Kid Dynamite

There's not much hunting to be done in Sydney. And even if there is, you should be limited to one gun. I suspect the laws will be tightened after this.

Any news on Botman's return date? He's gone from being a Rolls Royce to a sicknote

Im not clear on weapons laws in Australia. But what legitimate reason is there to allow a civilian to own 6 different guns, including shotguns and long rage rifles?

Anyone else try to press play?

I assume a decent chunk of his voters struggle to square away shit like this with their own moral compass. Cognitive dissonance is doing some heavy lifting atm

It seems like Elanga, Ramsey and Thiaw were on the wanted list. They were all linked months if not years ago. Trafford was obviously our first choice GK target, but Ramsdale has been consistently linked since Howe joined as well. Wissa can't be judged yet, and Woltemade is hardly a flop. I think he's scored more goals than Sesko, Isak, Gyokeres, Cunha et al. He was also a bit of a Hail Mary given we'd been shafted by Isak and fucked off by Ekitike, Delap, Cunha, Mbuemo and Sesko, and only had days left in the transfer window. I think the point I'm trying to make is, whilst we didn't get our first choices in Ekitike, Mbuemo and Trafford, we still appear to have got players Howe was happy with and had been on his list for a while. He wasn't chucking mud at a wall and hoping it stuck. It's up to him to make it work.

When Wissa was a whisker away from getting a toe onto that ball over the defence I said to my dad that Nick would have been 20yds behind the play. The quickest solution to this malaise might be to get Wissa fit and just drop him into last seasons setup as Isak's replacement

I had to check this was real

It's nuanced though. It's nigh on impossible to be a standout player in a team that is underperforming. If you haven't got people moving into space to receive the ball or to pull players out of position it's going to be much tougher to look like you're having a good game, even if you haven't really done a lot wrong. I think that's why the likes of Tonali and Bruno look off the boil at times, even though they are our best players by a country mile

Other than City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, I think every club in the league would swap their squad for ours. Theres only really LB where we haven't got a specialist backup. And that's because Tino and Burn can cover there. Howe should be doing more with the squad he's got and the money he's spent. Pope/Ramsdale Tino/Trippier Thiaw/Schar Botman/Burn Hall/(Burn/Tino) Tonali/Miley Bruno/Ramsey Joelinton/Willock Gordon/Barnes Murphy/Elanga Woltemade/Wissa

With a fully fit squad we have 2 first team players for every position. Part of the issue is Howe has his favourites that he flogs. Schar is an able deputy for Burn Ramsey and Elanga at £100m between them should have been knocking on the starting XI. Miley should have been rotating with Joe much more often than he has

We were worse against Brentford and West Ham. Defensively we were solid today. Literally 1 shot against us in 98minutes. We were just shit everywhere else

I largely agree with this. But Villa, Arsenal and City appear able to balance 3 competitions at a time. Ramsay and Elanga cost us the best part of £100m and haven't improved our starting XI. Elanga was coming off the back of a good season at least, but we'd been linked with Ramsay for a number of windows and I can't see why? Pretty much a like for like replacement for Willock.

Villa, also playing in Europe, have won 10 of their last 11 in the league. We don't seem to have learned any lessons from 2 season ago. The players look lethargic as fuck