The College Dropout

The constant ‘we are looking at a small group of players’ and only publicly bidding for Osulu, Tosin, Kelly, Palace winger, Guehi kinda proves that’s true. And we all knew Howe’s Bournemouth side was heavy on the British. The longer Eddie’s been here the more we’ve gone towards his style until this January imo.

I mean, we’ve had a good start though. Good post Kaka. I still support Howe but it sounds like he needs to change his mindset a bit.

They’ve also strengthen. And have better depth than us anyway. We could finish higher because of those reasons. But 7th can’t be below par that’s exactly where we should finish.

7th or 8th is par. Any better is a really good job. i don’t understand how the 7/8 most funded squad can expect to finish in Europe though. But that seems to be the way. At some point we may need to take a step back. You can’t do that with a couple £60m signings though.

Bayern have been doing classic Serie A / Real managerial merry-go-round and they’ve struggled to compete in the CL and even lost the league. All that chopping and changing has hurt them.

Aye. But Arteta in particular would’ve been sacked by most owners. In his first full season they finished 8th. And he wanted to bin off the star players. And Ancelotti got sacked by Real the first time for finishing 2nd/3rd and getting to CL semi. He did that again in his second term and was nowhere near getting sacked. He also Got sacked from Chelsea for finishing 2nd. it’s a different era now. Managerial requirements are so specific these days. It helps that there’s a dearth of elite managers that deliver in the short term. And the 2 I can think of - Tuchel and Conte - are notoriously tough to work with.

That Chelsea model is a dying one. Even Real Madrid have had the same 2 managers for most of the last 10 years. Winning 6 CLs. Guardiola, Klopp, Arteta - the best managers are getting longer tenures. Going back to Madrid - this will be Ancelotti’s longest job in about 20 years. It will be interesting to see how PIF move with managers. FSG are patient. Arsenal have Shown patience. Levy and Chelsea have been trigger happy. I hope PIF are the type of owners that give managers the season. Even Roman liked to give managers the full season.

Btw the future of our club is ultimately dependent on the investment, commitment and competency of PIF. Relatively speaking Mitchell and Howe are small fry.

Longstaff can’t play 6. He can’t get on the ball and progress it. Bad under pressure. A modern 6 needs to be able to play and progress under pressure.

I prefer having a face and name talk about the club.

It’s fucked because we’ve built a Howe squad. Last summer we doubled down on Howe ball when it was time to not. We’ll need another manager who is fond of physicality and can be flexible.

Going back to the Howe vs Emery thing. Howe was second choice in part because we don’t know how he scales with European football and a model more driven by leadership than the coach. Early signs suggest he’s struggling with both. Ancelotti gets the big jobs because you can give him a squad of elite old men and he’ll try and make it work. No complaining or bad vibes. More of these types will make it to the top jobs. Good company men. One reason I think De Zerbi hasn’t landed a top job is that he was complaining a fair bit about Brightons transfers. Liverpool barely signed anyone - not heard Arne Slot make more of it. I think that’s partly why he was hired.

That would be Howe vs the rest of the leadership team. And that’s only going to end one way. Mitchell was appointed by everyone in situ. Howe wasn’t. Firing Mitchell would mean they all made a mistake. Firing Howe could be positioned as ending the first phase.

We used to play and defend with the intensity of Arsenal. Thay drive and commitment takes teams a long way. We need that. They are the best coached team in the division imo. Mentally as well.

Kellys also played a lot at fullback so his aerial stats would be worse if he was a pure CB. I agree with the Guehi/Schar combo too. Wouldn’t work. The Schar upgrade needs to be better than Fab in the air imo. Hall is going to be huge for us imo. Already a lot of our play is through him.

That’s an excuse. A new stadium increases the clubs value. As do all those other things. Everytbing goes back to PIF. But aye.

I’m a broken record but there’s lots of things PIF could do to show how invested they are outside of spending on transfers. stadium training facilities academy multi club investment in the NE

this is before the June debacle when we assumed we would strengthen with 2-3 players. This is pre-Staveley leaving. Pre Mitchell. It’s a new world. I said we overachieved with the 60 points last season all things considered. If everything goes right for us, I think we could challenge higher up. But the transfer window and reshuffle, down atmosphere has made that much less likely. We should finish 7th/8th. anything better is an overachievement.

Ok. I agree with most of that. A part of the reason Villa keep progressing imo is that they are better aligned to do so because they are further into their process. And that might actually include being able to hire Emery when we couldn’t. Emery was meant to get Villa into CL - at least Europe. And keep them there.

Nah the Villa project precedes Emery by several years. Thats like saying the Guardiola project started when he joined. No - it started with the takeover. They tailored it for Guardiola with the Pellegrini era when they got Txiki and co in. Txiki hiring is the latest you can say the Guardiola project started. Our project starts Nov 2021. Howe joins in December or whatever. The richest man in Egypt bought Villa in 2018. Within a year they sign McGinn, Mings, Luiz, Targett, Konsa. Emery is benefitting from 3.5 years of development before he joins. I’m not sure when they start investing in the academy. But that’s happening in the background too. There’s a good reason Emery turned us down but didn’t turn down Villa.

This is not to say I think Howe is the guy that will take us to the promise land. Howe has club built before. He’s got the best out of players before. Is he a guy they can fit into a modern top club structure and maintain performance with European commitments? Can he win trophies? I don’t know. But I’ll give credit where it’s due. Emery is more proven at a higher level. But could he club build? He didn’t want too with us. Emery is benefitting now from joining a club years into its transformation. While Howe is suffering from a club moving on from phase 1 of their transformation. It’s a lot deeper than just money in money out. But aye we should finish 7th and 8th. I think the reasons we may diverge is how developed and aligned the clubs are off the pitch.

What’s your point? My point is Emery has better foundations. Squad. Academy. Leadership. They then brought in Emerys guy as DoF. 6 of their starters yesterday were there when he joined. Compared to 3 for Howe. Howe has had to club build. Emery hasn’t. And yeh Emery has done wonders with McGinn and Watkins. Got Digne back to his best. He’s tops.

Last accounts either their squad cost or wages were higher than ours. We are both 7 & 8 in all the expenditures. Kamara and Tielemans earn £15m combined. I agree Emery has done a fantastic job. But Villa’s transformation precedes him several years. He benefitted from that. Emery and Monchi were 2 of the last pieces. Howe joked months after the takeover with a skeleton club. Howe’s had cash but that’s it (and a great positive atmosphere). Emery turned us down for that reason. Emery knew he didn’t need much to turn around Gerrards team. Everything else was in place or close to being in place.

That’s a tougher ask than what Emery asks of his lads. Especially with the squad depth issues.

I think that was his point. They already started spending before Emery came in. They gave Gerrard the keys and they mostly bought well. The last manager lost his job when they wanted to push on. 11th those years was about right though. The squad he left was a bottom 6/7. The atmosphere and Bruce limitations were being exposed. But we signed Villa’s backup LB for a reason. We signed someone pushing 30 who spent their career in Lower leagues and a bottom half PL club for a reason. They were upgrades on what we had. Without the signings + Howe - we would’ve struggled. It was a bad squad. Bruce wasn’t getting 100% out of it sure but he was a patsy.