HawK

Supporting a club is about the journey, never the destination. Enjoy the moments and upwards momentum when you can, because it's all we have and all there ever will be.

What gives me hope is that he's been there, done that with loads of clubs. He's a principled man who likes a challenge and I think he's 'man enough' to do what almost no other top-tier manager has ever done, and that's to build a project from the ground up - he just doesn't like to be fucked with. Either that or The Emirates

I think we should have a ban on these posts until the start of June. Tbf if pushed to one extreme or the other, I think both those outcomes are more likely than the alternatives

Pardew DoF anyone?

I was extremely nervous throughout this season, believing that if we didn't go up we'd be down here 'forever', and we'd be waving goodbye to the arguably highest calibre manager ever to walk through our door. But you have to take the rough with the smooth and some of the performances and moments this season were great, when we smashed QPR, Preston and when we unbelievably turned around Norwich. Add in our form for the past 3 months and it's been a real nail-biting finale. 4/5 as the watermark was set in our last season down here which I give a 5, when it felt so good to be a fan again and didn't feel like it was the last throw of the dice.

Think he'll be at Arsenal if they don't make the top 4 come first game of next season

Ritchie

http://www.gigslutz.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/F_200610_October13ed_91841a.jpg Yep, I'll go along with that.

Liam Gallagher, got the single. Blast from the past that

It was Bruce Lee who said: "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times".

Insert Colback on back of retro shirt here. This one?

If Mitro contributed to winning matches to compensate for his criminal lack of a goalscorer's instinct, he'd not get anywhere near as much stick. The fact is he doesn't, and Murphy's goals have won us matches. Strikers should be judged on goals scored, first and foremost. Murphy is just better at scoring than Mitrovic as the stats will show. How many assists has Mitro gotten whilst not scoring?

Really? I have the tightest hamstrings in the world and I'm far from explosive. fair enough

Players that are that explosive generally have tighter hamstrings, it's part of the reason they're so quick. Ergo they suffer a lot more injuries. If he learnt to be play within himself a bit, he'd be injured less. He's got enough awareness around him to still be effective without a yard of pace or so. Would rather have him at 90% for 38/46 games than 100% for 20-25.

That's lush. I'll be buying one of them if it looks like that.

Someone hoy a pic up?

Those two could have started for any team in the PL in hindsight, luckily we were the ones who took the gamble and it paid off massively. 2 of our best players in the past 30 years.

At pace, or with a mace. Then push him down a staircase to put him in a neck-brace.

I thought in his first couple of games he was nothing short of sensational, then his head dropped and probably thought 'wtf have I done', and it took Rafa a long time to turn him back around. Needs more consistency but he's the sort of player that will look better with better players ahead of him. Stick an in-prime Pirlo in our team and he'd be about as effective as Shelvey has been imo.

There's far too many awful consequences of failure for it to be savoured, like.

All bias aside, it's a shame that England went sour so early. What better manager for our international cloggers, than the king of the Premier League cloggers, time after time?

Backs Pardew, doesn't rate a non Barca/Real La Liga-title winning manager who also won the Champs League vs a World XI. I think it's safe to say Rafa knows a bit more than you, Babaloobawooba.

Mods should give him a mandatory signature, 'resident loon'..

Could be a world XI, that's lush.

Just him being in the team makes other players play more offensively I think, players like Gayle just know that at any given moment, a peach of a ball could be pinged in behind. I think them knowing that those moments can happen, makes them play differently/better for the whole game. Out of our entire first 11, I think losing Shelvey would have hurt us the most. With him in the team, it's allowed others to shine more than they could without him there...