Howay

It’s a fair point comparing the ability of the teams but that kind of leads me into that if we went down we’d have more that level of team than the one Rafa had (after windows obviously) but Rafas style wouldn’t change. Even in games we are clear and away favorites it’s a slow, methodical approach, while that’s fine, and it clearly worked, you often left games feeling we could have beaten teams by more or in a more entertaining way. If he was the only way I saw us getting back up and we had to go with that style, then I would take him, but personally speaking I have no interest in it since I think we would (hopefully) pretty much buy our way out and would have other options available (personally I’d keep Howe). Again to me it’s personal preference, I understand many found entertainment in Benitez’s style but I just didn’t. I enjoyed the games as I could appreciate his plan, how solid the defence was and how we methodically turned the screw in games but I didn’t find it massively entertaining. For that reason, since we are an entirely different proposition I wouldn’t want him back ever. If we go down the aim should be to be rebuilding back to being a side we want to be, one I hope is more on the front foot and attacking rather than the defensive, methodical approach, so appointing a bloke like Benitez is counter to that imo, if he had been the short term stop gap to save us from relegation I would have understood the move, but like I say we need to be building a side in the manner we hope to grow into if we do go down. Maybe that long term approach is the defensive style, I don’t know, I just personally hope it’s not.

If we go down I would personally fucking hate Benitez coming back. The season under him in the championship was a brutal fucking grind, while it was great in the end and got us to where we needed to be it wasn’t thrilling football which would honestly be the only bright spot about being in that league imo. I’d want to come up like we did under Hughton going into games confident of pissing all over teams. Of course the overall goal of promotion is what matters most but we’d have the means to make it about as odds on as you could ever hope provided you get a manager that could do a good job (which Howe would in that league for sure). I like Benitez, I’m not quite as enamored with him as the twitter lot seem to be but I do like the bloke. I think he belongs in NUFC past now, there’s plenty of managers around we don’t have to go back to him - also I don’t think Howe faces the axe anyway (I know that part of your post was purely hypothetical btw).

I also hope we are targeting some players who can at least get them the fucking ball. Maybe this means we have no interest in Eketike anymore, or that we plan to agree to loaning him back? Or the utterly insane, but also hilarious third option if we get Zapata, and Etekite which would mean we basically bought Wood to weaken Burnley.

Agreed on his purpose, I just don’t get others deluding themselves it’s true. It’s like all these idiots who act like if we went down the Saudis will just find another project, they’re not getting that with the ambitions they have and the money they (long term) are willing to spend the current state of the club is pretty much an irrelevance to them. I suppose it’s the last hope now after the money we have already spent, and clearly are trying to spend, a lot of the prior delusion that the Saudis won’t really spend much (another bafflingly weird delusion that was kicking around at one point). I understand there was always going to be this, but honestly it’s fucking tedious isn’t it? I suppose it will just always change forms, I watched this True Geordie kick off show the other day and there’s some absurdly annoying Manchester United fan and a Manchester City fan on there, and after bickering throughout the Manchester United fan just started bringing up human rights out of nowhere, so even once we are clear of this current mess and start to enjoy success (relative or otherwise) we will always get these tedious types of left field remarks.

I know Storey is of course a total fucking idiot, but this is the type of crap I keep seeing from people and it makes no fucking sense. There’s only two (?) clubs owned in a similar fashion to ours in the top 5 leagues in Europe, we’re not just owned by some rich bloke who might give up or lose interest, or continue to make a mess of things, this lot will make a success of things. It may not happen as quickly as some hope, or the early days might have some missteps but posts like Storeys are just fucking nonsense and frankly I don’t see why they delude themselves in this manner (I know he’s doing it as he enjoys the attention of the mackems, which makes sense seeing as they’re a bunch of fucking tramps as well).

I also enjoy that he acts like Hope was this horrible abuser when all he really did was run stories that literally were happening, or note statistics and decisions of Bruce’s tenure, and in return he harrasses Hope and calls him a rat. What a monumental little prick Alex Bruce is, not a surprise that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree mind as Steve Bruce is also a colossal fucking cunt too, something which I definitely can support simply from the conditions people who rent homes from him have to live in.

Good family

Why wouldn’t you listen to a man that some people have said was a small cog in the takeover?

Can we try the approach of agreeing a fee with a club? Isn’t he also injured for a while? I think he’s a quality player mind.

He’s just amazed by what Joelinton is able to do, for example Joelinton does this thing where he puts one foot in front of the other like Sean does when he walks but Joelinton somehow does it faster. Sean thought about trying it out but it seemed like a lot of effort.

The bed wetters counter that Leicester’s team was clearly miles fucking better than the one we have, it just wasn’t known at the time.

I don’t want to seem too critical of Howe as I know the (very valid) counter points of the job he’s facing, but I also worry he’s being too stubborn with his system. It’s fine if this is what he wants to play but it’s clear as day we don’t have the players to do it, which is why we get nothing at all from CM, it’s not been working but he still persists with it. Why not try playing Joelinton and Willock/Shelvey behind Almiron with Fraser and ASM wide and Wood upfront? Maybe it won’t work but we just keep trying this same midfield with the same results.

Aye that would be fucking mental. I’m not convinced going back to a prior manager is the best idea anyway, plus it seems he basically hates the whole DoF model our owners seem to want. Howe deserves time and backing now which I hope he gets.

Agreed, Longstaff doesn’t even bother running. I get the argument that the alternatives are also poor but he’s picking the worst ones at times, unless it’s some fucking weird Mourinho type move to show the owners how desperate we are for players.

Aye exactly. What’s the risk for him? I suppose he might worry he will look shit which might put people off? Not exactly backing yourself if that’s the case. If we go down he leaves, if we stay up he will probably have looked good and can stay or leave. Seems a weird decision on his side unless of course there are other offers.

Aye, I think they’ve not factored in the expense of the relegation when worrying about overpaying on these players. We also need to pack in chasing players where the club has absolutely no incentive to sell other than if a huge offer was on the table. An extra €10m on Carlos 2 weeks ago is far better than losing however much in TV money and then having to overpay for top end championship players anyway. They’ve been too slow imo, same as they panic appointment of Howe.

Aye, he then complained about how we were after the goal but what were the subs he made? Two completely like for like swaps in positions where tired legs weren’t as big of a problem. I get ASM probably needed to be taken off but he could have left Fraser on for more legs in CM surely? I’m more than happy to blame our terrible squad but at the same time the bloke is making poor choices himself.

We are down tbh. We pretty much need to overhaul the team and at this point I just don’t see it happening. We’ve signed 2 players in 2 weeks, even doing that again won’t be enough as imo we need a minimum of 3/4 more. The sad part is there won’t be loads in it, Watford, Norwich, and Burnley won’t win many games the rest of the season but we are fucking painful. I’m not saying the above as a result of this match btw, as I said earlier I don’t think the picture changed massively it just means we need points from harder fixtures. The reality is dropping 21 points from winning positions is what is killing us. They simply can’t fucking concede that goal today, but honestly it’s every fucking game. We’ve won one fucking game in over half a season, saying we will/can stay up is simply based on signing quality players at some point in the near future, something that as yet our current set up seem unable to do as all we’ve managed is a bloke that seemingly would have walked here himself to force a move and a bloke whose release clause we triggered.

We just offer fucking nothing, did we have a shot on target other than the goal? It’s pathetic. I know I keep saying it but I just can’t get over how fucking rotten our CM is, the defence rightly catches a lot of flak but they get barely any screen from CM, and the attack gets no support whatsoever. When we attack and lose possession the ball basically ends up at our defence every fucking time, even if a loose ball comes out it has to go all the way back to our defence before it’s recycled back into an attack. It’s far too fucking slow, the opposition can reorganize and get back into position. There’s also just no switching of the play, it’s all down one side then slowly passed back and eventually might make its way across to the other side, no purpose, no attempt to force an over load, nothing. At this point I’m convinced you could pick a random lad out the crowd and they’d manage to give a better account of themself than Longstaff does, fucking Beefy is more nimble than the concrete booted bastard. Shelvey is Shelvey and won’t ever change, how we still have to watch that prick play after all these fucking years, we even had some bloke have the brass neck to come on here and proclaim he was a good player, that’s the level of Stockholm syndrome our fan base have after being tortured by these players. Joelinton is strong and has energy but he’s laughable on the ball most the time. If we haven’t brought in at least one CM I genuinely might skip watching the Leeds match as it’s just a waste of fucking time tbh, and I can’t watch Shelvey and Longstaff plod around together anymore, I just can’t man. I almost called for an ambulance when Shelvey fouled that bloke on the edge of our area early on, I couldn’t believe he could be moving that slow in real time, I thought I must be having some serious issue and seeing things in fucking slow motion, the Watford player seemed to close 30 yards in the time it took Shelvey to move 5 yards. We could have Beckenbauer and Nesta at CB but we aren’t winning games with this CM, they slow us down, don’t screen for the defence, and generally offer fuck all. I actually started to watch them closely on Watford corners and free kicks, the lack of urgency they made in getting out of the box made me almost thankful 14 years of Ashley which has borderline removed my love of Football as if I was as passionate about it as I was pre-Ashley I think my head would have exploded. I know people will say signing players is hard etc but how the fuck are we two weeks into a window and we have not improved on Sean Longstaff, and Jamal Lascelles? Why the actual fuck are we the only club with trillionaire owners who can’t seem to spend it? This must be some elaborate reality show to torture the entire support base of this club. I actually burst out laughing at Longstaffs shot during the first half, I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a player have much more time and space in a PL game in my life, and he didn’t just miss he missed both high and wide , he has to be trolling.

I hope we don’t renew his contract. He’s been a fucking embarrassment.

That’s how I see it too. Until we get the necessary players in we will go down 100%. Today just made it harder as we need wins from harder games but the picture didn’t massively change, the same will be the case if we draw against Leeds and others stay around the same points. We are wasting easy fixtures here though and it just means points are needed against more of the mid table sides.

Agreed on that. I just think they have to make that choice. We can’t spend in a few key areas and get away with it until summer. This current squad is so bad whether it’s ability, desire, lack of training over the years, lack of competition etc that’s the case or a combination I’ve no clue but they simply aren’t up to it and I worry that we will spend a good amount on 3/4 players but still go down - which to me is brutal. They could also use loans tbf, that Van de Beek (if there’s any way round his weird agent issue), or whoever but we can’t keep putting this current squad out.

I don’t think he’s blameless. He played Longstaff, who is our worst CM with the exception of possibly Hendrick. If Willock is fit he should have played, and to be honest he should have played Anderson against Cambridge to see what he offered. He also needed to make a sub at CM when it was clear as day all three of them were blowing out their arse, it was more vital than taking Fraser off imo. Obviously he’s dealing with wank players but he’s making mistakes himself.

We absolutely have to make more progress on transfers as soon as possible. I knew this team wouldn’t be enough, we can talk about transfers being difficult but they have to lump up or face facts and go down here. We are trying to sign a bloke at the current 2nd placed team in Spain who have no financial pressure to make the deal, if this is who we are targeting we need to pay the ask or move on from it. We’ve wasted 2 weeks haggling over 2 CBs and it cost us today. I’ve no idea where we are with CM’s but they’re a fucking dire need too.