OTF

It's odd that the Everton fans have turned on Gordon after he was critical to their survival last season and is still their leading scorer this year in the league. That said Lampard has been atrocious for them, blaming everyone but himself and yet they seemingly still think he did a good job so there's not much logic being applied.

FYP

The one thing I would say about our mooted interest in Gordon is that I don't think there's any great urgency to bring him in unless he's really pushing to leave Everton and the price is reflective of that. His preferred position is wide on the left where Willock is currently in pretty good form and where Joelinton and Isak are also comfortable playing. Who knows what Lampard's sacking will mean for their playing roster.

He looks pretty good to me tbh, brings good energy which would suit our high tempo play. I think that his price would be prohibitive and that Everton would not sell him on the cheap when he has a few years on his existing contract and would be on comparatively low wages. I'm still expecting us to bring 2 players in before the window closes. More potentially if we can sell anyone else.

FYP

It's clear that selling Wood is all about getting someone else in who suits our style of play. He came in did what was needed last season and now can go elsewhere and do what he's suited to.

Blocked?

I mean this with no disrespect to CT, but the CN is the CT of 'journalism' in that the C stands for contrary. With CN you can probably swap out the o for a u.

When he's part of a defensive unit like we have he's fantastic. Has great vision and range of passing, is confident on the ball and generally has great judgement on when to get forward.

They're incredibly annoying, Sherwood has always annoyed me. He contradicted himself talking about how the fans expectations are excessive then later said we expect top four "and rightfully so". At least acknowledged that they should have been a man down. In general Sherwood's tune has changed so much since Howe came in, he's quite complementary of him but not of the club and our supporters. As far as the commentators went that Seb Hutchinson was shockingly bad. I'm not sure why the anti-Newcastle bias but he picked on anything we did and gave them an easy ride. Efan Ekoku was fine, great in comparison to Hutchinson.

Disappointing result really for all the ball we had, couldn't create much in the way of clear cut chances. Have to give some credit to Palace for that as they defended well, apart from the fact that one if theirs got away with a blatant second yellow that should have seen them a player down for more than a half. Seemed to be a good atmosphere in the stadium also. Also Jordan Ayew is a little diving prick and Zaha should have been carded when he went to ground trying to buy a penalty against Trippier.

Should be pretty easy being that he's cup tied.

I agree, he really wanted to do well here, so I feel for him going after some of his least effectual showings. Can't discount his importance in turning things around last season but he plainly doesn't fit our style of play anymore which Eddie as much as said.

𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐋: AFC Bournemouth winger Dango Outtara has completed the purchase of a new shirt for an undisclosed fee.

If only Bruce was in charge of the technical side, it would ensure noone would ever hear it. "The only word I understood was 'feed', but there's nothing to eat. I'll dust myself down, roll my sleeves up and try to get a recording over the line next time. Rafa would have really struggled here."

Fish stock

First on the list should be these two:

I love that a large part of their fan base size section is cherry picking various stats to make them sound more popular than they are. Their first and biggest claim was a season in the premier league where they had the third highest attendance. Of course we were one of the two higher than them. Despite a long period with relatively little success, Sunderland held the third highest average attendance in the country in the 2000–01 season with 46,791 fans.[13] Finally they note how they hold the record for average attendance in the third tier, because that's totally something people care about. Sunderland's average attendance of 32,157 in the 2018–19 season was an English third-tier record and the largest average attendance outside of the Premier League.[19] And the way it is worded tries to make it sound like it was a record outside the premier league, when of course it's not even close as during our worst period in modern history, when we were relegated our average crowd absolutely destroyed that number by more than 10,000. As for their vote for the nickname, what kind of fools vote for the symbol of bad luck to represent their club?

You're right. Michael Owen gets plenty of punditry work.

The great thing is that Bruce has less than no appeal as a pundit as he's thick and uninteresting so we'll not likely to have to see or hear him in that capacity. I'd be shocked to see him manage again at any level as his record speaks for itself and his attitude after each job ended through his own incompetence has been petulance on the level of a four year old.

Well that's ruined the plot for me. Spoiler tags thanks.

Yeah, this was good, the slow build is done well.

Also