365 pays out a win if it goes 2-0 even if Man City smash us up 2 nd half

Don’t hate football pal. Hate the moment; never the game.
It will excite and depress in equal amounts. Been watching since 77 trust me , I know

I hadn't actually realised that.

What's sad is, living in Bournemouth, there are loads of Bournemouth fans, many who I know have followed the side since before the -17 in league 2. They deserve the glory of the Premier League, because they've suffered and toiled and stayed loyal. But there are also Liverpool 'fans'. Far too many. And they'll revel in the genius that inspired the 9:0, as if they have in any way earned it, and have any entitlement to the score.

I predict some interesting scenes in pubs tonight, 5 pints in, when some Liverpool fan who's lived in Dorset their whole life gives it large to a life-long Bournemouth season ticket holder, and finds himself being told to go f*** himself.

But hey, that's football. I'm off to ignore all football coverage for 72 hours. Enjoy your weekend folks.

I didn't feel secure at 2-0. We can't keep clean sheets, and as soon as they got one, they were always going to get more.

I'd give Johnstone a run in the side, and it's time to leave Ward out, as every opponent targets him. Don't get me wrong, I like Ward and think he's served us admirably over the years, but age has caught up with him.

[just posted this BTL on the Guardian]

I don’t care who you’re playing, if you’re 2-0 up at half time, you shouldn’t go and lose 4-2. It’s a bottle job.

The writing was on the wall even in the first half, though. We didn’t push forwards that much, and when we did, Eze’s limitations in terms of ball control were exposed. I love watching him play but he doesn’t have a close/tight dribble and the high-quality City defenders found it easy to smother him. Ditto Edouard, who I’ve defended before, but now I’m really wondering. Lots of clumsy touches and he looked tired after about 10 minutes. But then again, ditto for Mateta, who when he came on looked tired almost immediately.

The only outfield player I would praise is Jordan Ayew. He was consistently ready to attack, to take on the City defence. We really miss Conor Gallagher; at this point Steve Parish needs to find the $35M or whatever it is to secure a midfielder who will actually hustle for the ball. We obviously therefore also missed Wilf, although his days at Palace are obviously numbered.

Our defence and goalkeeper were magnificent in the first half, all of them. I actually can’t blame them for our losing. As I’ve written here, it’s more this generally passive behavior of sitting back too much. It put far too much pressure on the defence and you can’t stop the man mountain that is Haaland if you keep retreating. He reminds me of that Will Carling remark about the New Zealand winger Jonah Lomu, i.e. “a freak of nature” or whatever he said. For the last goal of his hatrick there was no way that Joel Ward was going to get around him to the ball.

Disappointing after that first half against the team that unlimited cash bought.

Let’s just have a reality check, we have just been beaten 4-2 by a side who came very close to winning the champions league and can afford to buy a guy in Haarland who probably cost more than our whole team put together and with a salary to boot!! Secondly, we held in their own backyard a team (Liverpool) who came even closer to be CL winners. PV and his brilliant back room staff are doing a terrific job a year on from ‘Royball’, so give him some slack.

There are fine lines in football and today we should have got a third, we didn’t and the rest is History.

The tactics may not have been quite right in the 2nd half but he and his team will learn from it.

COYP

Bring back Brolin