Premier League 20/21 - Early Thoughts

[Lycan]

Not likely to spend much in the summer either. If they sack Woy they will 100% go down. Keep him and they've got a chance of being solid enough to stay up.

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[Deutsch Wolf]

If they were thinking of selling Zaha to fund a rebuild then I'd suggest they think again. He just isn't that good, no-one will pay silly money for him.

 

[Premier Quality]

Zaha wanted to leave last summer, I got the impression they promised he could leave this summer if he stayed for the season.

 

[Templeton Peck]

West Ham mate is feeling very despondent. No faith in Moyes and convinced Rice is going. Worrying as West Ham fans are a bit like Blues fans - always on about the 'potential' and being 4 players short of Europe.

 

[lemonjelly]

Zaha wanted to leave last summer, I got the impression they promised he could leave this summer if he stayed for the season.

apparently they're willing to accept £40m for him...

West Ham mate is feeling very despondent. No faith in Moyes and convinced Rice is going. Worrying as West Ham fans are a bit like Blues fans - always on about the 'potential' and being 4 players short of Europe.

Rice is totally the emperors new clothes. Really don't get the plaudits he is given so often.

 

[lemonjelly]

I was thinking about this the other day, we're obviously a much better team when we have the ball working it round the pitch and opening up spaces than when we're sitting back and nullifying the opposition (don't get me wrong we're very good at both, but we tend to not really look like scoring when we employ the latter), but to play that way for the full 90 will take a lot more out of the players. I think our fist half approach has played a huge part in keeping the core first team as fit as they are so if that's replaced with a little more intent throughout the whole game we're going to need a bigger squad. Nothing ridiculous but enough to be able to rotate when necessary which we don't really have at the moment. Address that properly and I think we'd genuinely have a real shot at fourth. If we approach next season pretty much the same as this one then I'd say between fourth and seventh again, it would all depend which way all those draws went.

WBA and Playoff winners to go down with one of Villa, Brighton, West Ham or Palace joining them. Villa and West Ham have the biggest opportunities to turn things round but I'd be tempted to bet on both being at the wrong end of the table again next year. No idea about Leeds, can't decide between safe mid table or in with the mix at the bottom, way too tough to call.

Interesting thoughts booz.
We did hear when Nuno was first appointed that he could be a bit conservative, and one issue other fans had was lack of goals.
Much of that has proved a little trite, however, we don't spank teams, and conversion of changes is arguably something we need to improve on.

I've had a couple of moments where I've been worried Nuno didn't have a plan b. He has proved me wrong, thankfully. However, it looks to me like we need to explore improving how clinical we are. We know we're capable of creating good chances.

 

[Boozad]

Interesting thoughts booz.
We did hear when Nuno was first appointed that he could be a bit conservative, and one issue other fans had was lack of goals.
Much of that has proved a little trite, however, we don't spank teams, and conversion of changes is arguably something we need to improve on.

I've had a couple of moments where I've been worried Nuno didn't have a plan b. He has proved me wrong, thankfully. However, it looks to me like we need to explore improving how clinical we are. We know we're capable of creating good chances.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have an issue with Nuno’s first half approach (apart from the fact we don’t see many goals down our end!) as it’s been proven to work, I think this season was defined by that long spell of conceding first though and that was one of the main reasons for all those draws. We seem to have rectified that for the most part but then a few late goals crept in. There’s obviously no way Nuno can get it right 100% of the time, it’s the tweaks and small improvements over time that define a quality manager and he does do that.

To get to be a top seven side instantly has been miraculous but the hard part now is working out how to push that on to the next step, it will be interesting to see how he goes about it.