in the battle mate, I'm not saying they'll get relegated. It might sound crazy to folk, but if they lose away at Brentford and to City it's not going to look crazy. I also appreciate Newcastle could beat Brentford and get something from city, in which case it could look a bit different, but I need to see it first. I think Newcastle will pull away in the second half of the season, but there's the big 6, and the likes of Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, villa and Brighton that look the best other sides in the league this season.
Villa, 4 game ago, were questioning the dark lord. Brighton are Brighton, they'll fade to around 10th. Crystal Palace and Bournemouth, they are this years Nottingham Forest. Us, I think we will have a strong season after Xmas but I say that more on hope than anything tangible. I am concerned about our away form and at the moment, there are more questions than answers on our style of play and what Eddie is trying to do here. Have we ditched the pressing style and trying to convert to a more possession based team? I think that is the main issue to resolve, we seem to be stuck between the two and the players don't seem to know if they should push on for more goals or sit back and hold possession. In the end we do neither and teams come back into the game.
It could go either way I admit that, but there's every reason to look either way at this point. It's going to be interesting what kind of reaction we get over the next month and it'll tell us more I guess.
No way are we going to be in any relegation battle, we haven't been anywhere close to a relegation battle for years, we're not in one now, and the last time we were was when we had Hayden, Clark, Shelvey, Fraser, Laescelles, Gayle and Ritchie in the team. We've just started slowly like we normally do, we'll song go on a run that will ping up rapidly up.
Question is why exactly do we have these "slow starts" Feel like we have appalling pre season planning tbh
Thats an easy one. We had no sporting director again for the transfer window and we are unbelievably slow at getting players in. Howe also likes to bed in players and introduce them slowly to the 1st team. Thus it's Nov/Dec before we have the team up to speed. This time round though its worse as I think Howe is trying to change the way we play and so its an extra element that needs to come good. I do worry that most people say 'It'll come good as it always has under Howe', that is more hope that anything tangible.
In this case of a certain Mr Isak ****ing things up and meaning we only got key strikers in on the last day of the transfer window with no time to properly integrate into the team. Nick has done well, but we still lack a strong team bond.
In converse saying it's all gonna go to **** and be a relegation battle is all pessimism and nothing tangible. Things have never gone wrong under Howe tbh, 11th place finish from looking certain for relegation, then 4th, 7th and 5th place finishes and our first trophy in 70 years. His record speaks for itself. Top 6 looks a harder ask this season though, going on a run soon is key, which I assume we will when the fullbacks are back.
Doubt Howe is under any real threat at the moment as two or three results can turn it around, the league is very congested. That said we are woefully easy to play against unless we hit the high intensity. This game was a masterclass in awful management. The players who came on basically did cardio. We’ve spent £55m on a winger who was only turned to with 10 mins to go, and our only threat - Murphy - was the one hooked. We had two left wingers at one stage because Howe failed to get any discernible plan on the pitch and our best player, Tonali, ended up at ****ing right back. This 433 obsession has got to stop. The transfer “strategy” has been the same as Howes in game management - like for like all the time, with reliance on loyalty. He couldn’t wait to get Schar back on, had no intention of bringing off Burn or Bruno who were both shocking. The clear issue is because the transfers have followed the squad management we have no number 10 in the squad. I’d switch it to 4231 as soon as possible, get Burn out of the team immediately, hook Pope, get Joelinton out to use Ramsey in the 10 and be touting Barnes, Gordon and Elanga to be sold as they’re all ****ing awful. Sadly we need to stick with Gordon for now as the best of a truly awful bunch. Or go with Murphy and Hall as wingbacks in a 532 once Wissa is back, or a 343 until he is.
