If he’s made contact with the player I’d say a pen but as you say maybe not quite as clear cut as the other one. These days winning the ball means nothing though. Seen played sent off when winning the ball. Thing is when you see a pen given for AWB kick on Silva yesterday. We have one away last year v Brighton when a Robbo tapped the bottom of Welbeck foot (which no one even appealed for) then you see someone get kicked in the head and wonder when common sense is going to come into it. try explain to someone who doesn’t watch football how you can get away with that, but not a small touch on someone’s foot..
Why? He's not good enough. He gives everything and its awful watching someone trying so hard and just not up to it. Howe has identified him as being useless along with Hayden
He was late arriving and just stuck his face in there.. Credit to him for bravery but it was dangerous play from him.. The defender was just kicking the ball away
Longstaff has a decent shot tbh and i think he takes a decent corner, but seriously he's just not upto standard. You've got to be a top top player these days in cm. He's maxed out and failing it's not a good sign.
I thought he was for 30mins. Then reverted to type effort wise. His body language at times is disgraceful. His distribution was awful, we missed out on a lot of counter attack opportunities because he wasn’t on it passing wise. I liked listening to Howe, it was refreshing to hear a manager actually call what was going on. He just outright said we were **** with the ball, I think it was probably aimed at Jonjo too because I think Howe rates his ability with the ball. It would be unfair to blame it all on him though. Bar Willocks gut bursting runs near the end to finally get Max in a better situ with Tomiyasu, they all lacked quality with the ball. I think Saturday worried Howe. I think he thought the players had more quality on the ball than they do. It’s probably just dawned on him how high the mountain is he has to climb. I personally don’t see Longstaff helping based on the last 18-24 months. He slumped and never raised his level again.
I agree with this entirely. The lack of quality in our midfield in a creativity capacity is terrible. Jonjo I can’t decide on. He’s clearly talented on the ball and his our best passer but outside of that he does make everything slow down. Technically he probably our best player aswell. And he had some good efforts against Arsenal. But I can’t recall any passing to get any players in. I can’t recall who played in Wilson mind for his penalty shout.
In all fairness arsenal aren't Brentford or Norwich. We did fine vs Brentford so it'll be fine vs norwich.