Magic Lamps

we have been a wasteful side since Conte left but really hit new dimensions under GP in this regard. Maybe bring on Lewis Hall to complete the full house of chance wasters.

Can felix pls be more wasteful Chelsea disease already

yeah wehn we dont score those chances we can as well stop playing football. simply no use. Honestly i was not even surprised one bit he fluffed that. No way we walk away here with anything.

his aim when shooting is terrible tho. Kai is so low IQ. is clean through and runs straight into the defenders.

Honestly think even Mount would be of more use here. Pulisic or Sterling not perfect themselves still would do us a world of good here in his stead

ziyech is so useless. always backpassing. cant carry the ball with his snail pace

neither can he himself. it will be a huge road ahead for him to get to the level necessary in terms of composure and movement accuracy but if he does it will be worth the wait, his work ethic could signal a long career at the top

the ref is terrible as usual. completely needless giving a handball there, clearly unintentional

3 glorious counter attack opportunities already squandered by poor touches. got to do better. Mudryk looks so raw its crazy at 22

right, esp as he has not shown anything that would warrant him starting since then or in general this season. Even then we could have scratched him from the CL squad and put Madueke in. Not deregistering K2 and ziyech for madueke and badiashile rips such huge holes into our first XI its disgusting

Ziyech, RLC, K2 will be our downfall. But I like Felix over Mount and Cilly over Cucu. we are clear underdogs in this one tho.

If KK starts, Dortmund will wreck him a new one. If there was one team I would not want an old slow immobile CB to start against it would be BVB. Their fleet footed attackers will run rings around him and Cucurella if GP is daft enough to start him again.

PSG are not playing like a team but just every ball to Messi/mbappe/neymar ignoring all the good runs from Mendes. Not sure they will ever win the competition playing like they do. Bayern however can make many players look quite ordinary. While they don't have this absolute top end world class level they have such a huge depth and balance of very high quality players plus good discipline, teamwork and balanced tactical approach they will just methodically chuck opposition teams down bite by bite when they are at it. If City choke again Bayern will be favourites. Spuds are just an embarrassment for English football. Who tf let them into this competition. There is the Conte factor but most of their team is just dire, average and boring af while Kane and Son are blatantly getting old and looking like they are losing interest in carrying spuds on their own. AC Milan are piss poor themselves and still held Spuds at bay comfortably.

Can we stop using Arteta as a an example of why we should give a midtable manager more time? Arteta has worked with Guardiola and plenty of silverware as assistant manager under his belt plus a respectable playing career. However, as an Arsenal coach he has won just the Anthony Taylor FA cup so far and looks on course to squander an 8 point lead. If they are still top after their second City game, then fair game but till then questions marks remain. If the board have some valuable insight in why GP is one of the best then we have no other choice than trusting them but the rationalisations we get from journalists supposedly itk are flimsy at best.

Saturday was a disaster and one we could see all the way. I was not even shocked or frustrated cos I have grown so used to these kinds of performances. I want GP out as well but to say Moyes outthought GP is ridiculous. W'ham were incredibly poor, had real 2 chances all game due to poor defending from Cucurella. We outplayed them the first half completely and had bad luck in finishing/offside/ref corruption. Sure, there is no excuse, we should have blown such an inept WHam team out of the park but there was no tactical superiority on their side at all. They just hung on for dear life.

Noticed that last season as well. We turned up in the cup competitions (apart from CWC, were we really looked shaky af) bc we still got a trophy to win and barely showed up in the league. But that is why we brought in many young, hungry players who still want to proof themselves in PL. Honestly, there is no way we would be in this bad a position with TT at the helm. He might also have struggled to motivate our spineless squad but with these signings now, he sure af would have them firing already. While TT would never have been the man to lead our long term project, neither is GP and we downgraded ourselves massively with this managerial switch. No way we would have missed out on top 4 with TT. This is particularly frustrating as TT did not even want to have anything to do with the transfers, so Felix, Mudryk, Enzo might have come in anyway. More so, we will pay a huge price for having GP as manager in the years to come. Even with a great squad that basically trains itself, you can only get so far without a decent manager. The only team ever that carried managers of GP's level successfully in recent memory was our very own golden generation of the Cech-JT-Lamps-Drogs axis carrying Grant and RDM to CL finals. But this current squad is not only too young and inexperienced to accomplish similar heroics but also will be held back in their development massively by a manager out of his depth.

Yeah, Jude is gone but he is more of an AM these days anyway... Barella is more of a DLP like Enzo, no? Nunes also seems to be developing into that direction. Kone and Lavia would be fine and given the situation their clubs are in, a more likely pull. Classic box to box midfielders with endless energy and a ton of upside Not that big a fan of Mac Allister tbh. Defensively not sound enough and quite small. would prefere a dominant physical presence next to Enzo. Onana is still raw but you can see he will be a beast. Would love to see Zakaria next to Enzo tho first ( and not given up on Kovacic completely) before deciding if we need a big money signing here or just a capable back up.

That should not be a problem. Getting Enzo was the hard part. He appears to be the generational player we all hoped he would be. Getting a capable box-to-box midfielder should be straightforward enough. It is a shame Kova and Kante are on their last leg apparently. Both would have been almost ideal partners. I just hope we will not blow 100m on Declan Rice who is way too conservative for a DP with Enzo. If he had not just signed for Bayern Konrad Laimer would have worked well I think. But also household names like Tielemans or Milinkovic Savic would complement Enzo very well. I have not given up hope on Kova making a 100% recovery yet tho, he is still only 28

Yup they are all friends now, a big cordial footballing community... disgusting. Maybe it is a problem of our generation or of social media, and it would be fine if they were just pals having a kick about. But they are professional athletes getting paid by hundred years old instutions backed by millions of fans so they should at least show that they respect that. Overall life as a baller is very comfortable, only very few sacrifices to be made. One of them is chit chat with rival players. It is not that hard to just thank the fans and go back into the tunnel. All this nonsensical hand shaking and hugging after games is just disgusting. The reason footballers are getting paid this much is bc they are modern day gladiators. A competition to distract the masses and help them project the conflicts they can not fight out themselves in this rigid society. But once they cease to play that role, cease to leave it all on pitch they erode their very purpose. Luckily most cuddle-needy footballers are sheep and can be led by actual warrior characters. Those are the ones that make the difference when it comes to winning titles. I doubt that KDB cracked jokes with Rüdiger after the latter had cracked his jawbone. Or Salah shaked hands with Ramos who dislocated his shoulders. One reason I respected most of the English golden generation so much was that they really embraced the tradition and meaning of their clubs. This is also the reason why one of the best national teams ever never won shit whilst the current one albeit talent-wise inferior nt is way more coherent. Lampard and Ferdinand once told us in a pundit round how they were best friends at West Ham and became completely estranged once they played for rival clubs. When you fully immerse yourself into the fabric of a club to become a legend, real sacrifices have to be made.

Yeah Cucurella albeit still young and could potentially still improve seems to be way out of his depth atm. We can just hope with Chilwell back he can teach him a thing or two... As soon as Chilly is back to full match fitness there should be no argument who is no.1 left back. Not sure what went wrong for Cucurella after his first 2 great performances.... probably what we saw back then was just a purple patch and his form since then is his regular level. Fofana is probably perma-wrecked but even if his pace is gone, he has always had decent defensive insticts so might still become a half-decent squad player. He too is apparently on absured 200k wages which is just mind boggling cos he as well could have been gotten on half that probably. you just don't arrive at wages with this even numbers on a negotiation basis. We just offered him 200kpw straight away and his agent snapped our hand off and ran. Absolute noob level negotation tactics. Anyway, he is unmovable as well now so our only hope is that he becomes a reasonably useful back up at some point. Sterling might still become good, he looks like having a positive impact on the team and is a reliable poster boy for the club at least off the pitch. Can't really argue with the reasoning behind buying him tbh. Was usually impressed with his early years at City and did not notice him having regressed that much last season. Beforehand, I always perceived him as a menace when we played against him. Still jsut about young enough to bounce back and with Pep's rotation he has not that much mileage in his legs that you would think he is dusted already. K2 and Auba, well the less said about those two useless donkeys the better.

Yeah no chance we will ever be able to move him on these wages. We are stuck with him like with so many other dregs. That was one of the bigges gripes I had with the former regime and it seems like it carried over. Offering no-name players from samll clubs such a huge salary increase. usually they would be happy to make the move regardless, even for half that money. Same thing we did with kepa. For established stars,ok I get it, if we really want them that is what you have to pay but it seems we do not really even engage in wage negotiations.

not having a striker is unpleasant and holding us back but that is not why our style looks stale, boring, unimaginative and not creating any vertical penetration. I know Kai has been poor but today was actually a very good CF performance in terms of movement and positioning, holding on to the ball well and winning a fair number of balls high up but Westham packed the box and all we could manage was mostly poor quality deliveries, cutbacks and passes.

Yeah I guess it is there for all to see now that we have swapped out half the first XI that who is holding us back is sitting on the bench... When there are no consequences, players and coaching staff will just continue getting used to drawing against relegation fodder and stop justifying themselves, just delivering the same 80% effort performances every week.

bringing on gallagher and Ziyech at 1-1 is just throwing in the towel btw. Terrible subs once more.

wow just fkin wow... daylight robbery at its most blatant so far clearest handball pen i have ever seen. they take 5mins to VAR review a country mile wide offside for westham but dismiss the clearest handball ever in seconds