The quality throughout the league is genuinely astonishing. The leap that Championship sides have got to make now is huge because they can no longer count on a handful of poorly run mid-table clubs to have an off-year, except maybe Everton. Our Centurions and Fourmidables teams were fantastic but they were helped by the fact that we were two seasons ahead of everyone else with regards to playing out from the back, pressing from the front, and really capitalising on making the most of quick transitions. Now the rest of the league is a bit wiser, the managers are a bit smarter, and players are just that bit more astute. Everything's data and figures and analysis now, and it's caught up to us a little bit. Fitness levels have also gone up loads across the league in the last five years, which means we don't wear teams out in the same way anymore. There were definitely signs in the first half yesterday that Pep's going to start looking at a new approach - instead of setting up camp on the edge of the box and waiting for a gap in the opposition's formation, it seems like we're going to sit a bit deeper as a team, invite the opposition on, and build through the middle of the pitch. It should work wonders for Haaland - we should have been out of sight by half-time yesterday and it was only those missed chances that stopped us. Then we ran out of energy. I'm curious to see what Pep does with this team next.
