In retrospect I think I, and others, got our hopes it too much we could challange City. The club and Pep have done a magnificent job of making his ethos there stand, recruiting generally brilliantly and it will take some effort and a lot of luck to overtake them in the league. TT was given only 2 main signings. Ones a flop, the other we will see what happens with if the toys fully Co out of the pram or not.

And we simply cannot match City for money invested. Roman is rich, but he looks like a poor man compared to the country that owns City. 

Premier League has become the German league or French league, one side pure dominance only dropping the ball once in a blue moon.

For any who made it to the Bridge what was the reaction like re to both TT and Rom?

2 hours ago, axman2526 said:

In retrospect I think I, and others, got our hopes it too much we could challange City. The club and Pep have done a magnificent job of making his ethos there stand, recruiting generally brilliantly and it will take some effort and a lot of luck to overtake them in the league. TT was given only 2 main signings. Ones a flop, the other we will see what happens with if the toys fully Co out of the pram or not.

And we simply cannot match City for money invested. Roman is rich, but he looks like a poor man compared to the country that owns City. 

Premier League has become the German league or French league, one side pure dominance only dropping the ball once in a blue moon.

To be fair to us injuries and Covid really messed up our December period. I don't think we should be to downbeat at all, and yesterday's game showed how resilient we can be.

1 hour ago, Malcolm9 said:

To be fair to us injuries and Covid really messed up our December period. I don't think we should be to downbeat at all, and yesterday's game showed how resilient we can be.

Yeah this seems pretty clear to me. Our near perfect storm of injuries and illness + City’s incredible run of wins (aided perhaps by the submissiveness of their opposition at times, and some luck) are the reasons we are 10 points behind. To @axman2526i ask you again - how does any of this point to Tuchel being shown the door? I get the history argument (though I don’t agree with it) but is there anything else?

3 hours ago, axman2526 said:

In retrospect I think I, and others, got our hopes it too much we could challange City. The club and Pep have done a magnificent job of making his ethos there stand, recruiting generally brilliantly and it will take some effort and a lot of luck to overtake them in the league. TT was given only 2 main signings. Ones a flop, the other we will see what happens with if the toys fully Co out of the pram or not.

And we simply cannot match City for money invested. Roman is rich, but he looks like a poor man compared to the country that owns City. 

Premier League has become the German league or French league, one side pure dominance only dropping the ball once in a blue moon.

Fair. I didn’t think City were going to be this good this season. I think/hope they will falter at some point and I may be biased but still think premier league is by far the best. If you’re right though and it really comes down to money alone, at least then we can look forward to Newcastle challenging in a couple of years 😩 and instead of a monopoly it becomes a duopoly more like la liga 

6 hours ago, forbzy said:

Fair enough. But only because I don't want Spurs winning anything. The League Cup has lost a lot of luster since the 80's sadly. 

Once you lose your milk sponsorship it’s all downhill I’m afraid. 

I thought City would drop a level especially playing with no striker - but they haven’t. I think wining the league was always a big ask being so many points behind last season. I think we have closed the gap to at least challenging. Tuchel just needs to work on getting the forwards firing - without them, we won’t win the league.  

8 hours ago, Amputechture said:

Sorry but what was CHO's involvement in the Lukaku story?

Just adding another decision that Tuchel got right yesterday. Apologies if this thread, about Thomas Tuchel, is exclusively to how he’s managed the Lukaku situation.

6 hours ago, axman2526 said:

In retrospect I think I, and others, got our hopes it too much we could challange City. The club and Pep have done a magnificent job of making his ethos there stand, recruiting generally brilliantly and it will take some effort and a lot of luck to overtake them in the league. TT was given only 2 main signings. Ones a flop, the other we will see what happens with if the toys fully Co out of the pram or not.

And we simply cannot match City for money invested. Roman is rich, but he looks like a poor man compared to the country that owns City. 

Premier League has become the German league or French league, one side pure dominance only dropping the ball once in a blue moon.

I was wondering how much they had outspent us by, so looked up the last 5 years of player purchases on Transfermarkt.

The key difference between us and them is the first part of your post I have highlighted. They've had more hits than misses with who they have bought, whereas our recruitment has wasted millions on duds, particularly forwards.

Believe it or not we have actually forked out £23.3m more than them in the last 5 years ... £793.3m vs £770.0m.

In my opinion, we desperately need a proper Director of Football and a better network of Scouts as a matter of urgent priority. The Director role has been a gaping chasm in the management system since Emenalo left.

25 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

In my opinion, we desperately need a proper Director of Football and a better network of Scouts as a matter of urgent priority. The Director role has been a gaping chasm in the management system since Emenalo left.

We need a director of football who’s on the same page as the manager working towards the same objective/playing style though. Which is hard to do when changing manager every two years. 

58 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

I was wondering how much they had outspent us by, so looked up the last 5 years of player purchases on Transfermarkt.

The key difference between us and them is the first part of your post I have highlighted. They've had more hits than misses with who they have bought, whereas our recruitment has wasted millions on duds, particularly forwards.

Believe it or not we have actually forked out £23.3m more than them in the last 5 years ... £793.3m vs £770.0m.

In my opinion, we desperately need a proper Director of Football and a better network of Scouts as a matter of urgent priority. The Director role has been a gaping chasm in the management system since Emenalo left.

That is shocking. I didn’t even realise that. Our £300m worth of forwards is the worst bit. None of them look threatening. 

Still loving TT in general and he’s doing a decent job all things considered.

Would be nice to see some flexibility in his formation.

A back 3 is great when we’re keeping clean sheets every other week and have our outstanding wingbacks delivering the goods. But neither is the case at the moment.

Be nice to see a back 4 at some point to allow for an extra attacking player to get on the pitch against weaker teams. We have an abundance of talent up top but none of them ever seem to get enough game time to really play themselves into form. 

56 minutes ago, Munkworth said:

We need a director of football who’s on the same page as the manager working towards the same objective/playing style though. Which is hard to do when changing manager every two years. 

True, but that's the point of the DoF ... he's the one that sets the objective/style, which the manager then follows. Shouldn't matter if you chop/change manager as they would all be following the master plan of the DoF/Club.

Rewatching the highlights and the second Liverpool goal showed that Alonso either forgets where he should be positioning himself or that the back 3 couldn't cover their area well enough.

2 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

Rewatching the highlights and the second Liverpool goal showed that Alonso either forgets where he should be positioning himself or that the back 3 couldn't cover their area well enough.

...and nobody closed down TTA( who is the best passer of the ball in the Liverpool team) allowing him time to pick the pass into the space, this happened in the Brighton game too. Whether it's fatigue or players out of form we aren't defending as a team as well as we did the backend of last year.

5 minutes ago, charierre said:

...and nobody closed down TTA( who is the best passer of the ball in the Liverpool team) allowing him time to pick the pass into the space, this happened in the Brighton game too. Whether it's fatigue or players out of form we aren't defending as a team as well as we did the backend of last year.

Slightly veering but I've noticed whenever teams have a long run of being great defensively when that stops it stays stopped for a while. Even under Mou 1.0 we had a longish run with minimul clean sheets in the second season.

4 minutes ago, Argo said:

Slightly veering but I've noticed whenever teams have a long run of being great defensively when that stops it stays stopped for a while. Even under Mou 1.0 we had a longish run with minimul clean sheets in the second season.

Possibly true, we had an air of invincibility, resulting in a lot of clean sheets. Last season the two outer CB's were quick to step forward closing  space down the side of the midfield two. The forward line closed down faster. The loss of Werner has contributed to this plus Chalobah for all his very good debut season still looks very raw. The best defences keep changes to a minimum. The loss of our WB's has without any doubt hindered us both forward and defensively.  Suddenly we are conceding a lot of shots, goals are inevitable. We need to put more emphasis on stopping the crosses from coming in, though as I said previously it could be down to fatigue.

It's been a while since we have seen both Kante and Kovacic playing together under Tuchel.

With both our FBs being injured made me wonder if this duo was chosen for their movement around the pitch in case either Alonso or Azpi got caught out being at the wrong end of the pitch.

Will be interesting to see if he persists with this pairing going forward or reverts to bringing back Jorginho.

1 hour ago, Gol15 said:

Rewatching the highlights and the second Liverpool goal showed that Alonso either forgets where he should be positioning himself or that the back 3 couldn't cover their area well enough.

I thought Alonso played quite good at the start of this season, like really well /relatively - but now he seems 5y older. Very slow movement, as usual, but also very slow in anticipation and sloppy with his technique. Not sure if it's fatigue (like I'd say is the case with Jorgi who's clearly not fit), don't really think it's that but he's playing right now like he just joined the team while being 35yo. Kinda strange. Or the start of the season was a bit misleading with other teams not being fully in form and he profited in comparison.

6 hours ago, Dean said:

Yeah this seems pretty clear to me. Our near perfect storm of injuries and illness + City’s incredible run of wins (aided perhaps by the submissiveness of their opposition at times, and some luck) are the reasons we are 10 points behind. To @axman2526i ask you again - how does any of this point to Tuchel being shown the door? I get the history argument (though I don’t agree with it) but is there anything else?

Aside from it being Roman's model of success since he bought us my suspicion is him breaking our transfer record for Lukaku he will expect a successful season in return, and I dont think finishing top 4 will cut it.

4 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

I was wondering how much they had outspent us by, so looked up the last 5 years of player purchases on Transfermarkt.

The key difference between us and them is the first part of your post I have highlighted. They've had more hits than misses with who they have bought, whereas our recruitment has wasted millions on duds, particularly forwards.

Believe it or not we have actually forked out £23.3m more than them in the last 5 years ... £793.3m vs £770.0m.

In my opinion, we desperately need a proper Director of Football and a better network of Scouts as a matter of urgent priority. The Director role has been a gaping chasm in the management system since Emenalo left.

I did not know that. I bet Roman does and is likely less than happy about it.

3 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

True, but that's the point of the DoF ... he's the one that sets the objective/style, which the manager then follows. Shouldn't matter if you chop/change manager as they would all be following the master plan of the DoF/Club.

That’s all well and good but the calibre of manager we tend to hire have their own (most of the time big, living out loud) personalities, want to play their way and don’t like being told what to do. Although I feel Tuchel is the type who’d actually play nicely with others as long as they’re generally on the same page.

 

2 hours ago, Gol15 said:

Rewatching the highlights and the second Liverpool goal showed that Alonso either forgets where he should be positioning himself or that the back 3 couldn't cover their area well enough.

I actually thought Alonso was trying to cover a big Rudiger shaped hole behind him because Rudi had been dragged out of position by Salah and got carried away trying to get the ball back. 

Personally, I think Tuchel handled this situation well. He didn't decide to drop Lukaku based on emotions, he consulted the senior players which is something I had never considered tbh. 

3 hours ago, axman2526 said:

Aside from it being Roman's model of success since he bought us my suspicion is him breaking our transfer record for Lukaku he will expect a successful season in return, and I dont think finishing top 4 will cut it.

I did not know that. I bet Roman does and is likely less than happy about it.

Fair enough Axman. I think I’ve probably made my views clear on this so I will spare you and the forum … for now 

1 hour ago, Deino said:

Personally, I think Tuchel handled this situation well. He didn't decide to drop Lukaku based on emotions, he consulted the senior players which is something I had never considered tbh. 

I’d love to know which players and who said what. Can’t pretend I’m not a sucker for a bit of gossip from time to time 

9 minutes ago, Dean said:

I’d love to know which players and who said what. Can’t pretend I’m not a sucker for a bit of gossip from time to time 

Jorginho, kante, azpi, rudi were consulted according the Atheletic report.