Pizy

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.

We just look so ridiculously vulnerable with all the long balls and diagonals. I don’t get it, man.

Tosin, good lord. Look how slow he is in space!

We look dreadful from front to back. Being outplayed by fucking Brentford. This is all on Maresca, too

WTF ARE WE DOING

That’s twice now Gittens is caught offside on a simple pass out.

After the surprising starting place he was handed, I thought Facundo looked very good. No idea why we’ve taken him off. And now fucking George up top again 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Tosin is super solid in most circumstances and I really like him as a player but he’s got 2 very unfortunate weaknesses that are especially exposed against small teams like this who play on the counter. One is that his recovery pace is abysmal. Play a ball like Henderson just did over his shoulder to a fast attacker and he’s dead. Turns and runs like a giant cruise ship. And the other is that if he’s then isolated 1v1 against a fast attacker he doesn’t have the lateral quickness to deal with it well.

We finally start playing the ball around quicker AFTER conceding that shit goal. 🙄 Maresca really has to work on the team starting matches with far more intensity and a killer instinct. It’s like we always try to feel our way into a match slowly and it’s biting us in the ass in nearly every match thus far. These small teams like Palace, Brentford, Fulham WANT you to play slowly and keep everything in front of them. They cannot deal with big teams who play quickly and sharply so this is their tactic. And we have once again played right into their hands. Every side has done this to us this season.

They’re missing their 2 best current attackers, too. After being decimated in the summer.

Yet another poor start to a match this season. Palace, Fulham, West Ham, and now here.