Mudryk finally scores for Chelsea, a win tonight puts them in 11th a point behind Man U.

If you swapped Chelsea and Palace positions the table probably already has a top/bottom half most would have predicted as the season finish. Could see quite a gap between the top and bottom halves of the table this season. Big 6 plus Newcastle, Brighton, villa, West Ham. All of those look far better teams than anyone in the bottom half

I don’t remember Liverpool questioning Brentfords game against us. But now they want rectification, a replay suggested by some. Where does all this looking backwards end in any game. In any game there will be a wrong call about a foul. So everything that happens after that should not have occurred. What, is that a replay. Move on you wankers. Well how about they send over the 2001 FA Cup to us, admit they are a bunch of cheats and we will have a brief think about their ideas. Scummy club and scummy entitled fans.

Right now I'll gladly take a draw against City. A nil nil draw. I want to see us hold them to no goals.

I may be misremembering but when we had the Brentford ‘forgot to draw the lines’ last season I don’t recall as much of an uproar from Arsenal or the general fans and media at the time.

Liverpool need to let this go, at least in public, nothing can change what has happened now. Yes they can lead the campaign for better standards in private communication with the PGMOL but the victim complex has the potential to make them lose focus on the good start they’ve made to the season

Or charge them with bringing the game into disrepute and take 2 points off them as a penalty. As someone on another site pointed out last year Jota should have had a red card for high foot into the face of a Spurs player but nothing happened and then he scored at the end to win the game for Pool. Karma.

I saw this in the Daily Mail so it'll be 100% bang on.

The incident on Sunday was a much higher profile game. I don't think the Arsenal one was live on TV was it? Also, as bad as the error was for our game, it ultimately was an oversight, albeit a remarkably stupid one. The Diaz goal was altogether different. A mistake was made, the VAR refs spotted that error and then did nothing to rectify it when they saw the onfield ref had misinterpreted what they said. They deliberately let a valid goal be disallowed. That's a much more serious charge than incompetence.

I think it was one of those perfect storms. They was terrible miscommunication, then the system design (not being able to review after play has restarted) got in the way of doing the right thing. Then they bottled it (those couple of seconds where you know you have to do something that takes a tiny bit of courage and then the moment slips by).

Its a trainsmash indeed. But 1) I don't see how it was worse than ours and other VAR failures (and bad decisions before VAR) and 2) there is no point in doing anything other than honestly assessing how it is that supposedly fail-safe systems fail, and committing to fixing the bugs.

Liverpool do need to move on.

I won't disagree with Liverpool finishing 2nd unless we get healthy and take it up a notch. We are doing very, very well but our attack should be better. If Harvertz finds his footing, we'll be very tough to beat if Arteta continues to start him. Probably based on his price tag. Mikel sees a very good player in there, I'll have to trust his better judgment.
Newcastle tentatively 4th for me. If they buy well in January, definitely 4th. Man Utd won't finish 9th. Their squad is much better than their current league position and problems. They'll get it partially sorted enough to finish top 6 maybe. Tottenham will be battling Brighton, Villa and and Man Utd for 5th and 6th places.

So it shall be written, so it shall be done.

Interesting stat going back to the spurs game. Despite the game lasting well over 100 minutes the ball in play time was the second lowest of all games in the Prem this season. Spurs also made 19 fouls in the game. The tactic to stop any flow worked and we contributed to the messy, chaotic stop start nature of it by getting drawn in to that type of game instead of forcing our game on them

I'm yet to be convinced about Liverpool, and City without de Bruyn are not quite so daunting.

And hey, both have lost already so we the annual worry feast about them going unbeaten is nipped in the bud! And I somehow doubt Spurs are going to cause any sleepness nights on this score.

22Raya
18Tomiyasu
2Saliba
6Gabriel
35Zinchenko
8Ødegaard
41Rice
29Havertz
7Saka
9Gabriel Jesus
19Trossard

Substitutes
1Ramsdale
4White
5Partey
10Smith Rowe
14Nketiah
15Kiwior
17Cédric Soares
20Jorginho
21Fábio Vieira
24Nelson
25Elneny
31Hein

yeah Mikel doesn’t do rotation,

surely you could have given Rice a rest and maybe given Kiwior a run. if you can’t trust him in this game there’s no hope.

Ramsdale is firmly second choice now.

Arteta wants his wingers inverted so we have plenty of left wingers who are right footed gab, Leo, Reiss but not a single player who is a lefty who can cover Saka. I really think this contributes a lot to Saka having to play so much, he doesn’t want a right footed winger on the right hitting in 50/50 crosses. all possession based.

He wouldn’t pick him if we had another option.

It gets on my tit-end. We have probably 5 players on the bench tonight he could give a run-out to. Those 5 won’t start against City. It literally doesn’t matter if we win, lose or draw tonight. We’ve got more than enough to get out of this group. We’ll be running on fumes in the 2nd half come the weekend.

Jesus !!!!!!!!

Jesus 1-0
Saka pounced on the mistake, quickly to Jesus who shifted his man and drilled it across the gk in to the bottom corner.

Lovely

Lens started well, but of pressure and spurred on by a noisy crowd. Then we had 2-3 minutes of sustained pressure and possession which just calmed it down…. Then we struck.

Crowd quiet now

Really nice play, Havertz setting off his marker and hitting a volley that the gk makes a good save from

1-1

Mistake from the back. Raya played a ball wide and it was intercepted and then we were a bit all at sea at the back

Oh Raya

So Raya subbed at HT?

To be fair from the position we gave the ball away it doesn’t often end in a goal. Lens just played it brilliantly and it’s a fantastic finish

Saka down injured

Saka off Vieira on.

Given he’s limped off the last two matches and we have City at the weekend it was a huge risk to start him. Got to pray he’s fit for 5 days time now

starting him was nuts

if you can’t trust Vieira or Emile Smith Rowe to cover saka for a game like this then you don’t trust them at all.

if he misses city we can only blame ourselves

Doesn’t look likely seeing as he’s only managed 30mins

Two pretty identical fouls, Tomiyasu in the back of their player given, but their player in the back of Jesus not.

Jesus is getting frustrated with getting nothing from this ref so far

Another shocking free kick given against Havertz. He was having his shirt pulled, then it hit the defenders arm but lens get the free kick

And another one against Trossard. Ref is giving everything their way right now and you can tell it’s getting to the players

Lens' players are dropping at the slightest, and the referee gives the foul.

With no Saka or Martinelli we haven’t got as many players who can accelerate the game and our transitions are slowing up. Need Rice and maybe Ødegaard to break lines in midfield, and Havertz on the late run.

1-1 HT

Not moving the ball quickly enough. Feels like too many players are happy to hold their position, receive the ball, and then pass the ball all without ever really asking them to do anything difficult defensively.

They are pressing but we should be finding it easier to play though it. When we have played through it we haven’t got forward quickly enough to capitalise. They quickly retreat.

Pens are working their socks off so let’s see if they tire in the second half.

Very much a meh performance so far

Similar to many of our games this season. Lots of possession but creating very little. The familiar horse shoe around the penalty area.

Up against 3 big Cb it feels like it might be a game for Havertz to battle some of them and let Jesus find more space on the right wing as he’s the most likely to do something incisive for us.

Need to see more from Ødegaard in the second half

The way we play sometimes.

We work the ball into a promising area wide then because of our reluctance to release the ball for anything less than what I’d describe as a 90% probability pass the ball goes back central and back and they get players behind the ball. Sometimes it just seems possession at the expense of even scoring. Take a man on, whip an early cross in or try and ambitious through ball. We barely cross the ball at all right now

It’s like “*%^@*** hell I won’t take responsibility mikel will shout at me if we lose it”

This is the most frustrating thing about us right now

That’s how we have played most of the time this season. It is very similar to City but they have Haaland. Both Saka and Martinelli don’t try to beat their man as often as they should and with the two of them missing it’s even more conservative. Reminds me of what Grealish has become. It’s boring really.

i agree it’s city lite. A death by a thousand passes

however city do take more chances around the box and are happy to hit a few 50/50s at Haaland,