Greenfly

They seem weirdly bitter about the ghost goal incident, despite the fact that if you were to add the points to their final tally they wouldn't have moved position in the league. It means pretty much nothing to them, yet they're so mad about it.

Fair enough. There are few things I want more than for him to start banging goals in right now. He'd be so good if he did. He has pretty much every other trait down.

This is a little harsh. I agree that we could do much better in terms of backup than Davis. That said, for the most part he does the job of a center forward very well. The only thing he doesn't do is score. If he did, we'd be lauding him as a brilliant target man. Scoring goals is not the only measure of a player. You only need to look at Ollie's performance against Palace to see that. Davis is very good at holding up the ball and bringing the midfield into play, traits which were pretty valuable to us at times last season. He defends from the front too, something Smith specifically mentioned about Ollie. He's not great, Benteke is certainly better overall, but to imply he's got no footballing ability at all is unfair.

I think they'll be safe. Snatching a point against the best team in the league would've been great for Sam's first game, but doing it against Liverpool is commendable too.

Aside from the goal, their defence is looking much more resolute now. They're even getting forward, so there's clear improvement. He might just keep them up after all.

He was perfect for us back when we had him, but there's no way he fits the system Smith has us playing now. Imagine him in place of Ollie yesterday. Would we have still won so easily? I do look at the possibility of him coming back with rose tinted glasses myself as he's one of my favourite ever players for us, but it definitely shouldn't happen. I advocated for it earlier in this thread, but I've changed my mind. He wouldn't work for us anymore.

Sheffield's start has already been worse - at least QPR muddled their way to 7 points. 2 points at this stage is woeful.

The thing is, a prime McGinn does exactly the same in midfield. With those two on form, we might as well be playing with 13 men. We may have been a man down against Palace, but in reality we were actually a man up.

This is a great quote. It really puts what he brings to the team into perspective.

The save from Milejovic's free kick was fantastic. The way he reshaped his body when he realised it was curving around him, after no doubt seeing it so late, was seriously impressive. Watching him throw himself at the ball to save it, run out at attackers to deny them an angle and just pluck balls out of the air like it's the easiest thing in the world is joyful. Four clean sheets in a row now. What a guy.

Even Henry Cavill couldn't do that.

He must have a hell of a lot to do with the high level of morale in the squad at the moment.

Can't say I blame you. He's always flattered to deceive. I always expect him to be a tough opponent and one to look out for every time we play him, but he's never really been a proper threat. Raphinha is twice the player, imo.

In a way, we got lucky. Burnley and West Brom are pretty much hand made opponents for Hause; he's almost specifically equipped to deal with those hoof-ball, physical sides. I think he would've always been the better option for those games than Konsa.

I don't know, I can't see szczesny wanting anything to do with that mess.

Just reading that gave me a headache.

They hate him, but it is now impossible for them, or anyone for that matter, to honestly deny his quality. They really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to criticise him.

It's Christmas and they're absolutely in a relegation battle. They'll almost certainly sort themselves out and get out of it, but the fact is they genuinely are in the conversation at the moment. What if they don't sort themselves out though, which is entirely possible? Burnley will shithouse their way out of trouble like they always do, Brighton look like they could start to click any time now and Fulham aren't actually as bad as they looked when the season started. All three of them could pick up some form soon. Meanwhile, Arsenal look like they're spiralling. They're shot of confidence, they look like they have no clue what they're doing, they don't even look like they like each other very much either. It's a shambles. Premature? Maybe. But it is a real possibility.

I think it's because when Mings and Hause were passing the ball between each other at the back, one must've kicked it slightly in the general direction of our goal at some point. Either that or the algorithms that work out xG don't understand the concept of 0.

That's generous. Everywhere I've seen has them as low as 0.02.

Big Sam, everybody.

Sad to see Barkley and Konsa are still not in. We should still win this though.

"punch for punch", apparently. I just can't take these people seriously anymore.

I laughed when Neville said the way they play is "absolutely brilliant", immediately after saying it's like how he used to train as a child with no regard for tactics. 4-1 down. Any other team would be getting ripped apart by pundits playing like this.

Just hand them the title right now.