Sunbury Fox

Coady or Soumaré.

Truly horrific stuff. At this rate once things revert to the mean, we could be on the end of some real hammerings.

On the positive side, it does show how quickly things can be turned around in football if you get the right manager in post and he is given good financial backing.

Yes, now corrected!

I agree that Cooper’s system just doesn’t work. We end up being lopsided, with no RB when we’re defending and no RW when we’re attacking.

In 90% of games last season, teams parked the bus against us, so we had no choice but to play a heavy possession game. But against better teams in the PL, Enzo would have adapted the style, as he did twice against Southampton in the league and at Bournemouth in the Cup. In those games we were happy to sit deeper and hit teams on the counter. And we looked bloody brilliant. One thing is for certain, Enzo would not be playing bloody Ayew or Reid over Fatawu or Mavididi, or ostracising our best technical player in Ricardo.

This is bang on. You have got to fit the system around the best players you have, not vice versa. If he had really studied all of our games from last season, as he claims, then he would know Fatawu, Mavididi and Ricardo were amongst our best players and therefore should all be starting.

For the love of God, Cooper, get Fats, Mav and Facundo on the pitch at the same time and from the start of the game.

He's a Man U 'fan' from Portsmouth. Says all you need to know about him.

Yeah but what PL experience has Alves got?

Those stats are fascinating. By contrast in the last 20 seasons from 04/05 onwards,, there were: 5 different league champions (1 winner from outside the big 6 - guess who?!) 8 different FA Cup winners (3 winners from outside the big 6 - including us again!) 7 different League Cup winners (2 winners from outside the big 6) So, that is 60 trophies, with 53 of them won by 5 clubs (Tottenham having only won 1 in this time, the LC in 2008). And it gets worse if you look at the last 10 seasons - in that time, the big 5 have won 28 of the 30 trophies (93%), with only 1 non-big 6 club winning anything - guess who?! This goes to show how the power and wealth has been increasingly concentrated into 5 or 6 big clubs, to the detriment of the competitive element of the game. Whilst I still remain a total football obsessive/addict (I love watching games on any night of the week, listening to podcasts about LCFC and football in general), the lack of real competition in the EPL does make it less interesting as a spectacle. I heard a pundit saying the other day how open the league was this season before adding (with no sense of irony) that Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool were certain to be the top 3, but there were 3 or 4 clubs who might sneak into 4th, like that was something thrilling. I think many of us like The Championship because it is genuinely unpredictable and even the 'big' teams lose 9 or 10 games in a season. Compare that to the EPL where Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool are racking up 90 points in only 38 games, losing only a handful of matches. And even in the Championship, parachute payments are starting to take away some of the unpredictability. Not sure what the answer is, though, as money has got such a grip on the game, it is hard to see us going back to a time when competitions were genuinely open.

Always switch off if Barraclough is on the WYS podcast. He's just not objective and doesn't really give any kind of constructive critique or analysis of performances. Piper is way better.

Seeing those match stats on MoTD is truly embarrassing. 36 shots, 76 touches in our box, etc. WTAF. I know Arsenal are good but really??

Amazed that Chelsea didn’t dip into their feeder club one more time for this guy in the summer, as he’s streets better than any of their 2 million keepers. Sadly, will definitely be off for big money at the end of the season. For such a young keeper he’s truly outstanding. I’m going to enjoy him being here whilst I can.

Problem is there that there is no chance that we’ll get at them from the off, based on what we’ve seen of Cooperball.

With Cooper in charge we will never see both Mav and Fats starting games. So frustrating.

PL experience to see out the game…. Ending up with a front 3 of those 2 plus a knackered 37 year old, really??! Surely we needed to get some pace on to give us an outball and at least make them think twice about throwing everyone forward?

Totally outclassed. This lopsided formation of Cooper’s is just not working. We have no RW when attacking and no RB if we lose the ball. Just madness.

Lol! So we’d have him starting otherwise. He’ll be the first change today of course.

Even when Cooper makes an attacking choice it’s not the right one eg BEK over Facundo last week (when throwing in the former in a huge game always seemed the wrong call, as it proved to be) and now Facundo over Abdul, when surely raw pace is what we need to try to do Arsenal on the counter.

If true, I like the intent but I’d rather see Abdul on the RW as I think we need raw pace on both flanks to hit them on the break, which is our only chance to threaten their goal.

No idea why everyone is so negative on here. It’s not as if we are going to a ground where we’ve only won once in 52 years (during Covid when there were no fans at the game), under the management of a man who has won 1 of his last 19 PL games. Oh……

No point getting excited over this one, he'll be off as soon as he hits 16 by the sounds of it.

Not looking forward to this at all. Sport only works as a concept when there is a genuine prospect of any result at the end of the day. In this game the most we can hope for is not being totally embarrassed. Let's hope we improve on the 0.02 xG that we managed against these on the last occasion we met them under Rodgers. But I'm not confident that we will, given the way Cooper will set up.

Even Cooper must now realise that Coady is a cheerleader, rather than a viable option to play in the PL.