Colly

Nothing worth saying about this game other than I hate that double advertising hoarding shit. Shouldn't be allowed.

But competing with them whilst barely playing that position? Whenever I've seen him play he's on the wing, and a quick whoscored has him in centre mid for about 3 games earlier this season. I'm bored of him now...

In which case he's competing with Foden, Bellingham and Palmer.

I like him, but his competition for that right wing spot is Saka, potentially Foden, plus Bowen in that squad, I don't think you could put him ahead of any of those.

Absurdly long VAR check here, it's obvious there's no camera angle to show it's a clear handball so the goal should stand. It's getting silly.

Can't go wrong with this guy in goal

That Kudus goal was lovely too, only caught a bit of that game but I picked the right bit.

Ooh, I like the shoulder stripes.

I thought he dealt with the Mainoo questions well too. "He's played about 4 games". Glad that we've got to the point though that Phillips actually playing and showing he's not good enough has meant he's finally lost that Tom Cleverly thing of his supposed ability mysteriously increasing every time he was injured.

I got tickets in the resale! 8 of us attempted it, only success was me getting 4 tickets for Austria v France at a far higher price point than I wanted, but still happy-ish!

What an assist that is from Odegaard, made all the better by McCoist on comms. He should be prescribed on the NHS.

I basically wrote it off after Gordon got injured, pleasantly surprised so far.

It absolutely doesn't do this by the way, as one interpretation of the laws in an isolated English game doesn't set any kind of precedent, in a sport with so many moving parts that something similar may happen tomorrow somewhere in the world or not happen again for months. You could argue the gray area is there already, but football is an inherently risky sport, and if we were going to eliminate all the gray areas where a safety concern potentially existed there wouldn't be much of a sport left. We'd certainly have banned bicycle kicks and any kind of volley years ago, and potentially progressed to walking football. I digress. We do have laws on dangerous play and serious foul play which will have been considered, but realistically Doku isn't lunging, he's stationary and swinging to clear a ball in the box and has no idea McAllister is there (so no intent). The worst he's going to end up with is a scrape and a bruise, it's as mentioned a long way from a De Jong king fu kick.

I'd like to expand a bit too. On the "if it's a free kick outside the box it's a penalty in" point we all know that isn't the case, and to be honest I a) don't see that as a bad thing, and b) don't see it as cowardly refereeing. If anything it's the other way round, we know refs will happily semi guess inconsequential decisions in the middle of the park (like say giving a drop ball the wrong way ), but will be a bit more cautious on a game changing decision like a penalty and if they didn't we'd be whinging about the game going soft. It's very much a "seen them given", but not necessarily a clear and obvious error. If McAllister puts his head in he guarantees himself a pen (and a headache).

You, me, and Jamie Carragher. The 3 Amigos.

I think you're right with this, as it is it's a classic "wouldn't have been overturned if it was given". It's certainly not "stonewall" (I fucking hate that term, and you could probably find a post from me saying the same a decade ago @stokeriño).

Big fan of Ederson just wellying him there. If in doubt.

It's a good ball in but I don't think it's that clever, he's just played it to the guy Darwin couldn't be arsed to mark.

Feel like he's going extreme devil's advocate in the absence of Carragher.

Genuinely no idea what Neville is suggesting with Ake there, especially in comparison with the offside in the Carabao Cup final.

Crystal Palace 2 vs. 1 Luton (Sat 3pm) Wolves 2 vs. 1 Fulham (Sat 3pm) Arsenal 3 vs. 1 Brentford (Sat 5.30pm, Sky) Aston Villa 2 vs. 2 Tottenham (Sun 1pm, Sky) Liverpool 1 vs. 1 Man City (Sun 3.45pm, Sky)

It's Shearer as he might appear on The Man With The Stick's helmet.

Dunno, looking back at all the transfers post takeover he's the only one (bar Livramento being eased in) that hasn't been successful to at least some extent, and presumably the logic is that he's 19 and his value will only increase if he's any good. Otherwise I'd argue our transfer business has been excellent, the club couldn't do much about Harvey Barnes being crocked near immediately.

We'd kind of assumed the opposite, it's felt all season like we were trying to avoid some kind of minute threshold to trigger the permanent. Makes the bizarre sporadic substitutions even more strange, unless Howe just thinks he's not quite ready yet.