Yeah, certainly feels like we haven’t been able to field that same centre back or central midfield duo in successive games for some time now. Which is unideal to say the least.

Does seem like there have been more games where it feels like our performance has deserved more than games where we have nicked points.

Makes it difficult to say that we are a (consistently) good team at the moment but certainly not too far away in my opinion.

Haven’t checked recently but I’m pretty sure that only ourselves and Fulham have underperformed in both our xG and xGA.

Exactly. McGinn, Cash, Onana, Kamara, Ramsey, Bailey all played under 65% of available minutes. Make a case that at least four of them get in our best XI.

And that is without getting onto the knock on effect (Cash out usually means Konsa RB etc)

The level of inconsistency has been wild. Quite often within game, never mind game to game.

Been a variety of factors, and don’t think it’s as simple/easy as this but I saw this table the other day, and it certainly can’t be helping.

Am I misunderstanding the xGA underperformance that you mentioned?

Couldn’t see your source for that, but fbref had us at 14.6 xGA (which I’m assuming is the same as yours) so surely that suggests the number of goals conceded/clean sheets should improve?

Point 3 is the interesting one though to me. This is clearly a tactical choice, and all have negative trade offs, and perhaps it’s just being exacerbated by poor decisions/basic errors but it feels like we are the most open when have been for a while.

Seems a simplistic answer but feel likes Cash, Konsa and Onana/Kamara help points 1 and 2 quite a bit.

Oh, it’s definitely deliberate. I just meant that it is in stark contrast from 12 months ago.

Tactical shift, player turnover and a lot of niggling injuries all contributing to some, reasonable in my opinion, but pretty disjointed/inconsistent performances.

Yeah, Bailey seemed a bit brighter after about the first 20 minutes, so that should help.

Agree. A sustained run of Cash and Konsa playing together would be pretty useful as well.

The transformation from control (which admittedly we weren’t doing as well towards the end) to being this transitional has been quite something.

Has been compounded by a lot of niggling injures in our slight defence. Cash and Konsa being able to play together for more than five minutes would help.

I still, just about, stand by the fact that we aren’t *that* bad, but we seem to make a lot more poor decisions and basic mistakes (felt like we miscontrolled the ball a LOT today) than we have previously.

Would have been sent off twice if it had been the ref from the Bournemouth game. Inconsistency game to game is genuinely staggering.

Imagine that will be the case. Should have a decent amount of the ball today and, while Digne has been very good, we have definitely missed someone getting around the back of a defence on the left hand side.

Guessing they are just being careful with Cash.

One of those lovely examples of players that fans don’t seem to ‘get’ yet is consistently picked by every manager that he has played for.

Presume both are fit given they were pictured training and that every other injured player got a mention.

Maybe being a bit harsh, but possibly as they have been consistently very good, rather than outstanding, at the same time others have dropped off a bit.