Mattoon

He's the bookies favourite

There's no such thing as twitter.com anymore it's been permanently changed to x.com which doesn't embed.

I think we'll bounce back hard here and really put then to the sword but not until we've got through another shaky start.

You want to know the mean, look at last season and the start of this one, making comparisons to a threadbare squad is asinine, you're judging a carpenter who has been given a screwdriver and a hammer to work with.

I think it's unfair to judge him on the happenings of this season, just a question mark over the level of injuries we've had. We defend and attack as a team and when integral parts of that machine are missing then there's glaring holes in the system. It's no surprise that the loss of Joelinton greatly exposed Burn and the loss of Pope opened up huge holes for the over the top ball. Howe has tried to adapt to these changes but creating a new system half way through the season is never going to be infallible.

Therein lies our issue, we've had no choice but to play him, but now we do, Joe looks solid, great cameo by him again today. I don't blame Longstaff and I can't blame Howe, but it is massively frustrating watching him stink up the pitch. Hopefully he gets his injury issues sorted over the summer and he can offer us something from the bench next season. He's not as bad as this version of him, I wouldn't sell him just yet.

Next season will be interesting, Howe does need to show his ruthless side though and bin off as much of the Ashley dregs as he can including some of the fringe players that have had a lot of game time this season. Next season we'll have Man Utd in transition and a lot of how they adapt will be down to what manager they manage to get in. Liverpool also in transition and I think we'll see some of their old guard leave along with their manager. Aston Villa have got a tough season ahead of them with the extra pressure of the CL, the extra games and unless they make some changes to the way they play I think they'll have it tough in the league too. Chelsea look to have found some form, although it doesn't look like it's going good with Poch, they'd be daft to let him leave or force him out, but something isn't right there. There's a good opportunity to be in the mix for 3rd down, but we absolutely, categorically have to get the summer window spot on and that includes losing some deadweight and some of Howes favourites.

Honestly, at this point we might as well risk Pope for the last game, he's on the bench for a reason, I know we probably wanted to keep him away from the game until after the summer to give him time to fully heal but today just pinpoints why Dubz will never be good enough at this level.

I don't feel like they gave the pen shout a proper look, certain angles just made it look like a great tackle by Casemiro, benefit of the doubt, they didn't care enough to look at it properly which is scandalous at this level.

I'd go one further and say he's actually hampering us in games, how many times does he lose the ball or pass it straight to the opposition in promising positions? And although he's actually really good positional wise in the box he wastes so many guilt edged chances. Fair enough he's carrying injuries, but at this point we have options, just don't play him, Joe has to start Sunday.

We just have to win our last game to pretty much guarantee ECL and hope that Bournemouth can do something at Chelsea for the EL, not beyond the realms of possibility albeit unlikely. Please, please can we just finish above those plastic Mancs for once?

Oh absolutely, I still have him muted, one swallow and all that

I think less the result more the manner of the loss will infuriate me for a few days. We had some good spells, got the ball into some good positions, just lacked that killer instinct when it counted. Defensively we were a shambles, Trippier had a disasterclass and we made some schoolboy errors all across the back. The difference was Man Utd were clinical, we created a fair few more chances, they buried their half chances.

Rare Edwards W