Pizy

Like the look of Buanonotte in each of his appearances so far. Tidy player who doesn’t hide from the ball. Should be getting plenty of minutes in the weeks ahead if Palmer is out.

Season unraveling just a few weeks into it. Our attackers here look like they’re seeing each other for the first time today and our defense is comically shit as usual. We’ll almost certainly turn this around and win it but Brighton and then Liverpool are going to slaughter us if we don’t improve dramatically ASAP. And if we lose those 2 Maresca should be under huge pressure. Completely inexcusable to keep looking this poor nearly every match this season.

I’m not mad at the players or even the bulk of our recruitment. This squad is more than good enough in MOST areas to be performing much better than it has to start the season. I’m starting to get more and more pissed off about Maresca each week. The stupid team selections, where in the formation he plays players, how he decides to rotate, his rationale after games as to why he didn’t play certain players. And most importantly of all, the fact that seemingly EVERY match thus far it feels like we’ve started so fucking sluggishly and only ever begin to look better after we concede. For me that’s on the manager. He doesn’t have this team mentally ready. He has to get a bit of slack because he is being undermined by the fact that the club refused his request for a new CB. But then at the same time he has been in love with Rob Sanchez since he got here and defends him no matter what. Don’t think there’s any chance he gets the sack during the season and tbh that’s not something we need. But if we finish outside of the UCL places he should 100% be replaced once the season ends. It would be completely inexcusable to finish lower than 4th with the squad we have and the money we spent.

I was seriously excited for this season. I never thought we’d put in a genuine title challenge where we’d be there until the very end but I thought with 100% certainty that we’d finish a respectable 6-9 points behind the eventual champion, comfortably finish in the top 4, and really kick on to build something special for next season. Now I would be STUNNED if we finish higher than 6th. The Colwill injury and subsequent refusal to replace him with a top CB + Sanchez in goal will kill our season within the first handful of games now. Our defense + keeper have produced catastrophic errors in nearly EVERY game so far this season. From extreme optimism to utter calamity in the blink of an eye. If we fail to beat Brighton next I may just give up on the season.

Worst Man United side perhaps ever, manager on the brink on the sack. But then Charity FC once again comes to town.

Weekend ruined once more.

Game over after less than 5 minutes. Good job, guys. Fucked by a simp,e ball over the top once again.

Good lord, this rain!

Fofana starting in wet, slippery conditions against United’s tricky attackers? Hmm, not sure I like that at all.

Looks like there’s going to be some shit weather for this one. So probably going to be some shocking football on display.

Brighton 2 up on Spuds. All the more reason that we MUST win today. Brighton up next who are always super tricky followed by Liverpool. We could very easily fail to win all 3 of these next 3 if we aren’t on it.

Would be nice to see Estevão & Garnacho as the starting wingers for this I don’t think Maresca will do it. I could actually see him putting Palmer on the right with Buanonotte in the 10 and Neto on the left.

We always seem to play down to their level. No matter how shite their football has been or how terrible their form has been leading into the games with us, we always match them shit for shit. I expect much of the same tomorrow unless Maresca gives us some nice surprises in the XI. Both teams will play not to lose.

I would drop Enzo for Andrey Santos for this one. Maresca would never do it but I would. United are SHIT in the middle of the park and especially against athletic, mobile midfielders. We could really cause them problems in there with legs and pressing which Enzo doesn’t have. I think he could be a liability against a side who is a real danger on the counter attack. I’d drop Tosin for Josh as well since United are surely going to try playing a shit load of those balls into the channels and over the shoulder which Tosin gets roasted on. Mbuemo, Cunha, Ahmad, etc are highly dangerous in space. Josh’s pace and ability to get around and recover is needed.

Spot on. They’ll be in desperation mode already. They’ll be extremely motivated to make up for that embarrassment in the derby and will raise their game as they always do against us for whatever reason despite being shit against every other big team. We need to take the game to them and attack with pace and purpose. If we do our usual walking pace + pass it around slowly at the back bullshit then we’ll let this awful Man United side beat us. Lose this and I’m going to seriously doubt we’re going to kick on and have a solid season.

It’s actually embarrassing how shambolic we are defensively. We’re nowhere near the elite sides in this competition because of how mistake prone we are at the back.

Think it’s going to be made clear to Maresca VERY soon if it hasn’t already today that Gittens won’t be the starting LW any time soon. Garnacho being PL proven and having a bit of arrogance about him will see him being the main man there quickly. Hopefully starting with the next game if he’s fit enough. Gittens looks shellshocked that he hasn’t been able to just blast by everyone in the PL so far. Looks like a timid child every time they show a close up on him after a failed move. Very Mudryk like. Still don’t get why we decided to go for him at that silly price and did so in an expedited way. Like someone at the club genuinely thought he would immedietly be a top player. Looks really dumb so far. It’s like he’s 100% a data driven signing. You see the dribbling/take on data being amongst the best in Europe and think that’ll instantly translate to the PL. But even most of us who watched his footage could see he was nowhere close to a £50m+ winger.

If this were the Brentford of the last couple of seasons under Frank with Mbeumo, Wissa, etc running around I’d agree. But this Brentford side today were only going to cause us problems in one particular way and we played right into their hands. Sit deep, barely have any of the ball, long balls, long throws, and time wasting to frustrate us as early as the 30th minute in the game. To combat this you have to play it quicker and force them to defend relentless pressure.

Not getting wins against shit teams like this just puts even more pressure on us against the big sides like Man United next in the league. Same bullshit that we’ve been suffering from for years now and we had hoped would be different this season considering the ridiculous resources we’ve poured into the attacking areas. It genuinely hasn’t felt like our entire attack has clicked at the same time as a unit at all so far this season. We’ll have 1 attacker look good and the rest all look bang average. You watch Arsenal today for example against a Forest side that are much better than the Brentford side we played. From minute 1 they completely strangle Forest like a python and don’t even give them a chance. Aggressive, assertive attacking play that doesn’t give them an ounce of belief that they can beat Arse. They’re demoralized almost right after kickoff. Meanwhile, in match after match to start this season what do we do? Play at literal walking pace slowly passing it about at the back and deep between the midfielders for pretty much the entire first halves of all these games. It isn’t until AFTER we concede a dogshit, schoolboy level goal or we reach half time that we pick up the pace of our game. Maresca is really irritating me these days.

Bayern will be licking their lips at our defense. Long balls and long throws cause a club with title/UCL ambitions that many issues. Issues we didn’t correct over an entire 90 minutes.

Fucking dreadful result.

JUST LOOK AT THAT! why the fuck are 4 of our defenders all bunched in top of each other!?

My fucking god our defending. Unreal. Just fuck off.

HOLYYYYY THUNDERBOLT

HOWWWWWW That’s an absolute sitter for him.