ThunderPower_14

They've lied about their sponsorship deals because of bullshit rules designed to prevent an upstart club like Man City from muscling in on the long established European Giants. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Manchester City or state owned football, but these rules aren't designed to stop the mega rich, they're designed to protect the existing mega rich at the expense of everyone else. It's worth seeing Man City fight this and win to get these unjust rules changed.

I hope they fight it and tear the whole bullshit system down. They're the most financially sound club in Europe. The fact that they are falling foul of these rules while other clubs are allowed to rack up astronomical debts is insane.

If Mings was wantonly trying to make tackles all the time we'd probably concede 10 goals a game. I'm not even worried about the interception stats, because he's probably positioning himself well enough most of the time that people aren't trying to make passes by him.

Like others have said, I think that stat is mostly indicative of how poor we are at keeping the ball in the midfield, and how often we get penned into our own box because we can't hold the ball once we win possession. The lack of composure in the middle is our biggest issue IMO, much more than needing a new striker. If we can control possession, we have enough weapons to score regularly. A top level CM would transform us as a side.

I don't think a salary cap is workable in a system like football where there are countless competitions and divisions to move between. I'd like to see a tightening of squad sizes and how many players a club can loan out though. It needs to be a burden for big clubs to hoard talent. Clubs (including us) shouldn't be able to loan out 10 players (or 30 in Chelsea's case). Maybe have a capped squad size of 25 including loaned out players for all competitions, and any player over that incurs a luxury tax to be distributed to the rest of the league. I haven't thought hard about a solution, but it's definitely a problem IMO.

I'd prefer Smith to stay regardless. Staying in this league is incredibly difficult and we're showing some signs, we just need to continue to gel. The team will get better and better at defending as they get used to playing together. We'll keep bringing in good players. I'm not convinced we'll go down. We're not even currently in the bottom 3, and we've just brought in a genuine striker who looks like he'll make us much more potent going forward overall.

We just seem to get absolutely overrrun in the midfield. No composure and no strength in there. We struggle to move the ball out from the back through the middle of the ground and when defending, teams seem to get behind us easily. I don't think you can play Luiz and Nakamba as a 2 man central midfield. I'd actually prefer Drinkwater start and Luiz come on as a sub against tired legs where he has room to make some of his excellent passes.

We've been a bit unlucky but again we're inviting pressure by being too weak in the midfield and totally unable to hold the ball against their press. Painful

Catastrophic is wildly OTT given we signed him at 22 and he's moved from the Belgian league to the hardest league in the world, settling into a new team with lots of new players and getting used to the pace. We're half a season in and he's scored 5 in 21. AND he's been called up to play for Brazil in that time.

MON's failure wasn't performance, it was squad building. We ended up with awful players on long, expensive contracts which hamstrung us massively over the next few years and was a key reason for our relegation. We played some scintillating football though, loved those teams.

That post was probably a bit of an overreaction. We probably just need a bit more energy in the midfield to break up opposition attacks. I feel like teams get in behind our midfield way too easily

The fight in that game was brilliant. We conceded, I felt against the overall run of play, but we came out after half time and absolutely deserved that win. Those 3 points are absolute gold, especially as teams around us keep picking up points. Just need to bring that 2nd half intensity every week and we'll stay up.

Yeah pretty nice. Long early cross type of ball in from Luiz who had gotten behind one defender, took a touch and then hit a powerful tough half volley past Ryan. Classic Jack really, but there was no way Drinkwater was playing the pass Luiz did.

We need to move on from that awful formation and go back to a 4-3-3. Drinkwater isn't fit and isn't offering anything over what Luiz offers in the middle of the park, and Luiz feels far more likely to put someone in on goal or score one himself. We looked better in the 2nd but we just have to be able to create more chances against what was a pretty poor Brighton side.

Great run and finish, excellent ball to him by Luiz! We're alive!

Literally the only thing he's good at, scoring.

Is Drinkwater giving us anything at all that Luiz wouldn't?

We have to stop playing this 3-4-3. The wingbacks stay out wide and we just get murdered through the middle of the park. It might be different if we had established top quality premier league players in the 2 CM positions, but we've been miles from sorting that position out all year. Go back to a 4-3-3.

Yep, this is so dire. We're constantly under pressure because our midfield is non existent.

We just have absolutely nothing in the middle of the park. Nobody who can slow us down a bit and get a bit of possession. Every time we've got it we look about 0.5 seconds from losing it.

I'd be happy to get Benteke back. He was outstanding for us and kept us up in a couple of seasons we rightfully should have been relegated. Positive vibes from fans who have good memories of him could do him wonders. He'd be cheap as well. I'd hope he's not the only striker we bring in though.

Faultless and his distribution was excellent. Really assured performance. Not worried about bringing a keeper in

Happy. Shame about the sloppy conceded goal because we really felt in control defensively. The 3-4-3 is working. Very pleased with Nyland's game. Faultless, very assured and his distribution is a step up from what we've had. Hopefully he can continue on in that vein.

Honolulu upon Tyne

In the Australian Football League (Aussie Rules), the match review panel and tribunal are often criticised because they'll set their punishment based on the outcome of a reckless or intentional action instead of the action itself. So if you bump someone high and they get up, you'll get nothing, but if you execute exactly the same bump to a concussion prone player and knock them out, you'll get suspended for several matches. It seems unfair, but it's a duty of care issue. If you're going to clatter into someone, the onus is on you to ensure that you don't hurt them. Mee has, at the very least, gone in hard to make Wes earn it, and in doing so he's badly injured him. He's got form for doing the same sort of thing. It's not 1970. There has to be some sort of duty of care exercised and players need to be punished for making dangerous tackes, whether they get the ball or not. This wasn't a freak accident. He's tried to hurt Wes and he's ended his season. It's not okay.