OTF

Robin's overused cunt And....

The second one was cut off. ....reliable and experienced in the field of coming into clubs, making them and their players worse, departing with a hat full of excuses and leaving a redolent stench.

I imagine this unfortunate mess will be sorted once they send that link to the premier league and clear things up.

Something for wor flags to pop on some banners.

Without having read all of the specifics of the charges I'm going to say nee chance they're relegated. There could be a sizeable points deduction but you can't imagine it would happen this season with how long these sort of legal proceedings take. A lot of the charges stem from failing to provide information, which, from Cities perspective may offer them enough plausible deniability to avoid the harshest penalties. The others relate to breaches of premier league sustainability and european FFP rules. Interesting the periods covered include the same seasons for which they were previously punished with a fine in 2014 (that was from that season and the two prior I believe). Initially that was a ban from European football but for whatever r€a$on £ha£ n€v€r $£uck. Our manchester blue correspondant has a lot to answer to.

You're right. All the ducks need to be lined up; from a legal perspective it doesn't matter how much smoke there is, proof of the actual fire is required.

Longstaff doesn't like to sit deep from what we've seen of late, neither does Joe, I feel like we'd not have a lot of shape with that formation, just a lot of forward runs with still not a lot of finishing. It's more than possible that Longstaff is doing what Howe asks of him, so maybe sitting him deeper could be possible, though he's rarely convincing defensively IMO. May be worth trying Willock out in a deeper role, he's more dangerous coming into the box late and has the energy to hound players like Joelinton does and is a good defender against the break. We effectively know how Bournemouth will set up, they'll sit back trying to compress our space and will hit on the counter. If we're stacked with forwards who like a bit of space (Almiron, Gordon, Isak) we're playing into their hands a little because they'll have no space to work and will be too far up the pitch to get back when they counter. They'll have plenty of bodies in the box, but can be a bit flat footed and won't like pressure when they've got possession at the back. We'll need lots of pace and movement on balls into the box, the kind that Trippier can get, but will need Wilson running superb lines to take advantage of them. I'm not sure who will be best suited to act as that midfield fulcrum distributing the ball, but fair chance shape wise we'll need two of them. Normally it's Bruno doing that for us, against West Ham it was a mix of players, but it mostly meant that we favoured the wings more than usual. Brighton, at home, who have a similar playing style to us struggled to break down Bournemouth in their last game. They scored late with a superb header to win it. They should have scored in the first half when a bit of pressure forced Leno into a terrible pass and they were almost made to rue that missed opportunity.

Dan Burn is a good target, but not a good header of the ball. Schar is a better header of the ball, but still not particularly good. Botman is mere moments from scoring even when he's sleeping. Wilson operates best with space and isn't tall. On the flip-side Lascelles is actually a good header of the ball, but is otherwise Lascelles.

Stand by for the CN tweet: "Charges against Man City for financial breaches further proof of what I previously stated regarding Newcastle's spending limitations. Remember where you heard it first."

Meanwhile, at Chelsea

Financial penalties

Ashley had to put in a bit of money more recently because of how thin and weak the squad was through lack of investment in the preceding years of his ownership, back when we were frequently winning the Balance Sheet Trophy.

Need to win to pick our momentum back up. Can we get those marvelous Turkish wizards at Cinik to work some plastic surgery magic on Bruno to give him Manquillo's face?

He loses the ball, or doesn't win a tackle and he's either on the ground or uselessly jogging. He's never been rewarded for flopping to the ground in an exaggerated fashion and yet he still does it each and every time. Miggy used to do it (but he was never workshy) and he's completely stopped it, but ASM seemingly can't. He didn't have as bad a game as some are saying here and he did play some dangerous balls and troubled the defense on occassion, but more often than not he looked like the odd one out in team, the rest are moving into space (not just in a forward direction) and covering for each other defensively, he's only looking for his own run and when he does defend it's like he's doing you a favour.

Unlike the fan base (us included) Eddie is not going to discard a player after a bad performance. Not saying that ASM is in the long term plans but whilst he's here Eddie is going to try to make some use of him. He still did some useful stuff out there but his underlying flaw which we all agree on seems insurmountable at this point. It's not that he doesn't pass, as he's started to pass more often, it's that he's work shy and precious.

He runs his legs off every game he plays.

I too can't shake the same feeling as much as I love Burn.

A frustrating draw, West Ham much better than their table position, especially defensively. As expected we really missed Bruno. Some nice touched from Gordon in his cameo.

Aguerd has had a great game, the prick.

Express quick is Gordon

Sucked the life out of that half chance.

Oh Joe