I think we have missed Luiz.

Yes Youri is a class act alongside the brilliant Kamara but I think we'd have got Champions League last season with Luiz in the squad, particularly around that tough October-December period last season when we struggled with juggling Champions League games and the league and then again when Kamara had to play centre back for us during last season's injury shitshow

Kept playing balls into the box from the wings against big lumps who eat that up for breakfast. Should have kept it central and threaded through the middle imo.

If only that were true.

The way to beat packed defences is to go wide and get behind them and pull the ball back.

Instead we had Bailey and Sancho on the wrong flanks and continually playing the ball inside outside the box. Then a series of one twos until we lost posession.

Love Unai, and he’s brilliant, but I think he got it wrong today. I always think essentially leaving the midfield short, centrally, is a mistake. It’s so hard to build angles without that - and that manifested with us, it took us so long to move the ball from side to side they could reorganise easily.

I also thought it was clear we needed a physical presence, instead we reduced that as the game went on.

Whilst we dominated possession against 10, the speed at which we tried to penetrate their defence was just too slow, we kept flooding the edge of their box and showed little movement once we were camped there.
It was a pretty ordinary attack v defence operation with defence coming out easily on top.

Quote from: Villan82 on February 01, 2026, 07:22:55 PM

Keep him out of the squad. Nothing against the bloke, but that crazy winning run we were on coincided with hi being out of the squad and I just think he is all wrong for us.

It coincided with our best 3 midfielders being fit.

Er, we started the season very badly including Elliot being singled out by Emery in our drab draw with Sunderland. Elliot was nowhere during that amazing 15 wins in 17 games period

Excellent article Dave - completely agree.