80

I'm confident he would've made his comments a lot fluffier if he'd wanted to, I agree he's brilliant at coming out with weightless content. Which is why it's striking he's set up a load of headlines here.

It clearly wasn't a brainfart. He's gone out of his way to make the same point in multiple set piece interviews.

To be fair, I think it's easier said than done for a few reasons - there can be a mammoth amount of scenarios to set protocols for. There's quite a lot of complexity in these situations. There's an argument for doing what they see as strategically right and letting the cards fall as they may, with the presumption people will adapt around the new structure. I can potentially sympathise with everyone in this scenario. My bias is towards something closer to the traditional strong manager that Eddie seems to prefer to be. But football operations at the highest level are gigantic nowadays, so even in that situation I think to be successful you have to have huge amounts of delegation. But personally I don't like having relatively unaccountable 'directors' having the whiphand over 'head coaches'.

Nah, not at all. Whenever similar things have come up previously he's made comments to the effect of he's "here for as long as the club see fit to employ him". It's "never say never", but with the emphasis on him needing to fulfil the club's ambitions to remain here. He's never repeatedly made pointed comments about whether he and the club's outlooks are going to be the right fit for eachother; that's unprecedented so far as I'm aware. Particularly when the start of the season is a handful of weeks away.

He's clearly a bit unsettled, which can't be too surprising. It's a separate matter from the England job. He doesn't want to leave in the slightest, but hopes his concerns are addressed satisfactorily for him. He's a very careful communicator, the caveats about his future are there for a reason.

Yes, if you're telling me it's RW or CB, I'll take RW. It'll be a game changer.

Yeah I'd start preparing for the worst if that was the quote. I don't think it will be though. I don't think he'll flatly say he won't accept an offer however, simply on the grounds it'd be out of place if they haven't made an offer - it would be shitting on whoever eventually gets the job. So he might not be as categorical as some would like. But I expect it will be clear enough reading between the lines.

I was wondering something similar. Can we break the man

I can see the logic in this.

He did make it upstairs but didn't quite make the toilet, poor bairn

Yep, no PR required there. Also good to see so much of Joe Willock, he's looking happy and uncrippled

Well I never...

We should set up an NO twitter account just to fuck these guys off. Just be a reliable place for highlighting their thefts, errors and blatant lies.

This season is shaping up to be sensational, I can feel it

Yeah that's right. Initially, the claim was Eddie had encouraged them to go back and try again for Mitchell. So someone's talking absolute bollocks.

Ha, hopefully not... But there could be some interesting interactions. Either way it's an exciting hire. Would be so good to get this section of the club locked down.

I'm really not worrying about this, but if it did happen I would be disappointed, but not necessarily in Eddie. I think I'd be looking back at the Amanda situation first etc. Personally though, I'm convinced he's fully focused on the story that's left to be written here. As someone else said, he'd be looking to make any rejection as sensitively and diplomatically as possible, however, so we shouldn't be expecting a big immediate announcement that he has zero interest.

Plus the manner in which it would be done, and the shelf life of the two job roles.

Playing along with it almost entirely because it's winding some people up, it'd be interesting to see Trippier's reaction if we brought Poch in. He doesn't have the best things to say about him. On a related note, maybe a bit of Diego Simeone? I'm interested in Terzic too.

I'm interested to know what's going through his mind as he meets our players Looking at poor Murphy like he has a windowless van lined up for him.

It's from his Overlap interview. He has a pretty unconventional approach to fitness e.g. almost zero strength training and emphasizing his own stretching methods, which Howe and co. support his decision on. But maybe more conservative managers would not be impressed by. Where's this from?

Yeah I had wondered that. Very open-minded to theories like this but ultimately there's a good chance Southgate is just a shit manager who couldn't see past using the same 11 and predetermined subs over and over again.

Yeah, the gist appeared to be him telling Emanelo to kindly piss off and stop briefing the press about us.

How the worm turns.

I think that would actually be pretty cool. Not monetizable enough though.