Tomo

Xhaka is suspended for us now ain't he?

Arteta reminds me of Kaa from the jungle book, manages to manipulate fans into trusting him while he kills the club.

This is the first game I've seen with crowds that still feels like a BCD game

If Burnley go down could it be worth looking at McNeil to be 2nd choice LB and 4th choice winger?

Newcastle 5 points off the top if they win their game in hand. Newcastle, under Bruce, in 2020

Hat tricks are great achievements regardless of the opposition. It's one more than Ryan Giggs and David Beckham ever got and they had many games against teams of the level or lower to Barnsley.

Yeah I do agree we should get the job done in Wolves, they have little threat without Raul J and you would expect a big reaction to Saturday. The West Ham game is the one I'm most worried about in the near future, facing an in form Moyes team without Ziyech and Pulisic has long night written all over it. Defiently, but I still can't enjoy it as much as I would had we won.

The opposite for me, makes it worse, purely because it meant we missed a chance to close the gap and secondly because I can't enjoy our rivals fuck up's as much as I would if we done our job.

I think the harsh reality is Liverpool are just a bit too strong for the rest. Much as I hate to say it they're in a similar position we were in in 2005. We can hate them all we want but they're relentless. Hopefully we can keep progressing and be the team that goes on challenge them properly (like United did to us back then).

Okay then using the exact same metric with no projections on points total if we have a shocking season but still finish above City then we can't sack Lampard because we finished above a team funded by a country. I'll be the first to call for a change if I believe there's not enough progress but I'll be basing it on our own performances not what other teams do.

That's the only difference, losing to that team would feel like losing to Palace, ie got shithoused by a team we should be beating.

So if we finished with 90 points and Spurs got 91 then Lampard should he sacked?

Even if they beat us it will change nothing, they're bonafide midtable fodder and all the metrics back that up, take the name out and it would be no different to losing to Palace.

I reckon if Ancelotti went to Arsenal and won the league they'll be no ill feeling towards him. We been quite lenient on our players/managers going to rivals down the years, all we ask for in return is the respect is maintained.

We should he judged on our own metrics. My target from the start this season was 75-80 points with clear encouragement we can challenge next season, that would constitute a good season all things considered regardless of who won the league.

Hes pretty much done the damage already with his comments and general lack of respect towards us. Compare the way he talks about us and compare it to the way Ancelotti does, night and day!

He "always" won the league until he went United. Records are their to be broken.

I assume you're talking about the way I've called people out on their behaviour towards Mount? That has nothing to do with people not rating him or criticising him, it's the ones that are/were outrightly abusive towards him that were called out.

I can't really win with you, can I?

Me initial fears with him have come home to roost a bit since the return from the international break, he's been passive going forward and defensive mistakes are creeping in. I can accept the latter as a by-product to an attacking fullback but he really needs to start showing some more aggression in the attacking phase, James is making him look ordinary at the moment

Apart from Fulham, Arsenal away genuinely looks like the easiest game out of that

This is why football is so small lines. Unless you have a team largely in it's late 20's managed by a Mou/Conte type manager it's very dangerous to base your entire assesment on games purely on results which I feel far too many people do. I feel this was very similar to the SHU game, went behind early and largely dominated the rest of it, the real difference is we had our shooting boots on in the other game.

Possibly because Lampard has commited to Pulisic-Ziyech with CHO as the squad player meaning no winger worth his salt will come to effectively be the new SWP. This way we have wing cover and keep depth up front as Tammy/Oli will have enough minutes to remain satisfied. If we want to have good squad depth you need some players that can cover more than one position, the two players in every position notion doesn't work in practice, they'll always be a couple of players totally starved of gametime (case in point, what's happening at CB now and KDB when we had six AM's).

The base game as to look at would be what we saw in Sevilla when he was dribbling through breaking the lines and making key passes. To push it further and isolate a single moment I would say his actions before Oli's opener that night.

Werner's issue has been his finishing, something that won't be automatically solved by playing down the middle. His general tactical displays have been pretty good, and our clincher goals vs Newcastle and Leeds were scored by world class bits of play from Timo that wouldn't have happened if he were playing through the middle. He was also signed for his versatility and ability to coexist with other forwards.