Rayvin

As some consolation, that was a below strength team, and we are gonna blow their fucking doors off at SJP. The days of regular howkings from Liverpool appear to be well and truly fucking over.

Targett is a great player for us and I remain very pleased we took him.

Won't be long before they're forced to do that for us as well man - these are the final days of an era in many respects. Our time will come

This lad really hasn't worked out how to be natural in front of camera yet has he Those facial expressions scream constipation, not appreciation.

The guy who runs that twitter account genuinely never seems to miss a trick

Fair play from Willock, if that's how we're going into this game then fair enough, maybe I shouldn't be so gloomy on our chances.

It's crazy to me that there are fans out there who wouldn't want this Who knows, we might even win the fucking thing.

That might well be true but realistically we're seeing even at this early stage in the season, exactly why we're not going to get Europe this time out. For all that we have a good team with a good system and a lot of enthusiasm, 3/4 games in we've got injuries popping up left and right and are starting to become exposed at certain positions as a result. Whether we could manage to build into a European campaign next season is probably a moot point because I think it is unlikely to happen this year unless Isak really does hit the ground running and we stay relatively injury free. I do acknowledge that the drawback with taking another year to 'get there' is we potentially lose our star players to impatience, but I think that's the only real risk with taking an extra year - and ambitious buying next summer would probably (hopefully) placate them anyway.

This is what it's going to take though, ultimately. Steady progress. We're not going to qualify for Europe this year because we're not ready to do so, we don't have the strength in depth. If we did qualify, next summer would involve bringing in more players than planned and we'd probably still end up in a position where the sheer number of games we'd have to contend with would hamper our overall league progress. Consolidate this year for top ten/threatening Europe. Add to the team again next summer with a clear aim of European qualification and no world cups, European games or any other bullshit to distract us from it. This gives us an advantage over 4th and 5th. Next season we get Europe and use that as a platform to bring in some really top tier players in order to put the foundations down for lasting success. If we sprint to Europe this year we'd struggle next season. As much as I'd love to see it, I think I want the path that is more likely to get us what we want in the medium to long term.

Aye Mbappe goes without saying like.

Short of perhaps a loan I think that's true as well.

I am not confident on this one given our injuries, but probably would have been otherwise. Although that 9-0 is a hard result to ignore as well mind

Not doing badly at all tbf to him.

This is exactly the way to look at it.

The longer we go under the radar, the better we'll do. If people still think we're a long ball side that gets a few lucky results here and there, we'll benefit from it. And Neves' comments suggest that it's not just opposition fans that think this.

Fully deserves to go with them IMO. They'd be mad not to take him.

Just watching the extended highlights of the Wolves game there, for their disallowed goal ASM is sprinting back to defend from their half all the way to our goal pretty much. I really do get the feeling he's trying to be the best player he can be - not just a lazy flair player.

At least that rumour can fuck off now Clearly we were never interested.

Agree that Burn absolutely does not deserve dropping but it might just be a case of rotation, especially if we expect to give the cups a decent run. As we are set up at the moment, we have 4 good options across 3 positions in defence. Surely we can make that work.

Aye, sorry mate. Poor things. Sounds like you did everything you could for them.

I also don't begrudge him the move. Howe doesn't fancy him at all, that's been clear since January tbh. He may as well get on with his career elsewhere.

The only thing that would concern me if it was us, is why we've let this run on as long as we have. What was making us unsure about him?

Sunderland would have never celebrated that man. They'd have been hounding out their manager in outrage. This started off in my head as a sarcastic comment but on the second sentence I started to think it might actually be the truth

Also done.

The comments under some of these videos are interesting mind - people who've watched him at other clubs, or for Sweden. Sounds like he's very much work in progress - a player who can do a lot of things right up until the final moment and then struggles to finish potentially. Maybe Wilson can help him work on that though since he has such an instinct for it. Also sounds like he needs to have a very creative player (Odegaard was mentioned a lot as part of the reason he's done so well in the season before last) around him to get the most out of him, so that hunt for our attacking midfielder may still be an important one. Seems fairly versatile though and clearly has very good technique. Let's hope Howe can round him out as a player.