honeybradger

I am excited to see him play over the rest of the season. He is looking more and more like the player we thought we were signing on loan.

As a backup he's more than good enough. He will only be playing in the FA cup and league cup for us.

I think the problem with loaning Nelson out is that the teams he's been loaned to haven't given him a proper chance so far. Pretty sure he's had a league one loan (maybe two?) where he was not first choice and he is clearly championship quality.

Very good debut from the lad. Tackling, passing and positioning, he seems to have it all.

Bit sloppy but he's just come back from a long injury so it's not fair to judge him. Incredible pass for the Cannon goal.

Doyle shocking passing then pulls off a hollywood pass

Unpopular opinion but I think that IF we struggle defensively in the PL next year it will because of Faes. He's good for 70-80 minutes a game but will switch off a couple times a match and unlike in the Championship those lapses in concentration will be punished in the PL.

He did it during the Cardiff game. Muscle injuries usually occur due to a lack of rest, I am not purely blaming Maresca because Ndidi has been injury prone for a while but he was gambling with the fitness of our players with an unchanged lineup in a congested period.

I hate to be that guy but he did start 7 games last month. Perhaps this is a lesson to Maresca that players, especially injury prone ones like Ndidi, need rotation.

Personally I like Yunus because he likes to look for the forwards pass. I do not mind Casadei but he tends to play the easiest and safest option available to him. Casadei also seems to struggle when he's tightly marked whereas Yunus has the technical ability to play under pressure. On the other hand Casadei seems to have more of a physical presence on the game than Yunus and has a better goalscoring instinct.

I think we should at least wait till the end of the season till we come to any conclusion about whether we re-sign him or not. There are a lot of people writing him off on here but i think he's still our best striker.

In terms of output Fatawu isnt even that far off, he has 2 goals 7 assists in 1400 minutes, Amad had 14 goals 3 assists in 2750 minutes. It's not like Fatawu cant score goals either, it's just his finishing is 5% off, i think he could easily start scoring goals regularly like Amad did whilst also being more creative. Also if you value rating websites like sofascore or whoscored then Fatawu is having the better season than Amad did last year.

Which is ridiculous as clubs do not receive parachute payments on the year that they are promoted. If we get promoted this year we will have received a grand total of £0 in parachute payments.

I think the period that he was bad for gets inflated on here. I have seen people try and argue that he was bad in the 2020/2021 season which was one of his best. He's only had 2 seasons that were bad for us and that was 21/22 and 22/23 and he was injured for half of 21/22. The nature of the abuse he was getting was uncalled for as well, it's fine to say that he's playing badly but calling him a donkey etc when he's one of the best midfielders to ever wear the shirt is out of line.

It was incredible the number of fans who were willing to completely write off one of our best ever players. Even worse are the fans at the start of this thread who said he hadnt been good in 4 years. 2019 was 4 years ago and he was still excellent (when not injured) in 2020 and 2021.

He's never been particularly strong offensively. His best position has always been a wide centre back.

That's forgetting the fact that two of those European finishes happened after two of the worst bottles in our club's history. 14 points we had on 5th place Man United in 19/20 with around 13 games to go and we collapsed spectacularly. The real test of a manager is how they respond to when things go pear shaped and Rodgers failed in that regard. Look at the gap to Southampton and imagine us finishing below them at the end of the season (if the season only had 12 games left), that's how bad it was.

He's a lot better than i thought he was, I was pleasantly surprised by his finish for the first and tenacity for the second. Hopefully he can continue with these sorts of performances.

He's getting a lot of touches but is scared to make anything happen with them. Winks is ticking along nicely as always, Faes's passing has been sloppy, Vestegaard Justin and Ricardo have been good.

Why do we need depth for LW and attacking midfielder? We're strolling the league as it is and have Akgun coming back from injury. Personally i would rather see Will Alves get some first team minutes over the season rather than loan a player as a bench option who will be gone again in 5 months.

It's not a no brainer though. A player with attitude issues that hasn't played consistently in two years is not guaranteed to make the starting XI, not guaranteed to have the impact he had two years ago and will likely disrupt the squad. Let Leeds and Southampton have him, if we fail to get an automatic promotion spot it will be because of a mental collapse on our part, not the performances of Leeds or Southampton or us lacking player quality.

Calvin Bassey just had a standout performance against Arsenal.

You do have to wonder how we would be perceived after a couple or more seasons in the championship though. Considering we've had one of the most successful decades out of any club in England including the big six it's arguable that our status as a club has only temporarily increased.

He's our best player and the best player in the league. Even when he's off it he's still been a difference maker for us.

How come the ipswich game is still going on?