Billy Talbot

Ali trent Gomez konate robbo Milner Fabinho Thiago salah Nunez gapko

I've always like Neves. Yes, he's not the fastest player, but I've rarely watched a match when he's played and not thought he'd be good for us. He could play one of the 8s or the 6. Problem is, he's got to that sort of age where he'd want a ton of money up front rather than a 4 year deal with a promise of a bumper 5 year deal after 2 if he does well.

Yeah, as I said yesterday... the quicker we get to 40 points the better. As much as I love watching Thiago, if I was being ultra brutal, Fabinho is the only one I'd keep.

It's all very reminiscent of half-arsed, threadbare team selections in cups were we get beat by better functioning lower ranked teams with lesser quality players. We will look a lot better with some new, all-action midfielders and I've no doubt we will sign some in the summer... until then, it's gonna be rinse and repeat unless we do revert to a massively more compact style.

We've seen the best of Fabinho when he's played with energetic midfielders who press hard. He sniffs out the danger in that, picks up the pieces and makes himself available for the simple pass when he's not the one winning the ball back. He's got a decent pass and can start attacks. We've seen the best of Henderson in high energy, intense, end-to-end games where he could use his size and presence to dominate opponents. He's tactically good and can be a good director of tempo, but he is physically on the wane and just doesn't get about as much as he did. Great to watch he maybe, but we've seen the best of Thiago when we're strolling around in control of midfield and usually the match too. He's improved his mobility and aggression, but that's not his natural game. He makes mistakes doing this. However brilliant they are individually, these three do NOT compliment each other, nor do they provide a platform for our forwards or any protection for our attacking fullbacks. Other teams' midfields don't have the individual quality but their styles compliment each other and are more suited to the types of games they normally end up playing and executing their game plan within them. I think to mitigate this, our plan was (is) to play Trent higher and more inside, Salah higher and further wide and ask Fabinho as more cover to RB. It just hasn't worked. Often there's a hole at RB for teams to attack and no matter how good people think Trent is midfield, he's part of it's current dysfunction. He doesn't track runners, he doesn't close space. He doesn't tackle, whilst his presence displaces players and disrupts pressing triggers and patterns. Part of this was to also facilitate Elliot playing as the wide RM, but again, that's not worked either.

Sort of. We don't press like we did though, so now he's got more ground to cover, which isn't one of his strengths and weakens his major strength in that he's more likely to be out of position, more of the time.

Without doubt. However, I do think that the bigger difference between the two midfields is how their players fit together and properly integral to their game plan, which they're able to execute. The big problem with our midfield is that we're unable to execute our game plan (which is to camp out in other teams halves, pin them back and break them down with intricate passing). That requires us to play a relatively (or equally) passive midfield and teams have realised we don't have the pace, power or press to assert that situation over them. As such our midfield are, as a combination, a sum less of it's parts. We have 2 pacy forwards, 3 if we count Gapko, so playing deeper and more compact should resolve this to a great extent, but that's going in reverse to where we've been heading for 3/4 seasons. Maybe longer.

Indeed. The quicker we get to 40 points the better.

I had a small, but flickering belief we could maybe make top 4 if things started to turn around. That’s been thoroughly extinguished over the weekend. I expected us to lose vs Brighton. It’s a tough place to go and we’re in very poor form. But the other results and the way they happened have put pay to that. We’re not making up 10 points on either the mancs or Newcastle. Not when both are playing well and luckily winning games they could easily have lost. We aren’t even losing games we could easily have won.

Yeah, it’s ironic given the protests at goodison. Their board have at least backed their various managers. The midfield situation is that there are players that the management want and are willing to wait for.

I live in a village with one. Always grin at the scrotes that hang out in it. Mixture of obnoxious farmers, youth spivs and dodgy looking ****s who are in it for the subsidised beer. annoying as it’s the only place left for miles with a pool table.

This ref is pissing me off

That was a ridiculous decision. He’s running to take the throw in, didn’t touch the ball. How the f*** was he offside?

Has Darwin travelled?

In all likelihood a city win is best.

What have I missed?

Seems like trossard always scores against us.

Didn’t he imply in an interview recently that he’s already thinking about moving in the summer? He’s probably too good to sit on our bench forever.

Yeah, I’ve been thinking mascherano for a while. Caicedo looks good

I keep coming back to the idea that we've been travelling down a cul-de-sac somewhat with our midfield recruitment for some years. Our midfield squad is built for games where the oppo sit back and wait for us to break them down and games where the oppo will try to take us on in terms of technical football. That's not what's happened this season. Teams have been happy to try to dominate us in midfield by running through us and beating our press. I think this has caught the coaching team somewhat off-guard.

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Yeah, we're not. We don't have 11 midfielders though. Fab, Thiago, Milner, Keita, Hendo, Ox, Jones, Elliot, Melo is 9. Melo hasn't played for us and probably never will, Ox plays as a forward. That's 7. We've got 5 and couple of prospects. One of the 5 is 37 and 2 of them are out of contract in the summer.

I’m just hoping if I keep saying his name he will appear like candyman.

Caicedo

Yeah, I like De Paul. Reminds me a bit of De Rossi, but it's probably the de wine.