The Fish

I think we were trying to evolve into a more possession based side even before Isak disappeared up his own arse. I don't understand the Elanga transfer, but Ramsey, Thiaw, Ramsdale, Wissa, Woltemade all fit a more possession based side.

Right, that's enough of that. Shut it down. Shut it all down.

Nah, not vertically enough.

Had a call on Teams where they ran through the good and bad of the year before lurching into a quiz. Y'know, because what screams Festive Spirit more than a 20 strong Teams call where silhouettes mumble hurriedly googled answers. anyway, one of the questions was "How many vertical countries are there in Europe?" I listed three, Portgual, Sweden and Finland. Now, quite what precisely constitutes a 'vertical' country remains a mystery but surely we can all agree that Portugal would tick most boxes, right? No the answer was 2, Italy and the UK. wtf?

Biddy Biddy Biddy get wrecked Buck.

CT's spidey sense just went off

Your history of prediction is under investigation. I won't be taking any further questions until the matter is resolved.

I enjoyed Musk being called an "Odd Duck"

He'd better not. Hell hath no fury like a middle aged nerd scorned.

We need to make early moves in the window. It changes the feeling around the club, reinvigorates the season. We need to pull in some more coaches too. If we can get key players rested up, we can also have them studying the new style.

Gordon, Botman, Hall all needed 6 months+ to get accustomed to Howe-ball.

Have to admit I don't know loads about them, but even without AFCON I think they're a Xhaka injury away from trouble.

fucking hell, I blame the AI-ification of normal google searches.

Looks like Everton will be most impacted, then Bournemouth in terms of Goals and assists. Sunderland are losing first team players, but not regular goal scorers.

It is a lot more congested than this stage last season. We're middling at creating and putting away our chances. Completely middling at preventing chances and preventing goals. So, we're entirely middling. I guess the positives are: We're yet to hit our stride and we're not cut adrift from the pack chasing the European spots. we're still in the CL, the FA Cup and the League Cup too. Wissa returning might be an answer up front, the window is coming and we've money to spend, and we're going to be utterly unaffected by AFCON.

Partly it's a tactical/personnel issue: We've attempted to switch from a high intensity, high pressing side towards a more possession based side. Isak, Elanga, Gordon, Barnes... these are all players best suited to a team that wins the ball high up the pitch, or devastates on the counter. We're more and more facing teams who play with a low-block. We can't rely upon a predatory striker like Isak (unless Wissa is that answer) to snaffle up a half chance. We're not even making the same kind of half chances. It's partly form - nobody is really playing well. And not just having their form restricted by the strategy, there is a fragility throughout the squad. Bruno is up for the fight, so are Joelinton and Burn, but unless it inspires the squad it's just noise without focus, y'know? It's partly fixture congestion, Howe is not or can not get consistent performances out of the squad when he has 2+ games a week. It's partly injuries/suspensions to key players at key times - Gordon, Wissa, Hall, Livramento, etc. What we need is a spell of favourable fixtures with key players fit and firing. So Wissa, Woltemade, Gordon, Hall, Livramento, Bruno, Tonali, et al We need to play quick passing triangles between Bruno, Tonali, Hall, Livramento, and ultimately Woltemade. We need widemen either joining those passing shapes, or be the recipient of the final ball. I think we're equipped to play that and a high pressing game.

Absolutely. Ashworth, Mitchell, Eales, Isak, Owners, Howe, Wissa. All interconnected, all overlapping, all messy, all avoidable.

I won £35 on the derby.

I want to be clear, I'm not saying that we had a good window, just that this wasn't a window of scrambling around for random targets in a panic. We definitely will have bought players that we hadn't planned for pursuing yet, and maybe gone for players further down the list due to Isak's departure. But Elanga, Ramsey, Woltemade, Thiaw were all long term targets. Ideally we would have kept Isak, and bought Ekitike, Trafford, Thiaw and maybe a couple of others.

No, we haven't. Not really.

Elanga has been on our RADAR for a long time hasn't he?

There's a junction near where I live. Dunno what it is, but the lights, the traffic, whatever. Anyway it's a nightmare and whenever I drove through it I'd get properly pissed off. You know what I do now? I avoid it. Go a different route and the drive is so much more calm. Not sure what made me think of that.