Barrington Womble

Yeah, but it's easier to hate on vvd because he looks a bit casual. Don't blame the big dope who plays next to him, because he's a monster.

It took robbo 4-6 weeks to be right. They have had long lay offs, I think it was inevitable that they'd be a bit rusty. The question is can we win games while getting them back on it. I think there's just too many - Curtis, Jota, Trent, Salah, dom all short of their best.

They have a point except Leverkusen aren't in the CL semis!

There was no way they could keep that type of news quiet till the season was out. As soon as we started to try to hire a manager, it would have been all over. As for it spurring us on or not, perhaps we have had a bit of both. We got a boost when we had the injury crisis and it was just announced, culminating in the league cup final. But as time has passed, they speculation continues and fans and players alike start to look beyond klopp, it seems to have had the opposite effect.

I thought he was our best midfielder last night.

I know @Code thinks mo played well. But regardless of his measurement against gakpo or whatever. Is there anyone who thinks he's recovered from his injury and free enough from injury that he can be the star we expect? He looks a shadow to me and it's hard to believe he can/will turn it around in the oast 6 games?

The thing is with players like endo, the adrenaline and all that gets them through for a while. But they're not used to playing these back to back high profile games (almost cup finals), either mentally or physically. We don't have them to play every week, they're about plugging gaps, playing in the rotation. When they play all the time, you see why they're fringe players.

It's not really a conspiracy. Guardiola is a drugs cheat. His club are financial doping cheats. There's no reason to think he wouldn't cheat now, his club is. He did as a player.

He would be almost certainly his entire fee as profit. I'm not sure we need that type of PSR help though, although it obviously doesn't harm. I think if we sell him, it will be purely because they think it's good for cashflow and it's good business. The reality is, if we don't sell him this summer, it's probably fairly likely he leaves for free, if that's at the end of this contract or another. So let's say we get 2 years out of him, we'd lose the 100m fee and pay him 35m in wages across just 2 years. Does anyone think that's an outcome FSG would go for without the pressure of a manager saying "keep him"? I think the most likely outcome is he leaves this summer.

Crazy times, do you remember when we used to go wide as well as through the middle?

oh yeah, the christmas jumper one for mane. the one you mention with Mo -was that a 4-1 or 4-2 or something. that game now i recall i was in london and proper got on the ale about 1pm. i was fucking smashed and i had even been on the barley wine. i remember getting to the pub where i watched it, but have no memory of the game at all. when i woke the next day, i had to check the score!

all these stats though have so many caveats to them, they are pretty hard to take seriously in isolation. and i am sure using them to measure a footballer, there are lots of things that are true in one team and not another. even the score that is true, which is the only real measure in football we can rely on. and i am not saying the quants we have running all kinds of models etc can't glean something from it, i just don't really think they indicate anything unless you put them together with a load more stats and a fuck load of compute.

i think someone said to me at the weekend, we haven't won there since 2010. dunno if that's right, i haven't gone back to look. that just screams it's something to put right to me! you wonder if dyche has lost the dressing room a bit since that incident in portugal. they seem to be worse since they returned from there, even the win was that bad dyche had to say something stupid like "we were deliberately shit to just try and find a win anyway we could". the bloos i know reckon they've stopped listening to him.

Doesn't that just tell you everything you need to know about referees.

What would be the difference in his coaching abilities if he does or doesn't? He's either good enough or he isn't? I'd rule him out for looking like a fucking weasel, but I realise that's probably not the criteria Hughes and Edwards have.