Laughable Chimp

When was his previous good game? And no, scoring a penalty doesn't suddenly make him have a good game.

TShould've been a red in my book.

The breaking your fast thing depends on how religious you are. Its not as big a deal for every Muslim. I'm speaking as a Muslim myself.

Yeah, no. El Ghazi having his first good match in months doesn't justify keeping Barkley out of the squad. El Ghazi had a great game today, but man was on a shoot on sight policy today and the majority of his shots wer shit. It could easily have ended up like the Burnley match if he were a bit more unlucky.

Yeah ,same. I thought he was okay, not bad but not particularly goos.

Take a **** bow, son

Conor isn't out injured, he's being purposely left out of the first team by Smith to the point of changing the formation and even bringing in a youth player. And Smith currently has the backing of most of this forum, so they trust that he's made the right decision here. This makes it so that the idea of wanting Conor in the team doesn't sit easy with the level of support that Smith currently has, so people rationalize it by playing down Conor. If we start going on a bad run and Smith persists on not playing Conor, I'm guessing you'll see a lot more support for him to be in the team. He is also a weird player because in games where he doesn't score or assist, he is virtually anonymous and this is frustrating to watch. And he's not going to score or assist every game or two, so it feels like most of the time he's a waste of space on the pitch. Compare that to our other players who are usually always actively involved in some way. I remember calling it the Conor cycle last season, because we went through that phase where he'd score or assist and this forum praising him, be anonymous for the next couple of games before popping up with another goal or assist and the cycle repeats itself. Its not luck that Conor has been such a vital player in our history. Its because he is one of our main attacking threats and not only from set pieces which I think is focused on more because its one of the most obvious ways we can see his contribution. But last season he had as many goals and assists from open play combined as he did from set pieces. Per minute, Conor had the best assist per minute ratio out of entire squad last season even including Grealish. And his goals per minute ratio is among the top too and the best out of all our central midfielders. Even this season he's already had a goal and an assist to his name despite only playing 236 minutes so far. Its not as if he's started off with a dry spell. There's not much evidence of him regressing significantly as a player as of yet. Yet it seems like people are all too quick to disregard him.

I honestly think he's been pretty damn great for us. Man has 6 goals in 11 games. It should definitely be 7 in 11 too if not for VAR. If a striker was putting in these kinds of numbers for another team, we'd kill to have him. I just find some of the criticism of his game bizaare. Its not like he's not doing anything but scoring goals either. He has the best all round game out of all our strikers we've had in recent years. Like he's not perfect, but it feels like some people are expecting him to put a great performance every game. Not even Jack is that consistent.

He is extremely one footed though. According to understat, only 5% of the shot he takes are on his weaker foot compared to 13% for Salah and 30% for Mane. Even then, its not the shooting I'm worried about. Its the dribbling. He's supposed to be a tricky winger but its very hard to do that when you use only one foot so much. It just makes him incredibly predictable and easy to defend against. That Burnley game, there were so many times where I felt he could've had more of a chance to beat the defender if he was only able to use his right foot more.

I'd say 40-45m for Buendia. He's a good player who's proven himself in the PL and those players will go around 30mil at least nowadays. Add another 10-15mil to the fact that he's only 23.

https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/252/Tournaments/2/Seasons/8228/Stages/18685/TeamStatistics/England-Premier-League-2020-2021 https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/252/Tournaments/2/Seasons/8228/Stages/18685/TeamStatistics/England-Premier-League-2019-2020 You still have to navigate the site a bit to reach the stats you're concerned with. But basically, it says we've put in an average of 24.6 crosses per game compared to 21 last season.So we've put in more crosses per game this season. Our accurate crosses ratio is virtually identical to last season though with 22% of our crosses being accurate for both seasons. You're right that we are taking more shots per game this season compared to last season though. 15.9 shots per game this season compared to 12 last season. As to whether the shots we are taking of lower quality, that's a harder question to answer. But the xG stats does suggest that the chances we've been getting this season are of similar quality to last season and that we are doing a better job converting them this season. Even discounting xG, just looking at the average amount of shots we take per goals scored this season suggests we are doing better at converting our chances. On average we scored close to 1 goal for every 10 shots last season, whilst we're scoring an average of 1 goal for every 8 shots taken this season. That said, I feel like its mostly the Liverpool match being such an anomaly that's making our conversion rate look so good. If we removed that match from the calculations, I'm guessing we'll probably look worse than last season. But I'm not sure I'd be justified in trying to ignore the Liverpool result when calculating the averages.

Can we stop playing him on the ring wing? I don't really get why we're playing him as an inverted winger.

Why have we changed half our first team?

I think if we brought in Bannan, he'd just be a shiitier version of Conor. In fact, I ran the calculations. Since August 2018, Bannan's average minutes per assist is 433 minutes whilst Conor's is 300 minutes. Its just Bannan has been starting every game for Wednesday during this period.

He's coming off an ACL injury that will put him out on the shelf for at least a year. I don't know how anyone is expecting him to be better when coming back. I'm not saying he couldn't be better, but the odds are against it. And another thing. Unplayable? He was good, but far from unplayable in that match. And I feel like people are concentrating on this one performance as if he's going to just come back and just continue where he left off in this game. He's had good performances before this match, and he went straight back to being shit for the next couple of games after. There's no reason to think that the Burnley match was somehow the moment where everything was suddenly going to change for him when we already went through similar scenarios after the Everton and Norwich matches.

Edit: Nvm He's only taken one penalty in the PL and he missed it.

Burnley are good in the air. I don't think crossing is the way to go against them.

Was decent in my book. But would rather have Trez back.

Bang average. Which for a 19 year old midfielder playing his second ever game for a PL club, is nothing to sneeze at. Will withhold judgement of his overall quality until he's played some more.

CSI ENHANCE

I just don't rate the guy very highly stats or no stats. I watch the games and I don't see this incredible midfielder people are waxing lyrical about. I see a capable DM with some potential who does some basic things well enough and some cool moves but ultimately not much else. I don't see a bruising presence in midfield. I don't see a guy dictating play in the middle of the park. I don't see some technical midfielder unlocking the play with some good good bit of trickery. At best, he has some good attacking movements now and then but they're tempered by how deep he plays. **** hell, I think he may even be the weakest member of our starting 11 looking at current ability.

I'd sell Luiz for anything around 30m euros or more. So I'd probably take 25m and a good player

Smith doesn't rotate players in the league. He always plays his perceived best first team. Can't remember the last time he's went from starting a player and then benching them just because they needed a rest and that's especially true for defenders.

You have to wear masks when entering the restaurant, you can take them off when eating. I got refused entry into a restaurant precisely because I didn't bring a mask with me.

I don't see a world where Smith tries this. Unless we're getting desperate and are throwing everything at the wall.