Pizy

Makes sense from a financial POV but I don’t know what the explanation will be from a footballing one. Okay, you don’t want to spend £55m on a kid from France midseason. But there’s a reason we wanted him so badly and that was because we wanted someone who can go straight in. Going from wanting a starter to recalling someone who may not even play makes no sense. Why not go get Senesi?

Really wondering wtf the plan is now. All the briefs to the press were that we wanted a “top” CB this month who goes straight into the first XI. Anselmino is absolutely not that and definitely isn’t better than either of Fofana or Trev yet. Probably not better than Josh either who is already not playing as much as he should be. Bringing back Anselmino only for him to ride the bench like Josh does makes no sense to me the more I think it through. If one of our current lot were on the way out I’d get it.

Plus, hasn’t he been injured a lot since being in Germany? And isn’t he currently injured?

This is weird imo. I’d have kept Anselmino there to keep developing and if either were going to be recalled here between he and Sarr I’d have thought Sarr made much more sense as he worked under Rosenoir already. Maybe didn’t want to piss Strasbourg off even more than we have already? Still, with Badiashile, Tosin, and Josh still here it seems pretty pointless to bring Anselmino back. When does he play? He surely gets more minutes over the next 6 months at Dortmund.

Said before it reminds me of the Xavi Simons pursuit where we kept throwing in bids well below what the other club asked for, they held firm, and then the player goes elsewhere. That ended up working out for us so far as Xavi has been a bust. But if we end up with nobody here and have to depend on Badiashile and Tosin to play significant roles the rest of the season I think we’re asking for trouble.

They went down to 10 and we’ve just stopped playing.

Fuck off. May need that for goal difference come the end of the season.

Andrey Santos has been spectacular today. Always seems to be in the right place and keeps things super simple.

Love Wharton as a player and would have him here in a second but he’s been really poor today for them.

Now take Moi off ASAP so he doesn’t get a silly second yellow or injury.

Ball game! Massive 3 points.

That was the longest VAR pullback I think I’ve ever seen.

Another FANTASTIC goal!!!

What I don’t get most about Badiashile is that he’s a huge dude but gets physically bullied. Mateta just repeatedly backs into him and pins him and Badi can’t get the ball. If he was shaky on the ball but dominant in physical battles you could live with it. But he’s shit in both areas.

Neto looks miles off it in this left side. Needs to be hooked at half time.

Badiashile still all over the shop. Both with and without the ball. He’s going to cost us a goal if this keeps up.

Degree of difficulty there while running at full pace is insane.

WHAT A FUCKING FINISH!!! Out of nothing!!

A badly struggling Palace side looking far more dangerous in the final third than us. Just shocking stuff from us.

Completely dominating the play but can’t get our attackers involved at all really. Zero pressure on their goal whatsoever.

Badiashile if fucking dreadful on the ball and getting bullied repeatedly already by Mateta every time the ball is played up to him. Why the fuck is he starting again?

Badiashile starting when Fofana is fit and available multiple times is odd. Anyway, Palace may be in woeful form but they’ve still got some very dangerous players in this XI. If we play our far too frequent zombieball we can absolutely lose to them. With other results going our way and the Arse/United game hopefully doing the same we MUST win this.

Time to stop fucking round playing games with Palmer’s injury. He needs to either have the surgery or be sat for a long, long time until he’s back to himself. This is getting ridiculous at this point. In and out, in and out, never looking close to his best. He’s clearly severely compromised.

He definitely wouldn’t be the same player he was when we had him, you’re right. But he wouldn’t be asked to cover every blade of grass like he was last time since Caicedo would be next to him.

Thing with Kante is that I’m not sure he’d be open to a 6 month loan. He’s just about to turn 35 in a month and a half and will probably want one final multi-year contract with big wages before his career is finished. Don’t really see the benefit from his POV in coming back here for such a short stint as much as I’d like to see it.