I don't come on here to wind people up but I''ve seen some really sour grapes in here regarding the VAR decisions, maybe the people commenting will think differently if they watch the game again. The referee today should feel ashamed of himself getting so much wrong. Our first goal was never off-side and Trippier should never have been given a straight red, the tackle was with the top of his foot and was never going to cause a serious injury. I also thought that we could have had a penalty when Schar was brought down towards the end of the first half (I think it was then).
I'm more than happy to get a point from that game as you're easily the best team in the world and we've come a long way in a short space of time. I'm glad that you got the first goal and not us as I think we would have lost if we'd scored in the 5th minute.
Today was the first time that we’ve actually had a go at you for a long time. We played better at home to Forest but today was better when you consider the opposition in both games. In the end I thought that a point was well deserved, and a draw was a fair result. You can complain about some of your players maybe not being as good as others who could have started but we could say the same. Targett instead of Burn and the second and third goals possibly don’t happen because Burn was ball watching for both, that’s life we can all look at goals and pick fault but that’s football and not everybody is 100%.
Pope played well for us and that’s why we brought him in because he’s a huge upgrade for us and he’s shown that in the last two games. Saint-Maximin played as well as he did against Forest at home, probably slightly better, he’s’ changed his game slightly and is now passing instead of trying to do everything on his own. Joelinton put in a massive shift for us in midfield and Bruno had to take care once he got that early yellow and his game was reduced because of it.
We are much fitter under Howe, we could never have played like that under Bruce as the players were dead after 30 or 40 minutes after him and we have a game plan. We’ve only lost once at home since New Year and that was 0-1 against Liverpool so you not winning is not a massive surprise even though I thought that was the most likely result before the game.
I think both of our teams can and will get better as we play more games. Both teams are making massive changes. You’re getting used to Haarland who will be a massive threat to any team once you get the best out of him and we are learning to play more in the face of the opposition and not being so passive.
We set up to have a go and deserved a point. You can see how much further we need to go with bringing in better players as our substitutions came on and offered absolutely nothing. Maybe the entertainers are on their way back, at least I hope so because we’ve been garbage for so long. I would love to see us sign Paqueta as he would give us that extra quality up front and he works really, really well with Bruno as they can read each other’s game so well and he (Paqueta) has not been the same player since we signed Bruno from Lyon. I don’t know if anybody on here watches Brazil, the game against Bolivia will help you understand what I mean by them playing so well together when they assisted each other’s goals by simply knowing their game so well. They played together for Lyon and could always find each other as they knew exactly what runs each other made.
Lastly, you’ll still win the league although you shouldn’t expect us to help you out against Liverpool without us making another couple of quality signings. Our first 11 is fine when everybody is fit, move away from the first 11 and we’re struggling, we need to replace some of our starting 11 and get them onto the bench.
God, I waffle on.
