Pizy

Garnacho over Gittens for me. At least Garnacho despite being shit most of the time will score a decent amount against super shit teams over the course of a season. Gittens hasn’t really shown that he can even do that.

I think there’s a player in there too. I’m just not sure it can happen for him in a team like ours. He was highly effective at Ipswich when no opponent was ever going to park the bus against you. He could use his pace and quick turns on the counter and was excellent at that. Here we dominate the ball in the vast majority of matches and Delap’s best attributes are completely nullified because every defense is jam packed and restricting him. He may have the body and physical tools of your classic big #9 but he isn’t a Giroud type who can play with his back to goal effectively or you can feed cross after cross. He’s basically a bigger, more muscular Nico Jackson who is a counter attacking specialist. I 100% think that if he were to be sold or loaned to some midtable club next season who play against teams who don’t sit back he’d be straight to scoring 12-15 PL goals.

That decision to jump in super early and buy Emegha when we did feels so premature now and may fuck us over in the summer. Now we’re going to be getting a player who will have missed half the season. Don’t get why we couldn’t just wait until the summer and evaluate the whole striker market. He plays at our feeder club so it’s not like we wouldn’t still have a massive leg up on any competition for him. Now we’ve essentially completely taken ourselves out of the striker market since I can’t see Delap going after 1 season. Really, I wouldn’t be stunned at all if Rosenior wants to give Jackson another chance who everyone kind of forgets about.

Garnacho has already killed multiple attacks and he is just on. And we still can’t get the ball near their goal all second half.

This is starting to get annoying as fuck. Can’t keep the ball to save our lives now.

Really have to switch back on and actually play, ffs. Wolves have belief now and in these shit conditions anything can happen.

They look like they give up when they went 0-1 down. Started pretty well and had a go and then collapsed. But this is what we need to be doing against all these smaller sides with the players we have. We’d be so much more comfortable in the table if we had 🤦‍♂️

If only Lavia was fit this would be the ideal chance to hook Caicedo and get him some fitness minutes. We should probably take him off at 60 minutes anyways.

This midfield 3 if it gets a run of a bunch in a row can be fantastic.

Was a sloppy first 10 minutes but an increible performance ever since the first pen.

If we don’t start to see more of the real Cole Palmer today then I’ll be seriously worried that we won’t for the rest of the season. If not here against one of the worst ever PL sides then when?

True, but we are probably going to still see Badiashile starting matches for us who I think may be even worse.

Was never remotely a realistic target. For us or anyone in the short term. He is Juve’s cornerstone player and their supporters would go berserk if they sold him already. He’ll be a Real Madrid or PSG player for mega money in a few years if he continues developing.

Thing is, they aren’t really fighting for their lives. They’re gone already. Which may actually make them more annoying to play. Nothing to lose, no pressure on them, and they can just be annoying pricks who want to play spoiler to one of the big boys.

Our players BETTER not show up to this one thinking we can just roll out of bed and win without effort. That they don’t have to try hard. Not against a team who have lost EIGHTEEN matches so far this season and are long since resigned to relegation. Play our strongest XI and try to kill the game as quickly as possible. We absolutely have to pick up maximum points during this little run of “easy” fixtures.

Normally I’d worry about tiny players like him but he looks like a pit bull of a character. Got that typical Argentine edge just like Enzo and many of the others we see. No guarantees, you’re right, but I think he’d be fine. Someone mentioned it already but we should bring Barco in and send Essugo the other way on loan to play every week for a season.

Just watched the highlights for Barco at Strasbourg from today’s game and again I’m super impressed. This kid legit looks like a potential top class midfielder. Completely runs the game pulling the strings whilst also being aggressive as hell without the ball. He may be really small but he’s fearless. At this point I’m starting to be convinced that we shouldn’t even bother getting involved in the battles for those other highly desired midfielders like Anderson, Wharton, etc and should just do the easy move to get this kid. He’ll cost us a fraction of those guys and he knows our manager/system well.

The only way I think Julian Alvarez would come here is if we had a free run at him. If he signals that he wants a move he will have a long list of suitors offering him wages we refuse to go near. We probably have to accept that our 3 strikers next year will pretty much 100% be João Pedro, Delap, and Emegha.

The thing with Delap is that I think there IS a very good striker there. He’s got all the tools physically. For whatever reason he just hasn’t developed at all since arriving and seems more focused on getting in scraps than he is desperate to score goals. Even though we only paid £30m for him he has been so poor that we may not even get our money back on him if we decided to move on. I guess maybe Ipswich would if they’re promoted back.

I was perfectly ok with us selling Pulisic. Always injured and inconsistent when he was fit. What’s super maddening about our current situation is that 95% of our fanbase KNEW that we shouldn’t have gone near Gittens and Garnacho. Everyone knew these guys were bang average or even worse than bang average but for some strange reason people at our club were obsessed with both. If I’m being fair, if we had an amazing beast of a starting LW I actually would mind having Garnacho as that player’s sub. As infuriating as he is, he’ll still pop up with goals here and there. Gittens is the one that was a horrific mistake. Dortmund were literally shocked that we were willing to pay that price and their supporters were actually laughing at us for doing so too. We’ve now bought 3 high priced LW’s in a row that have all either been gigantic flops like Mudryk and Gittens or disgustingly inconsistent like Garna.

What really needs to happen in the summer are things we 100% won’t do and that’s to get rid of Garnacho & Gittens and sign an actual top class LW. Someone who can be as good on that side of the pitch as Estevão is on the other. But there’s zero chance these guys admit those were massive mistakes after only 1 season.

João Pedro is a great footballer and is capable of some spectacular finishes but we still don’t have that dominant #9 who can apply relentless pressure and get loads of shots away. He was great in the first half but then got completely gobbled up and nullified in the second half when he was marked closer. And yes, I agree that Palmer is just hurting himself long term the longer he carries on like this. He is desperate to play in the World Cup and is therefor refusing to get surgery. He seriously looks like a completely different p,Ayer than he was in the past 2 seasons.

Now after wasting all that energy for 90 drab minutes the likes of João Pedro, Enzo, Caicedo, and Cucu will be worn out for the weekend.

That was a shocking second half performance. We literally did NOTHING despite being the ones needing a goal. Arse just passed it around with no desire to do anything and didn’t have to get out of first gear. Our players all looked shattered after a decent first half. Oh well.

When we did get possession for sustained periods we looked nice and tidy. That interplay in the middle looks great. João Pedro fantastic holding the ball. Problem is with Pedro and Delap so far from the box we provided no real threat to Kepa’s goal.