épieur

mbobbins surely

We literally won against Arsenal from a set piece.

I don't think I am underestimating him per se. I just don't think we should be playing on the assumption that he's surely better, even if the form doesn't show it. We simply can not afford any more investment minutes as first choice given to new signings. Let him play himself back into form from behind and work his way up to first choice.

He doesn't strike me as awful at it either. Think he needs to learn some patterns and he'll be fine.

By "We", I mostly meant Slot and his team.

I expect we'll do well against city, but Slot reiterating "you see what we can do when our opponents plays the way we like them to play? LESS LONG BALLS PLEASE, PEOPLE" hasn't left me any less worried for forest after that.

For me it came down to the fact that whilst Szobo was good last season, he also played with limitations - Sloppy in his passing, not very decisive in the final third. Really more of a "manager's pet" type of player for all the tactical work he did. And Grav did great things, but is still a bit of a wet-behind-the-ears type of player sometimes. Whereas Mac Allister was/is the full package. He does all the things a midfielder should do in all phases of play and all parts of the pitch and ties all his things together. Szoboslai is doing that this season, but with more panache, as he is bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled, better final ball and finally showing that he also has that final third saviness we all expected when he signed in his locker as well. I do think as long as they keep up their tracjectory (+wirtz I guess), the narrative around our title win last season will change over time and it will be more obvious in a few years that having such a midfield clearly played a big part in winning the title the way we did.

Might work out still. I don't particularly like how he is as a player, in the main due to latent Moreno trauma, but I don't think it's fair to judge him at this stage for being thrown in the deep end when he shouldn't have been.

Or, we could have framed the setup as Kerkez needing to earn his place over time, and this being the season where he learns the ropes and gives the needed breathers to Robbo, as opposed to Slot's "finally, I get to not play Robertson" approach he went into the season with.

He annoyed me with some of his passes being wayward, but other than that he was tremendous.

He's eclipsing on-form Mac Allister as the main man in midfield with this level of performance.

Last night was the first time this season I can recall thinking our fullback pair were an actual asset to how we want to play.

Slot really messed up just handing a starting place to all the newcomers regardless of merit. He acted on the plan in his head without reality-checking it first. No way Szoboslai should have been made utility player to fit in Wirtz at the start of the season. Dom is the main man in midfield on merit right now and his form was there from the start of the season. No way Kerkez should have been starting games ahead of Robbo for anything other than rotation or even Isak given starts ahead of Ekitike. And frankly Jones should have played ahead of Mac Allister for most of the season too. Last night, we saw something looking more like a merit-based selection, with Wirtz having to find his way into the side around the players who have earnt their place, which means playing from the left. If that's to change, he needs to show reasons why. And it ought to be the same for Isak. He wants a way in, he needs to find one wherever opportunities may present themselves and then back it up with performances.

He looked like he belonged in the side. Think that's the first time one could say that.

That's a team I want to see.

That was cherry on top. They thought they were, as a matter of course, going there to dominate the game and trying to convince themselves that they also could claw back the deficit in doing so. It was a reality check on their whole identity to be outplayed like that.

It was a glorious game. Although in hindsight, this probably had a strong hand in Perez returning, and the Ronaldo/Benzema/Kaka/Alonso summer.

He is a one-note shtick player these days. His main saving grace is that at least he goes through a number of them, even if he doesn't execute terribly well, which is an improvement on his old shtick of being invisible.

My Spanish is very basic and learned from two semesters of evening classes and I could follow the conversation just fine. Given he's having three hours of lessons per day, I'd say he's no more than par for someone who's started this spring. He's not exactly doing complex sentences, even if he's doing fine with basic conversation. Good for him that he's taking that many lessons though.

Bergkamp was a slow starter in this league as well.

This is going to sound over the top, and probably is, but his performance against Villa was Modric-like. Always showing for the ball, and somehow always managing to receive and turn with the ball in a forward direction. If he can build on that, the sky is the limit for him.

Oof. Try again.

Aye. Nothing to do with his silky skills, passing ability, superior physique and Pogacar levels of endurance that makes running for 90 minutes a walk in the park compared to his peers.

Rogers make no sense when we already have Wirtz and Szoboszlai.

Rio absolutely does not need minutes the way we are going. He's to be integrated in fair weather times. Kerkez doesn't need minutes. He needs benching. Criticising the manager for not subbing his centrebacks in what was about to be our first clean sheet for a month and a half and only our third of the season is just looking for things to criticise.