verlaine1979

Didn't they pay about 15m for him? Hardly earth-shattering. Less than Sulemana in fact.

The seeds of our current predicament were already sown last season, as many who watched the losses against Leicester, Hull, Ipswich and a few others predicted.

This would be a compelling argument were it not for the fact that Ipswich's billionaire owners (a description I'd quibble with, as the investment fund that owns Ipswich has billions in assets under management, but they aren't all at the disposal of the club) only spent a grand total of about 2m per season over three seasons building their back-to-back promotion-winning machine. Nobody is disputing that Ipswich were in the race - the shocker is that a team put together for peanuts (I can't be bothered to do the maths, but I doubt their entire Championship squad cost them more than a single Shea Charles) performed so much better than us to sneak into the autos. As for our squad being ripped apart - no more than any other relegated team (Leics lost Madison, Tielemans, Barnes etc.), so no special pleading here. And we spent plenty. Likewise, the characterisation of us prioritising attack over defense might be a nice story in hindsight, but again it doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny. Why were Leeds and Leicester able to score at a similar rate, while conceding so many fewer? We played a slow, pedantic style of football that prioritised possession over either solidity or fluidity, and we scored plenty of goals because the Championship is so poor that Adam Armstrong and Che Adams is a potent combination at that level.

You're being incredibly generous here. He finished fourth in a three-horse race, played a style of football that was demonstrably fragile against any sort of energetic press, conceded an absolutely unheard of amount of goals for a promotion-chasing side, and got absolutely spanked both times by the eventual league winners, which puts the cheerleading about having the measure of Leeds into perspective. As for Ipswich, you call it bad luck, I call it Martin not being able to organise a defense.

Nope. Nobody is paying anything at all if Russell Martin staggers into the PL via the playoffs and then flames out in relegation right away. He's got no reputation to trade on. He'll just be another small time failure.

No one is taking RM off our hands for that kind of money if we get relegated. Leaving aside that Kompany's reputation as player and captain is probably at least 50% of the logic behind Bayern taking him, his record as a Championship manager shits all over RM's. Burnley blitzed the league and went up as record-breaking champions. We... didn't.

I'm not sure which kind of striker fits a manager who wants to build slowly, never attempt through balls and rarely put in crosses.

If his plan was to avoid defeats by keeping the ball as close to our own goal as possible all game, he's a fucking moron.

Spurs have defended poorly, but I don't see a lot to choose between the two teams' attacking talent. Mitoma and Minteh easily as good as Johnson and Werner.

If there's one thing our cautious control of the ball has given us this season, it's defensive solidity. Right? Right??

Downes and Aribo trying to pull the strings at the edge of the box. What a state of affairs.

I think the fact that we're being dicked three nil at half time probably warrants a bit of humility. Abject shite.

The comparisons with City are just bonkers. Their CBs pass it about amongst themselves on the halfway line. That's not even close to what we try to do, which looks more like a frantic game of defense vs attack on a 3-a-side pitch.

Like Watkins, he's a CF who plays on the shoulder rather than a target man, which is hard for him to do when our attacks build so slowly that the defense is set on the edge of their box by the time we've inched it forward. In Dibling and Fernandes we have two starters (+ Lallana) who can pick a through-ball. We need to choose an approach that allows us to play to our strengths rather than emphasizing our weaknesses.

Is Jan Bednarek better at passing than most PL attackers are at pressing? If the answer to that question is "no" (and it is - he's proven himself a carthorse with the ball at his feet over multiple seasons) then we have picked fundamentally the wrong tactical approach in seeking to draw teams onto us. It's as simple as that.

We got battered first half and we're lucky to be ahead. Second half was better, but we hardly dominated. Got what we deserved.

We still look utterly shit. Under the cosh for 40ish minutes and simply riding our luck. No control at all.

Because you'd have to stack AA and Fraser on top of each other to make one normal size attacker.

AA just doesn't have it at this level. Technique just isn't there.

Wtf Bree - Cornet was on for the one two in acres.

We've played much, much better football and scored better goals under both Ralph and Poch within recent memory. We had lots of possession last season, but our movement off the ball was actually pretty shit, favoring retention over risk. Hence so many dull games where we struggled to create despite hogging the ball.

So dominant? Are you sure? We got at them and put some nice moves together, but they created multiple chances and stretched us every time we lost possession. We were competitive, but let's not lose perspective. We did well for half an hour against a united team who played themselves into the match and then comfortably beat us. It's not the second coming.

Interesting - wonder if they're always half thinking about creating an angle to receive the ball even when we haven't got it.

We competed well for 30 mins, but both teams had plenty of opportunities in that time. It's not as if we were battering them and they couldn't wait to give us back possession. More like going toe to toe, which is obviously a step up from the attacking dross of the first three games. But let's not pretend everything had clicked into gear and it was only the penalty that caused everything to fall apart. United had already created plenty and we looked stretched every time we lost the ball.

Watching a recording of the game - midfield shape looks a lot better at least with lots more options for the pass.