SEASON-DEFINING MUST-WIN 6-POINTER (nufc v watford match thread)

[Gemmill 44495]

Hope so. Cos I like the bloke. He must be hating his fucking life atm working with these flids.

[aimaad22 4145]

14 minutes ago, Howmanheyman said:

I'm absolutely sick of the sight of most of our players, it's not even that they're mercenaries it's just they're so fucking bad even when they try. 

This. 

Can't stand watching them any longer. The team is a fitting final tribute to Ashley's reign. 

[GrahamTaylor5 872]

I worry that the rot has finally started to take effect. I worry that the addition of players may be , not too little but, too late. We have been so bad for so long. So lucky for so long. That has to have an impact. How Lascelles gets close to a championship team let alone captain a Premier League one baffles me. I still think we could pull off a survival but my stance on Howe maybe being able to do it without any additions is definitely changed. 

[Gemmill 44495]

Anyway season 2 of CHEER is out on Netflix.

 

So that's me sorted for the evening. Want to see what they do about the fact that last season's star of the show got in bother for being a nonce. 

[MMXXVIII 1293]

13 minutes ago, Howmanheyman said:

I'm absolutely sick of the sight of most of our players, it's not even that they're mercenaries it's just they're so fucking bad even when they try. 

Same. Rafa knew they weren't up to playing football and forged a plan to keep us up. Howe wants to play another way but most of them aren't capable of executing it. Trippier spun a couple of belting balls into Fraser in a dangerous area today and he couldn't even get control of it.

[Howay 12496]

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. 

[GrahamTaylor5 872]

To clarify, I do not blame Howe.

[Ayatollah Hermione 13837]

Mind, I don’t envy Howe having to come into a team where Lascelles of all players is captain, fucking hell. Won’t be easy sitting that lump down and telling him he’s dropped.

As for centre halves, if Rodon is available from Spurs on loan, get in tomorrow and get it done. He’s an improvement, even if he’s not this wonderful first choice signing 

[Howay 12496]

2 minutes ago, GrahamTaylor5 said:

To clarify, I do not blame Howe.

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. 

[Kid Dynamite 7009]

2 weeks of the transfer window stands between us and relegation. 
 

That team might sneak a win against Norwich, Burnley or Everton in the next 17 games, but we will be lucky to get to 25 points.

Championship fodder in every position. And I include Wood in that. Joelinton, Trippier and Dubravka played well. ASM has talent but did fuck all other than the goal. Lascelles is a league one player 

[Renton 21393]

17 minutes ago, Phoenix711 said:

Norwich winning today is not a bad result as it drags Everton into the mix. If we can beat Leeds that will be 6 teams in the mix which gives us a better chance of survival. I know, we only have a chance against Leeds with a few new reinforcements but maybe a silver lining is we are forced to try and push a few deals through

I think the Norwich result is bad as I can't feasibly imagine Everton going down, and Norwich now look to me as possibly the most likely of the shit 4 to survive. However I think we do have an outside chance of beating Leeds and dragging them into the mix. If we strengthen, anyway. 

[Kid Dynamite 7009]

5 minutes ago, Howay said:

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. 

The worry is we need 2 CBs, 2 CMs to play with Joelinton and a 1 decent striker so that Wood becomes our option off the bench for the last 20mins. 
 

You're looking at £150mil for those players 

[MMXXVIII 1293]

1 minute ago, Howay said:

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. 

You would think Willock is the most likely beneficiary of playing Wood. I like Howe and do think he'll get us going in the right direction once the deadwood is out, but aye he's not making sense at times.

[Ayatollah Hermione 13837]

2 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

The worry is we need 2 CBs, 2 CMs to play with Joelinton and a 1 decent striker so that Wood becomes our option off the bench for the last 20mins. 
 

You're looking at £150mil for those players 

The penny has to have dropped that we need to piss some money away to stay up. I think we’re about to find out just how deep PIFs pockets go as far as their football team are concerned

[Isegrim 9737]

1 hour ago, Renton said:

We've dropped 21 points from winning positions so far this season. Got to be some kind of record. 

That’s where the problem is, it’s the panicking when we are about to win a game, especially must-win games. The players are frightened about not winning. It is leading to man mistakes and conceding goals.

The pressure is now enormous and teams playing against us do know it. They just beed to stay in the game to kill us off.

The culprits aren’t the new owners and Howe but the fat cunts who made negativity a trademark on and off the pitch. Ashley not investing in the squad and Brucey just relying on lucky results have brought us into this position. But they will probably just laugh about it looking at their fat pay cheques. 

[Howay 12496]

16 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

The worry is we need 2 CBs, 2 CMs to play with Joelinton and a 1 decent striker so that Wood becomes our option off the bench for the last 20mins. 
 

You're looking at £150mil for those players 

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. 

[Phoenix711 26]

16 minutes ago, Renton said:

I think the Norwich result is bad as I can't feasibly imagine Everton going down, and Norwich now look to me as possibly the most likely of the shit 4 to survive. However I think we do have an outside chance of beating Leeds and dragging them into the mix. If we strengthen, anyway. 

Not sure about that, Everton have just 5 (FIVE) points from their last 12 matches, that is the worst in the league (we have 9 in that period). Yes they have 19 but they can't buy a point let alone a win at the moment - the win against Arsenal was a 90th min long range screamer, you get that once a season usually.

Benitez may well be sacked and they have a better squad than us but they have no money because they spend 400m+ over the last few years so are restricted by FFP. That's why all Benitez could buy was Gray and some cheap players and right now the new fullbacks have mainly been funded by Digne. If Everton go down they are in real trouble. 

However, I get what you mean, Everton have quality players like Calvert Lewin and Richarlison. They "should" be able to put some results together but they are by no means guaranteed. The same for Leeds, when they get their best players back they should be able to put a few results together too. 

Our main hope right now is we stay within 3 points of survival until Wilson is back. If we let 17th place get away from us we'll be relegated by March. Reinforcements will make or break us.

[Billy Whitehurst 894]

Right, so who is still with me in the dry sheet squad? Inexplicably, we’re still in with a chance of staying up, time left in the transfer window and, worst comes to worst, battering teams in The Championship will be brilliant next year. We’ll just need another yellow away kit.

Keep the faith!

[Gemmill 44495]

Everton might end up worse without Rafa. They're absolutely right in the shit at the minute though, it's daft to claim otherwise. 

[Gemmill 44495]

Just now, Billy Whitehurst said:

Right, so who is still with me in the dry sheet squad? Inexplicably, we’re still in with a chance of staying up, time left in the transfer window and, worst comes to worst, battering teams in The Championship will be brilliant next year. We’ll just need another yellow away kit.

Keep the faith!

Today is the first day I've thought we could be going down, but I also think there's plenty games left. I think we just have to go wild in the aisles with transfers now though. 

This squad of players unimproved is sunk.

[Howay 12496]

Just now, Gemmill said:

Today is the first day I've thought we could be going down, but I also think there's plenty games left. I think we just have to go wild in the aisles with transfers now though. 

This squad of players unimproved is sunk.

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. 

[Phoenix711 26]

24 minutes ago, Kid Dynamite said:

The worry is we need 2 CBs, 2 CMs to play with Joelinton and a 1 decent striker so that Wood becomes our option off the bench for the last 20mins. 
 

You're looking at £150mil for those players 

See, this is where I think we should be smart. We absolutely need 1 DM and 1 CB this week for Leeds. Lascelles and Longstaff should be squad players or see if you can flog Longstaff to Benitez for a few million before he is sacked.

As for those players, we could get £40m+ players like Bruno Guimaraes (Deep Lying Playmaker who can tackle and an amazing passer), but offer a loan to buy but pay £10m or even £15m as a loan fee. Apparently Lyon would be willing to accept that and those kind of loans suit us perfectly as its like a buy before you try and if they don't fit or we are relegated then we can just not purchase.

If we did that for both loans we could pay the stupid fees these clubs want in the Summer IF we stay up. I'm not sure who these two targets should be and there is an issue if they would want to come, but it's an excellent way to save money. And we need to spend wisely because of FFP or we'll be another Everton, £400m for average players and mid table finishes for 5 years and now in a relegation scrap. Even with amortization, we can realistically spend £100m in this window and £100m in the summer without worrying about FFP even if we finished mid table (UEFA have a lower FFP amount than EPL).

There are also a couple or high quality midfielder available for cheap (~£10m) because their contracts are running out this summer like B Kamara and D Zakaria, but they would both incur high wages so we'd need a relegation release clause but that should be fine for 6 months and if they can make the transition to the EPL they would be amazing buys. Kamara can also play CB but he wants £150k/week.

 

[Isegrim 9737]

We also just need to give ATM his own ball and forget about involving him in the build up of attacks.

He might have scored our only goal but he would have been much more useful if he hadn’t wasted possession time after time before and after. We might have created more and scored more with someone offering more to the team instead of playing for himself.

[Asprilla 96]

1 hour ago, Gemmill said:

Hope so. Cos I like the bloke. He must be hating his fucking life atm working with these flids.

What the actual fuck

[Gemmill 44495]

1 minute ago, Isegrim said:

We also just need to give ATM his own ball and forget about involving him in the build up of attacks.

He might have scored our only goal but he would have been much more useful if he hadn’t wasted possession time after time before and after. We might have created more and scored more with someone offering more to the team instead of playing for himself.

Aye, I was joking saying he was trying to have a net negative performance despite the goal (when we were 1 up), but once they've equalised, I think his performance is net negative. He costs us so many attacking opportunities and puts us on the back foot by giving the ball away so often, it's unreal. 

I sincerely hope he's not starting games next season.