honeybradger

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?

Mavididi wow

What do you mean by 'mythical goals and assists ratio of Iheanacho'? The stats that you have pulled up are good numbers for all of our strikers.

I think the issue with this is that with Winks not being a very defensively minded 6 we need two athletic, ball winning 8s for our midfield to not be bypassed easily. Does Gronbaek have the defensive capability we need?

His distribution was shocking today, gave the ball straight to the opposition at least three times. Part of me is worried that he will not be ready to play in the PL next season.

2.5 seasons of bad form for Wilf is a bit harsh. The Ndidi-Tielemans double pivot was one of the best midfields in the PL in 20/21, we would not have won the FA cup without Ndidi's performance. It's more like 1.5 seasons of Wilf not being at his best and half a season of that was because of an injury.

Keep in mind that Reading was on their best run off form this time in 2005/2006, looking at the stats they went from gameweek 15 to gameweek 34 with a record of 15 wins and 4 draws. Then they stumbled a bit towards the end where they had 5 wins 5 draws and 2 losses in their final 12 games. Yes we're only just ahead of Reading now but as long as we don't lose form towards the end of the season we will beat the points record.

He was really good against Rotherham, surprised there hasnt been much activity on this thread. He was even better before his injuries but that is more of a testament to how incredible he used to be as he's still one of our best players.

he's had better games than this earlier in the season. It's more about consistency rather than can he play well at all.

It's about showing fight, are we winning because we have superior players or because we have the mentality to win every game? If we fall off and finish second it suggests that we are getting promoted on player quality rather than mentality, which is a bad recipe for staying up in the PL because we will no longer have that player quality advantage. Some of the better promoted sides came up through the playoffs rather than automatics, the reason why they did better in the PL is because they had to fight to get through the play offs

Finishing second after the start we've had would require a collapse that could very easily continue into the following season. It's first or bust this year, us finishing second would show we dont have the mentality to stay up in the PL