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Another incredible half from our false nine

Played Warhammer 40K Boltgun as a palate cleanser between all the 100-hour RPGs and open world stuff I'm trying to get through. Very good fun and I say that as someone with no nostalgia for the Doom/Quake era nor any great love for Warhammer. Hades 2 full release today which I'm very excited for.

Alves could have played, they changed the rules this season so players can play for two different teams in the league cup

I was looking the other day and as far as I can work out the cheapest is from Fanatical with an affiliate discount code from YouTubers/websites, which comes to £38.94. The first one I came across was this one

Not sure that's true. FBref have him joint 10th on 15, 6 of which were against Wednesday when he was just shooting straight at the keeper from about 30 yards. Not even the most shots in our team because apparently Fatawu has had 16. Conversion rate he's joint lowest of players who have scored but then obviously there's everyone who has taken a shot without scoring below him. But you're right, most of the time he's not actually close enough to the goal to take even a speculative shot. All part of the duties of a false nine of course.

I don't really rate him but I think he'll probably be OK as a safe, steady full back if we have Ricardo on the opposite flank and players like Winks, Faes and James (i.e. players who aren't afraid of the ball) in the side. Between Thomas, Choudhury, Okoli, Skipp and Soumare there were just too many players who were at best unadventurous and at worst outright uncomfortable in possession.

Our xG+/- improves when Faes and Winks are playing though

I think it's fairly likely he would. 7 goals and 5 assists last time in this division in about 12 90s - the Ghanaian Firmino has put up better G+A than that once in his career and that was over a decade ago in Ligue 1. Daka might be a bad striker but Ayew is not a striker. Ideally Carranza settles and starts ahead of both.

Does look like he might be a bit of a flat-track bully but there's maybe an argument that's what they needed given some of the points they've dropped against dross over the last few seasons. Funny if it now goes the other way and they can bully the crap teams but lose against all the good ones.

I broadly agree but creating chances is the bigger concern for me than finishing them. Assuming Carranza isn't a total waste of space, I think we should have goals in the squad but we really haven't been creating enough good chances for my liking. I'm optimistic however that with Ricardo and Winks back in the side, James looking much more positive than Skipp/Soumare and hopefully Ramsey able to establish himself, we won't look as blunt.

I thought he was alright, not as good as the other two midfielders but nowhere near as bad as we know he can be. He does have a habit of underhitting or slightly misplacing simple passes to players in space which forces them, and the move, to slow down. Otherwise he was decent if unremarkable.

His strengths are very rarely of any real benefit to us (which admittedly isn't entirely his fault) and his weaknesses essentially hamstring our entire attack. If we persist with him as our striker I think it's going to be a real slog of a season.

Contractually he has to remain outside the opposition penalty area at all times unfortunately

Feels an odd choice of game to turn on him over given it's probably the first time this season you could say with confidence we were the better team for most of it. I think there are things to be concerned about but we've got 40 games left to play.

I thought we were OK, overall our best performance of the season (not a high bar) and no surprise it came with Ricardo and Winks (and probably also Faes) in the team, as well as Skipp out of it. Guessing Ricardo coming off was a fitness thing which is understandable but unfortunate because that change basically killed the game. James looked decent despite wasting one of our better chances and Carranza was pretty lively off the bench. Mavididi and Ayew were very poor, Choudhury looked like he was playing football for the first time in his life and four more years of Thomas is a grim prospect. Coventry were absolutely shit and it does feel like we let them escape with a point I imagine they'll be pretty pleased with. We don't create enough chances to get away with being so wasteful with the ones we do make.

I'm not sure we can go direct or press from the front, largely because he seems to have decided our first-choice striker should be someone who spends most of the game dropping deep into our own half and can't really run

Nah ball needs to be in play unfortunately

This is all getting a bit "he's 28 until he becomes 29" for me so I think I'll leave it there mate, I'm quite surprised anyone would say a deal going from 2025 to 2029 is not a four year deal but you call it whatever you like I reckon

Right but his new contract presumably starts now, not in 2026 when his old one would have ended. We can call it a three year extension if you'd prefer but unless I'm missing something very obvious it's a four year contract, isn't it?

Oh definitely, probably higher than that if anything - more in hope than expectation

If it means we can get some money for him rather than seeing him leave for nothing, cool. If it's with a view to him continuing to play regularly for us long-term, not very cool.

Tell you what, I've had just about enough of "Fletch"

Very nicely taken that

Yeah Mahrez's debut for us was against Boro, not sure why you'd count a game for the youth. Even if you wanted to do that, it looks like his first game for our U21s was against West Brom and he scored

I think it's also fine to just change your mind about things - if you said last season or in June or at the start of the season or whenever that Winks shouldn't play for us again, you don't have to think that forever. Reconsidering your opinion as situations and your own feelings change doesn't make you fickle, it makes you a normal human being. We would all be better off if people were more willing to do this.