steve_69

I genuinely liked Mourinho before this season but he's been a proper twat and deserved to get the boot. I think the game needs characters like him because for the most part it's sterile as fuck but he took it way too far and has made himself a laughing stock.

We're desperately short of service from wide areas, something that Townsend seems to provide. Without it, Mitrovic might as well leave. Townsend and Aarons on the wings with Mitrovic up front could be pretty potent. Sign a CB first though you set of twats!!

Needs to be captain.

Thought he did really well today. Much better in the air than I expected as well. Hopefully he carry on starting and get some match fitness and momentum going. I reckon he'd link up well with Perez if Mclaren would play them both together.

Do these lot not talk to each other on the pitch?! A couple of simple 'man-on' shouts and we could have been in there.

Good positive start......

McLaren needs to grow a pair of bollocks and make some drastic changes. Sticking with the same group of players and the same system is making him look like an idiot. We have a reserve team full of players champing at the bit for some first team action and I doubt they'd do any worse than our current first teamers. Come to think of it, it isn't physically possible for them to do any worse. Drop everyone shit, bring some eager young players into the first team fold to replace them and at least show the world that you're trying to make this work. So far he's tried 2-3 versions of the same thing and come up with nothing. He should be experimenting with every available option to try and discover a formula that works - he has absolutely nothing to lose. Weak as piss, safety-first loser.

Nope

I'm inclined to agree. Any alternative to Colo, regardless of how shit they are, will more than likely represent an improvement. Williamson is an abomination of a defender at PL level but Colo can no longer even be considered a footballer, just a lump of meat with an armband on.

Colo or Williamson? Kick in the cock or a punch in the nose?

Don't worry lads, we've got Williamson back.

With better balance the whole team should play better. At the moment there are players shoehorned into positions they shouldn't be playing. Give Mitro some service from the wings and he'll look a different player. The wingers will occupy defenders further up the pitch which gives Gini more spaces to run into. The name of the game right now is survival and a balanced team will give us a better chance of that. Adding another CM into the mix when we already have capable (but perhaps not outstanding) options Doesn't really help IMO

After CB, CM is the most important IMO. The more I think about it the less sure I am about that. We have 6 CMs already (admittedly most of them are crap) but we have no width at all and a striker who relies on service. Aarons is never fit and Thauvin is not currently fit for purpose. Add a creative CM into the mix and we're still going to be playing with 4 CMs, pretending Sissoko and Wijnaldum are wingers. It's still totally unbalanced. I'd much rather sign some pacy wingers with decent crossing ability and stick Colback in the centre with Wijnaldum.

We need some pace and creativity/crossing ability in the midfield asap, which is why I think a move for Townsend wouldn't be the worst thing. CB is absolutely critical, the number 1 priority. Colo and Williamson are basically unselectable A new CB, Townsend on loan, Aarons back fit and reallocation of the captain's armband might be enough to reach the heady heights of 16th position.

While the latter is obviously true, that we don't have any of those things, we're not better than 6-7 teams in the league, on paper or otherwise. Nonsense!! Our first team squad is full of international footballers from non-pisspot footballing nations - 5 dutch internationals, 1 Senegal international, a French international, a Serbian international and probably a couple more i've forgotten. On paper we are comfortably better than Bournemouth, Norwich, Sunderland, Leicester, West Brom and Watford. That's 6 teams and you could argue that we have a better squad than Villa as well. Holland are s*** now bar Robben, it says more about how bad they are that the likes of Anita can get into their squad than anything else. I'd barely have Anita in the Ireland squad ffs, if at all. Serbia are also s***. France are the only good team of those internationals you name. Leicester are way better than us btw. Haven't seen much of the other teams you mention tbf. Holland aren't s*** FFS! They're going through a poor patch but they're still one of the best international teams in Europe. And as for Leicester being better than us player for player - nope, not having that at all. Prior to this season the only players you'd probably have taken from them are Morgan, Schmeichel and Mahrez. Would you have taken Vardy over Perez last season? This season maybe but he's merely going through a purple patch. Albrighton over Aarons? Drinkwater over Wijnaldum? Simpson over Janmaat? Okizaki over Mitrovic? Schlupp over Sissoko? Ok I'll put it simpler for you. The two most important positions on the field are centre half and centre midfield and we have at a push one player who may be good in the future between these two positions. We have f*** loads of number 10s and f*** all elsewhere in the side. If we had even one centre midfielder who could pass a ball forward I have no doubt that the likes of Wijnaldum and Sissoko would be playing better but we don't and this is a major reason why we're terrible. It doesn't matter how many internationals we have if we have a spine that wouldn't look out of place in League 2 I don't think anyone would disagree with you. The conversation we had was purely based on the quality of our first team on paper.

Totally agree with the midfield. Never seen such a bunch of useless, non existent, talentless bunch of useless cowards than what we have now. Easily the worst midfield I have seen for god knows how long. I do think the way they are being deployed is part of the problem but i'd still happily bin the lot of them (apart from Wijnaldum) and start again.

While the latter is obviously true, that we don't have any of those things, we're not better than 6-7 teams in the league, on paper or otherwise. Nonsense!! Our first team squad is full of international footballers from non-pisspot footballing nations - 5 dutch internationals, 1 Senegal international, a French international, a Serbian international and probably a couple more i've forgotten. On paper we are comfortably better than Bournemouth, Norwich, Sunderland, Leicester, West Brom and Watford. That's 6 teams and you could argue that we have a better squad than Villa as well. Holland are s*** now bar Robben, it says more about how bad they are that the likes of Anita can get into their squad than anything else. I'd barely have Anita in the Ireland squad ffs, if at all. Serbia are also s***. France are the only good team of those internationals you name. Leicester are way better than us btw. Haven't seen much of the other teams you mention tbf. Holland aren't shit FFS! They're going through a poor patch but they're still one of the best international teams in Europe. And as for Leicester being better than us player for player - nope, not having that at all. Prior to this season the only players you'd probably have taken from them are Morgan, Schmeichel and Mahrez. Would you have taken Vardy over Perez last season? This season maybe but he's merely going through a purple patch. Albrighton over Aarons? Drinkwater over Wijnaldum? Simpson over Janmaat? Okizaki over Mitrovic? Schlupp over Sissoko?

Yeah, we're fully aware that the game isn't played on paper. The conversation isn't about that, it's about the quality of the players we have, not how good a team we are. It's pretty evident to everyone that we're not a team at all, we're a collection of sulking, overpaid mercenaries.

While the latter is obviously true, that we don't have any of those things, we're not better than 6-7 teams in the league, on paper or otherwise. Nonsense!! Our first team squad is full of international footballers from non-pisspot footballing nations - 5 dutch internationals, 1 Senegal international, a French international, a Serbian international and probably a couple more i've forgotten. On paper we are comfortably better than Bournemouth, Norwich, Sunderland, Leicester, West Brom and Watford. That's 6 teams and you could argue that we have a better squad than Villa as well.

Coming out of contract aye? About right then. Has anyone seen anything of him, is he remotely what we need? He's not Colo. That's a good start

The fact that the manager doesn't get the players he needs when he needs them is suicidal. This 'players weren't available at the right value so we'll try again next window' line we keep trotting out is mental. Had we signed the dominant CB we've been in need of for 5 seasons, in the summer we'd almost certainly have more points on the board and not look like relegation certs. I'm all for not overpaying for players but sometimes you need to pay full market value and maybe a little over to ensure you go into a season as close to fully prepared as possible. We knew Williamson was shit, Lascelles was young and inexperienced at this level, Taylor is a crock and Colo is finished. We've known this stuff for ages but we chose to ignore it and it will come back to bite 'the transfer comity'. That said, we are in a false position. Player for player we are better than 6-7 teams in the league but sadly they (apart from Villa) have what we don't - work ethic, team spirit, direction and determination ie. stuff the manager and coaching team is responsible for. By January we'll be cut adrift and no amount of work in the transfer market will save us.

It's too easy to put all the blame on the players. McClaren's job is to coach them, give them belief and mould them into a winning side. There are teams full of worse players than ours doing a shitload better than we are. McClaren persists with a lineup that doesn't work, continues to play Colo and has stuck with him as captain, consistently left Aarons and De Jong on the bench when we clearly lack pace and creativity and employs a motivational specialist who couldn't motivate a shit out of his own arse. In short, we're fucked!

He's not leaving, don't kid yourself.

Exactly how I feel. Today was the last straw. I was actually willing to give him a fair chance and genuinely believed he'd do ok but he has shown nothing, absolutely nothing. He's weak as piss, incapable of motivating players, tactically pathetic and incapable of spotting and rectifying the blatantly fucking obvious. He's more likeable than Pardew and he tries to play better football but he's another out-of-his-depth, sub-standard appointment and he's going to take us down.

Touche