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It is difficult question to answer based on just one game however there are several reasons why we might hope to stay up. 1. We matched Liverpool for possession and pass completion. 2. We were able to play through their press. 3. We created 12 shooting opportunities even though we didn't establish a territorial advantage. Indeed all the indicators suggest that we can play counter attacking football at this level. 4. 3-0 was not a fair reflection of the relative dominance of Liverpool and the scoreline flattered Klopp's side somewhat. The first goal was fortunate for them albeit well taken and finished through our keepers legs, the second two goals were a combination of Liverpool's skill and strength in depth and our own defensive awareness. Up until the first goal Klopp was looking nervous and agitated as his side were unable to dominate the game as they might have expected. 5. At no point did we look as though we didn't deserve to be on the same pitch as them. 6. On several occasions we played right through them and were only lacking the final ball, passing option or finish. 7. Our defensive line were able to match the attacking play in the 1v1 verses the Liverpool's attacking players. None of our back 4 was "owned" by the opposition. Based on one game only it would seem that we have a lot more to come particularly once Pukki is fully fit and Rashica, Sargent and Tzolis are more fully integrated into the team. With more precision in the final third and more depth to the available playing squad, based on this performance we should be able to get the nine or ten wins that will keep us up. Bonzo's bowl is half full.

This thread.

I've now read through this too and the way Horsefly and others of his ilk talk, it is as if anything you say about a black person is racist. It's the same with the jewish issue - to some people you can't say anything at all about that issue without being called anti-semitic. It actually destroys balanced debate. It's become as simple as saying you can abuse a white person for missing a penalty but you can't abuse a black man for missing a penalty. It's almost comical. Abuse is unsavoury wherever it occurs and I would far rather all abuse was condemned - and to say one set of abuse is racist and another set of abuse is acceptable is kind of....well.....a bit ridiculous. My opinion - and the same as most on here - is that some of the chant about those penalty takers would have been racially motivated, but a lot of it wouldn't. Either way it is a pathetic chant and that it has stuck and we will probably hear it whenever those players are on the field is a sad reflection on football supporters as a whole - not because of whether it is racist or not, but because it is just abuse.

I don't disagree that we needed an alternative to Pukki and hopefully Idah and Sargent will do just that. But i'm looking at the top scorers for last season... Lacazette got 13, Chris Wood 12, Callum Wilson 12, Danny Ings 12, Iheanacho 12, Rashford 11, Zaha 11, Mane 11, Bale 11, Aubameyang 10, Sterling 10, Antonio 10, Benteke 10 I think the argument that Pukki failed in the prem last time is quite simply palpably untrue, he scored in the same realms as £20-£50 million pound players. Basically, we won't get better than him for this season. Our alternatives might prove better in certain games, but Pukki really shouldn't be underestimated.

Don’t agree. He got in behind them a few times yesterday and it would have been more if Rashica was used to his runs. We need to get more support up around him.

Oh do give me a ****ing break. The guy has had COVID and there's an article on this website from just TWO DAYS AGO saying how he's still suffering from the effects of it. The whole team has suffered from the interrupted pre-season, so to start calling for the replacement of the guy who has fired us to two promotions in 3 years not to mention the 11 goals in the Premier League is utter, utter stupidity.

This must hurt our board to see this. Morally we're doing things right, they've performed wonders here in the past few years, and yet because they're not billionaires with disposable income they don't even reach 75% support via a public survey. Takes the **** if you ask me. Look down the road if you want to see what happens when you invite rich faceless investors into your club (Specifically Evans). For the 30% not happy, Is that what they'd prefer to try?!

The yes votes are from Sports Direct employees that would be removed from their positions if they refused.

Seen a couple of negative comments regarding him on social media, and quite frankly I don't see why. Thought he looked pretty good and was one of our strong points against Liverpool. Then did some old Googling towards what his stats were during the match and well.. Stats speak for themselves me thinks, more so given this was his very first competitive match for us after we of course had a rather interrupted pre season

At least they acknowledged that our song for him was brilliant. Loved the bit about fresh from winning the Copa America, he didn't make the final squad 😆

Yep I agree, I thought we spent the majority of the first half outplaying them. Some excellent passing and I thought Dimi and Max were both very good outlets. The second half Liverpool were dominant and our lack of pre-season showed to be honest. But I expect our match sharpness to improve and I expect us to be pretty competitive in a couple of weeks' time. Overall based upon our first half performance there is enough to suggest we are capable of staying in the league.

Half and half bloody scarves. OTBC

Darren Huckerby's forehead

Spurs fans were delighted with him, pundits were very impressed with him. He done his job as the CDM very well, against a very good Man City side. I think the fact Nuno started him in the first place kind of makes the point enough.

Name something more pointless. (Don’t say this thread)

Wait until he signs for Brighton/Southampton... it'll be "LOST OUT ON ANOTHER OF OUR PRIMARY TRANSFER TARGETS! COULDN'T EVEN SIGN A FREEBIE! WE'RE RELEGATED FOR SURE!"

Should be ok. Last time it happened was when everyone agreed that Roeder was a **** and the world carried on turning.😀

Isn't that the first sign of the apocalypse?

He is the Chris Eubanks of Footy, he thinks he's a gifted orator with great insight and knowledge and he thinks we should think that too. They have a very similar way of talking.....which they seem to find much more magnetic than their audience do. Self important, bombastic narcissists the pair of them. Just to be clear, I'm not a fan of either. 😉😇👍

Any excuse for a bit of The Chain.

I think this process is fine for topics which are clearly affecting a lot of people as we're seeing with the ticket office - it gives us as the OSP and the club a defined route to provide updates to multiple people/the wider fanbase in one hit. Where this process fails is if people bring up small issues which they expect a response to from the OSP/club, when they could contact the club themselves about it, not picking on your particularly @Greavsy but the bottles/paper cups thing would probably be a good example of that. This is the sort of thing which, in my opinion, wouldn't make the agenda for the next meeting in September - and if it did the meeting would probably still be taking place when it came round to having the following meeting in the new year! I don't want to pull up the drawbridge, but there obviously has to be a line where the OSP get involved and don't just become a conduit for minor complaints, which does add unnecessary red tape to what would otherwise be a simple conversation between a fan/customer and the club.

Greavsy pointing out I've liked someone's post

Well, I've read through all this and all I can say is all those calling out Horsefly to prove that the chants were made with racist intent have not offered up any evidence to show they weren't. As for the suggestion that we should ask the Leeds fans as to whether there was any racist motivation to the chant - yeah, I'm sure they're going to admit to that. As for the Gilmour chants from the Liverpool fans and the 'victim' chants from our fans I could hear them both clearly in the middle of the Lower Barclay (and my hearing isn't that good!!!) - the 'victim' chant started in the Snakepit and not many others joined in. BTW - please, please can we stop dragging out the Tony Martin incident based chant, particularly as most of those singing it weren't even born when it happened!!! Really shows a 'little old Norwich' mentality.

I think you are probably the most extreme woke troll I have ever come across on any forum you must be fun to live with

My Son was in Helmand in a forward operating base in Taliban territory. And he said fear was a big part of the population's reasoning. He said the ordinary Afghan was happy to see Western values arriving but was terrified when the Taliban came at night to compounds and said they would kill their children if they engaged with UK troops. He believed the US policy at the time of total destruction of the Taliban was the only way. And of course, lets not forget the undermining by other nations such as Pakistan, Saudi and Iran.

Hi all, here are mine. 💛💚 £10 - City to stay up. £10 - For each city player who scores more than 5 goals in the season (all comps). £10 - If City get to the quarter final of a cup. And as usual the League One bets which have proved very profitable (and very funny) over the last couple of years...🤭🤣 £10 - Town to stay down. £10 - Town to reach play-offs and stay down. £10 - For Cook to go. £1 - For each goal conceded (all comps) - which is already standing at £4. 🤣 Apples

11 goals in the Prem from a striker in a relegation team is a good return. He scored more than Aubameyang, was on par with Zaha and Rashford etc.

Midfield

Would he be prepared to come and be back up to Pukki though, that's my worry.

Pretty much any pub that's not a Wetherspoons.

It’s impossible to predict what Trump would have done in any set of circumstances, indeed presented with the same circumstances on two different days of the week he could well have made opposite decisions, total nutter. Hugely disappointing to hear some of the stuff that Biden has been saying however in his effort to defend what is happening now, and BJ commenting as above. The whole thing is yet another **** stain on the West!

Would expect Burnley to be a lot lower given that they’ve gone from being debt free and owned by fans with £40m cash to a leveraged takeover which leaves them with c.£90m debt

The goal we conceded 'from a corner' against Liverpool on Saturday was about a thousand times better than the one we conceded from a corner against Liverpool in the first game of our last Premier League season. On that occasion Van Dijk had a virtual free header from about 7 yards out. I realise that somebody will turn up in a minute and say 'what's the difference?' they both ended up being goals conceded, but any football coach will tell you that the one on Saturday was a massive improvement on the one from two years ago.

Agree VW. I read the same reports. Presently we are at a precarious balance with very high prevalence still between increasing cases in the 18-30 and diminishing elsewhere in the sunny out of doors summer with the autumn and school return only a few weeks away. What could go wrong? Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I don’t know why we don’t sign players from China

I’m not sure it was universally predicted it would shoot up after 19 July. The earlier unlocking in May (was it) when pretty much everything other than large gatherings were re-allowed was going to have a much larger impact. I think (memory terrible) there was quite a big jump following that earlier stage lockdown. Schools breaking up is the obvious one around the July 19th time. Noted children and teenagers still meet up, but less chance of being infected if you’re only mingling with five mates rather than a full secondary school of 1,200. But let’s not kid ourselves here either - the infections are still high. With this many infections pre-vaccines, we’d be seeing a lot more death and a lot more people in hospitals. Schools going back in particular, but also the colder, wetter weather will see a rise in cases, almost certainly. Likewise deaths. Likewise hospitalisations. Same as happens every year. All the signs currently are that vaccines will limit the excess deaths and ‘excess hospitalisations’ (if that’s a thing) pretty well, to the point where hopefully we won’t see much more death than a bad flu year.

“What about us?!”

Does seem rather unnecessary to be quite so harsh on us - and if we were that crap, how come two of their players played well enough to get into the team if the week?

It's not surprising is it? It's obvious from visiting here that some people haven't enjoyed going for many years now... 🙃

Good spot - I think they’ve always said they want all levels to play the same way, so it could be a ‘thing’ - though I’m a little surprised it wasn’t 3-5-2

I thought he played well, didn't look our of depth at all. I think he will be the biggest surprise of the new boys. Saying that, Sargent performed much better than I was expecting when he came on to.

A reminder of the age range of those at most risk

Jim is now available in stereo. From the pink un Q&A: Jim: Whilst I think there was enough promise in that display not to lose hope and the pre-season disruption is some mitigation I was worried by (i) shambolic defending at set pieces once again often leaving 3 or 4 players unmarked on the edge of the box and (ii) the incredibly obvious hole in front of the defence flowing from the lack of a defensive midfielder that every fan can see we need. Time for the club to be put under a bit more pressure to address these things? A DM should have been our first signing and defensive marking should be a given regardless of the quality of the players.

Most of the chances and goals we conceded came from Liverpool either isolating one of our full backs or catching them out of position. The spaces where they were getting these opportunities were in the areas that Skipp was so bloody good at covering last year. Gilmour and Rupp tried to offer some protection, but they're not that type of player, they don't have that natural awareness to be in the right place at the right time and neither of them are strong in the tackle either. I don't blame Aarons or Giannoulis, they are attack minded full backs and are doing what the manager tells them, but then when defending and when we lose the ball we need someone to cover those positions and give them a hand with their 1 v 1 defending. With Skipp playing we don't lose that game 3-0 and allow 14 chances in on goal. A similar type of player is needed urgently. As well as we played with the ball on another day that could've been 6-0. On another note we need to get back quicker. Every other team sprints back into position like they're life depends on it when they lose the ball. Our midfielders just kind of trot back and expect some last ditch tackle or Krul heroics to bail them out.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. We started to make our way to the Castle, but ended up going to the Cathedral. Had a good walk about, went in and seen Dippy. I was a bit disappointed that I ended up sitting outside the ground with a bottle of coke each. Was hoping to sit them in a beer garden but they had their shirts on. But the people outside the pub could see it was ridiculous. I took them to a park, they had a good day. Thanks again. I thought you were a bit nervous first half, but started the second half well and looked like a decent team. Just got caught out, pushing up. Yers 'll do okay. Nice one for the help.

I think there may be a rare consensus on the Pink Un about this.

Exactly. Are Brentford a footballing side? Generally I think they are but they exploited an opposition weakness to score with a throw in and a header. You have to mix it up at top level.

Dont agree. He was up against one of the best teams out there after having covid a couple of weeks ago. 26 goals last year. People forget very quickly.

Was it a 'poor performance' though? We were pretty evenly matched apart from the goals. It's fine margins but there's no shame in Rupp being a little less clinical than Salah, and that's ultimately what the difference between the two teams boiled down to. Our season was never going to be defined by this match. There are more positives than negatives from it.

I thought Rashica did ok. Had the audacity to commit TAA down the line and stood a decent ball up to the far post, little jinking dribble and cross etc The problem wasn’t so much Pukki but a combination of tiredness and Liverpool forcing us a bit deeper meaning that we didn’t have the legs to get/have anyone ghosting in at said back post to take advantage. It’s apparent we’ll both get fitter and play worse opposition where that kind of play will cause real problems. We did look seriously “underdone” today, Max running in custard for their third a prime example. Aarons is a serious athlete but the game took its toll today. He’s going to have a very different season this time around. We all know what Emi brought to the side in a creative sense but his defensive work, while acknowledged, was talked about less. It was apparent that he didn’t have the same in front of him today and if we intend to play a similar system with the same players, he’s going to have to develop a Drury-esque mentality and awareness when Ads had Hucks ahead of him. I think we (as if we didn’t suspect it already) need a better screen for the back four to allow PLM and Gilmour to operate in more advanced areas. Both players were highly promising despite the result. All in all, it wasn’t bad. The friendlies we missed would have brought higher fitness levels and more familiarity and a better understanding. I’m far from despondent despite the result and the outcome after going behind feeling oh-so-familiar. We do need 1 or 2 more though. I can dream, but Skipp for Rupp (who did ok for the most part and will still be a useful option), in that side and I think we’re properly competitive. But it doesn’t get any easier in the immediate future, does it?