Watching Chelsea, same as Liverpool they created so many chances from both their fullbacks overlapping and cutting back/crossing on the outside. Simple and effective

I have no idea why our Pep's disciple do these contrived inverted crap and pack so many people centrally to do sideways passing and leave our wingers always isolated or need some Saka magic to score

    City have been doubly vulnerable because Kovacic got injured on top of Rodri who he was replacing so they were playing without a 6 for their period of games.

    City were 5 points ahead of us just 5 games ago. Imagine saying to someone back then that we'd drop points to Fulham and Everton in the next 5 and still end up 3 points ahead.

    Who knows where we'll be in another 5 games...

    Clrnc don't think they're this bad with Rodrigo in midfield but fair enough.

      Clrnc Pep used to do that plenty in his spell at Barcelona. He had the fullbacks start to tuck in at Bayern, if I recall correctly.

        Chelsea , Spurs , Liverpool , Brentford and Brighton look so much better attacking than we do.

        As I type that Jackson scores a goal that we can never score nowadays because our forwards bar Saka are so bad

        So annoying that we have shit the bed this season. Watching Liverpool (or especially Chelsea) win it is going to be so fucking rough.

        How have we managed to fall behind these two teams again? And before doing anything significant as well. Fuck off honestly.

          TambourineMan that's the frustrating thing. I'm not a big fan of the 5 year plan ideas I don't think football really works in the way that you can be sure when you're best opportunities arise. But if you follow that path and grind your way up at the point we are at you have to be putting in top level performances season on season to deliver on that or before you know it your left behind.

          There are echoes of arsenal recently, look promising but perhaps flatter to deceive. That's the worry I have about where we are now.

              SimplyThePest The golden opportunity missed is this season. We weren't ready in 22/23 and got 89 points in 23/24 (not much more we could have done). This season we should have been pushing on and with City collapsing, being the team to capitalise but instead we've fallen behind Chelsea and Liverpool.

                Yep, last season, this one and the next two are probably the time to capitalise as Liverpool try to replace some ageing or out of contract players. Slot does seem annoyingly good. Hopefully City are more traditional and pick a manager to replace Pep who has a shocker. And Amorim has got off to a good start, but will need a few windows to change things around.

                Missing out this season would be pretty bad as the whole "project" idea was to leave us in the position to be ready to step up when city didn't quite perform but it looks like we've really fumbled that sufficiently to question whether we actually can win a title in my view.

                Let's hope we can fluke our way to a UCL title like what Chelsea did when they played some absolutely terrible football under Di Matteo.

                The cups should absolutely be our priority. We can win one off big games but we have no firepower to win the league with consistency.

                Let's see what happens. There's no urgent need to prioritise Europe until the knockout rounds, we're in a good position there.

                I suspect both that the gap to Liverpool will close slightly and that we'll aim at players in January.

                I would really love to know whether there was any concrete conflict behind Edu's departure now. Here's hoping it wasn't that Edu advocated signing forwards and Arteta pulled his weight to overrule him!

                  Burnwinter I would really love to know whether there was any concrete conflict behind Edu's departure now. Here's hoping it wasn't that Edu advocated signing forwards and Arteta pulled his weight to overrule him!

                  I've been wondering did Edu know he was close to leaving and take his eye of the ball in the summer. The way Sesko decided to stay where he was felt a bit unusual compared to how we've been operating recently. We usually have the player fully on board and its just the fee we need to work on.

                      Qwiss Something's gone on. I'm not sure if it would've been chicken or egg and there's not much gossip, except the (unevidenced?) claim that between Tim Lewis being proactive, Arteta taking up a lot of shoulder room and a growing number of overpaid players to sell that he couldn't blame on anyone else, Edu wasn't feeling like he had much upside left in the role.

                        I honestly think we're just cursed. Ever since Moustache Man got involved in the club we've had nothing but every single football god against us in myriad ways.

                        No point expecting any real change of fortunes because we aren't any closer to a first league win since 2004.

                        Fucking Chelsea are back out of nowhere and look far more likely to win the league than us, despite how strong we've been these past two years.

                        Chelsea will fade away.

                        I still think we’ll win the league. Do do that we do need barmy decisions to stop going against us.

                        The performance away to Sporting was the highest level of football I’ve seen us play since the invincibles