aimaad22

Should these fears come true and the Saudis do eventually push Eddie out, I'd love to see their plan for the next manager. As things stand their pitch would be: "Transfer budget for the next year is about 2 loan deals. We want you to take this half squad of relegation fighting Bruce players and finish top 4 plus win a cup or two. Just like Eddie did, after which we backed him with 2 first team signings and against everyone's wildest expectations the whole thing fell to shite so he got the sack." I'm confident candidates will be falling over each other to join.

My wife once got mad that I have no sense of direction. So I packed up my stuff and right.

PIF own/control some of the most complex entities on the planet. There's probably a bunch of long term financial models and business plans that will have been put in place for NUFC right down to 5-10 year cashflow projections. My guess is there's a particular point in time the management feel certain things have to be put in place to get the maximum benefit out of them, perhaps aligned withg the stage of progress/evolution the club is in. I could be wrong, but something like that seems more likely to me than them simply not knowing how or being able to immediately raise all revenue streams when every other club is doing it.

We tried being positive when the Tonali news first broke and thought some journos were making more of it than there was. The pissy pants are sometimes right I still don't think Ashworth will leave. Man Utd are a mess by all accounts and he's already helping build something special here.

In that case we can continue to blame our rotten luck and not have to contend with the meltdown a defeat against Sunderland would entail.

Unless they can find a way around FFP they'll have to suck it up. And it's hard to think of another manager who can get more out of the current players than Eddie has. If we dont turn it around in February that's when the alarm bells should go off. We've already been soundly beaten by many poor teams so when the fixture list and injuries have eased off there will be no mitigating factors. Football can be funny but there's no reason to think we wont turn it around then, a manager and players that have been this good for two years shouldnt just suddenly become shite.

Football is funny, and fickle. A couple of decent results and we'll be flowing again, sausages everywhere. Eddie will sort it out. Just not this month perhaps Let's just have some relief from the mackem game.

Some nervy moments defending though which is unlike him. Understandable of course because of how shite we are defending as a team at the moment and he's just come back from injury. That long ball over the top which ended up falling to Nunez was the bread and butter sort you'd expect him to clear half asleep.

The Mourinho link just wont go away. Do the people that keep advocating for him seen some of his recent teams play? He's methods have been outdated for some time, all he does now is throw tantrums and live in the past.

Aye. My biggest fear right now is Bruno doing something stupid and getting sent off after 10 minutes. The way our luck has gone this season.... We should be cruusing this game by all means but confidence is a massive factor in football.

Well this went pretty much the way we thought it would. From us being ran ragged to the laughable penalty decisions. I think some have summed our situation up pretty well already. It's going to get better before it gets worse. Calm heads need to prevail, keep the trust in Howe. We could well be bottom half before fixtures ease up and more players return from injuries. The mackem game becomes even more important. A strong performance and victory gives everyone a huge lift and a cup run could salvage a relatively disappointing league season.

You just knew it. Beyond a disgrace....

I was just going to say can we at least avoid more injuries and suspensions

You can tell most of us aren't even watching or doing so silently in some hidden corner with the volume down. Real throwback to the Bruce days this. You can tell it's only a matter of time for their goals to start going in.

Well across a few windows perhaps. And I guess he's staying for now. Once again, they are above us in the table

Hopefully INEOS reckon they need to chuck another billion quid at home to sort out the problems.

Play the reserves and focus on the cup game.

Also and I know we've talked about this before, but can we please sign someone who can shoot from outside the box to mix things up once in a while.

Write off is not exactly the right word but for me it's about perspective as a fan, it means accepting we probably won't be finishing in the CL places this season. We just don't look the part away from home. That might change once everyone is fit but might be a bit late by then to grab 4th spot again. Enjoy the home games, remember where we are coming from and where we are going. And beat the mackems please.

I do bloody miss last season, this was not how we hoped this year would go

Yeah been saying that for a while now. We're a shadow of the team from last season. We're not finishing in a CL place this time. Loads of things to factor and we've talked about most of them for some time like the injuries, rotten luck with fixtures and the fact we decided to sign 4 players knowing full well what we were getting into. We've been now outplayed by some terrible teams away from home. Can't just say it's bad luck with fixtures and fatigue. There's something wrong and Howe will fix it I just hope it's bloody soon and before the mackem fixture. Season of transition and consolidation. Write it off, we just need to make sure we learn from it. And for perspective remember that we're talking about a top half finish as a write off, because it's still not that long ago when that would have been beyond our reach.

When nothings going your way... That was dodgy as hell ffs

Oof it's a match thread I think I'm allowed to comment on the football a bit As I said mitigating factors abound but if you've watched us play we've been poor throughout even against rubbish teams and we're hanging on here against freaking Luton I repeat. Nothing I don't expect to be fixed. We'll be fine but for now it's poor. Very poor. You don't want to hear or say it that's upto you.

I'm not really. You can believe in the team and still think we've been shite so far. Another great chance we're hanging on here....