonight it would have been Bramal Lane or Selhurst Park (possibly even Watford at home), still could be if no lessons are learned! If that was our best line up I'd suck it up until there's a chance to change things, but it wasn't, EVERY SINGLE PLAYER who was part of that incredible smashing of Everton (which was probably our best and most complete performance since the same fixture in Conte's title season) have been available since the restart, why haven't we seen that lineup (exception being Pulisic in instead of Pedro) again? and worse than that, why has the catalyst for that display only been seen in 50 minutes out of position in 4 games? That game (and the Liverpool game) were beautiful, it looked like we finally found our best core of players, best system, the style of play was mesmerising and it didn't even last another game, ripped up for shit on a stick football where a player that wasn't even playing for us that afternoon is now having to bail us out constantly, just how? Another thing really annoying me are the CB issues. I'm not Zouma's biggest fan but him and Rudiger were slowly forming a really good partnership before the break, WHY THE HELL HAS THAT BEEN TINKERED WITH? I'm one of the minority that think while our CBs will never be world class (apart from potentially Fik) they've been dealt a bad hand with Kepa's form and constantly being rotated about, pick Zouma with either Fik or Rudi keep them there and all off a sudden things won't look too bad. Don't get me started (again) on Kante walking into the side no matter what, it was bad enough earlier on in the season but Frank still hasn't learned his lesson. The fact he's still being selected means either Lampard genuinely thinks we're actually better with him in the team despite all the evidence and metrics saying otherwise or he's playing him because of what he was/is at his very best. I hate being critical of him (Kante) as he's one of my favourite all time players for the club and I'll always appreciate the difference he made when he arrived but that's one thing with me, I'm so club/team orientated that I don't have trouble letting my head rule my heart. Also with Mount in the side, we don't even miss Kante's engine as much as we use too. Then there's the regista issue. Some people don't seem to want to embrace the idea of a regista because they're all on the "traditional DM" idea and can't be moved, but it's actually one of the most important positions in the modern game, having players who can dictate from deep at a high level are absolute gold dust in the modern game, we've got not only one but two and neither are being played, and in favour of putting a box to box player there (therefore neglecting his best attribute), that's Mourinho lite. Frank's a young manager so I will give him the time to fix this shit especially as I have seen serious promise with him (if this was an experienced manager pulling this I'd be going full Claude) but if these tactics and selections are the "new normal" I'll give him till Christmas.

While i'm not trying to say Azpi is up there with them in terms of leadership lets not pretend it was all parties and rainbows with them either. Numerous displays under Scolari and in 10/11 we were everybit as bad as what we can see now, infact in the Avram season they lost 10 points in injury time.

He was crap outside the goals and i'm far from his biggest critic. I really hope Pulisic and CHO are flanking Oli sooner rather than later.

It's happened twice now which makes it even worse.

My expectations for the season and how i'm assessing Lampard have changed. Before the return i would have not had a negative word to say if we finished anywhere in the top 7 because i assumed we would carry on with the building process and if that came at the expense of top 4 then that's fair enough. However now we've resorted to shit house selections and tactics he has to justify that by getting results, so top 4 and Cup final.

Zouma and Tomori together. Jorgi, Kova, Mount midfield. Go back to what was working so well for god sake. Go back to the team that looked so promising and go from there. If we lose top 4 due to growing pains then fuck it, our ultimate goal is to build a side to challenge City and Liverpool and the longer these shithouse selections get rolled out the more regression we make on said ultimate goal.

While i'm not atall defending the defense the wastefulness in attack is probably an even bigger problem. How many times this season have we dominated games without winning? As shown against Everton and Liverpool we can work with this defense with crucial adjustments infront.

It's not as easy as people think to just flick the switch back on, i'd rather finish 5th sticking to the process than shithouse 4th.

It won't be the last time this week. That's twice now Lampard has destroyed our momentum by shoehorning him back in.

Nothing like (most) previous clashes. I passed off most of the pre lockdown defeats (this season and last) as part of the process, frustrating but it was a learning curve, since the return we've resorted to the shithouse tactics Conte was serving up at the end, if he wants to do that then it can only be justified by results.

We're as reliant on Pulisic right now than we ever were Hazard bar the 2015 calendar year.

This is exactly why I wasn't getting all starry eyed when we beat City. It was 3 points up in the table but massive step back in the team evolution.

We're going to see two years of hard work changing our style go down the shitter if we keep setting up like this. I can accept the growing pains while we're genuinely building something but we're reverting to type and doing it with the same mistakes.

Oh look yet again the best midfielder comes off. If only he was world class three years ago in a totally different system.

Would make a quad sub now. Abraham, Willian, Barkley, Kante off Giroud, Hudson Odoi, Mount, Jorgi/Gilmour on

The thing is, he has, he just for some reason thinks Kante has to play 90 minutes every game. Going to turn into our LVG/Rooney situation.

All the positive momentum gained from the last two games before lockdown gone. Really looked like we finally found the right system to truly kick on and now we're back to relying on one individual to bail us out.

Be less of a problem if the correct team was selected.

He was world class in 2017 so must play 90 minutes no matter what.