Memphis

Best I can tell, Spors was heading the football side alone, which included several clubs - and had no connection with the seemingly very dodgy financial practices of their ownership people. I don't think it's fair to lump him in with the rest of them, I wouldn't have thought he'd know anything about that.

Both of them seem to fit the bill. I'm fine with either. 

9 minutes ago, Holmesy said:

Don’t know anything about him but this is exactly the kind of signing I love.

Could be world class, could be shit.

There is a segment of fan that seems to thrive on negativity towards the manager, and I get it - we have had more than our share of absolute chancers, idiots, and assholes running things. It's hard to accept that we actually have not only a decent man, not only a very competent man, but perhaps our best manager in decades running things. It's hard to let go of the spite and the cynicism, especially with this club. But it's time.

I don't think I would swap him for anyone in the world. Feels weird to say that but considering how well we play, our style, the way he improves players, the way he communicates with staff and supporters, I genuinely don't think there's a better fit for us. 

It's a long-winded way of saying - individual results can be criticised, as they can with any manager, but if anyone is seriously questioning his ability or his fit here, it says far more about them than it does about Howe.

Reading the report, he comes across as well as anyone could given what he did. They repeatedly note that there is no way they would have ever learned about any of his bets without him providing all the evidence and a confession. They also note his admitted gambling addiction, though all of that is redacted. Considering all of that, and with him taking a reduced wage, somehow he comes out of this looking like a very sound guy whose demons got the best of him. I hope he's gotten the help he needs because this could end up being the making of him here - lots of time to settle, learn the language, get acclimated, experience the club and fan support through a very tough time. 

I am so glad to have finally drawn a line under this whole saga. Cannot wait to see him back.

It's so silly to hear shit like "leading the race for his signature". Like 5 teams put contracts down on the ground and Tosin is closer to ours than everyone else's? 

That said, he would be a smart signing and an excellent way to start the summer. I hope we, uh, win the race.

1 minute ago, tgarve said:

Does the deadline coincide with this seasons ffp deadline also? 

It does. Again, none of this is an accident. This was clever from Ashworth or whoever put it in there. It's designed to smoke out any potential clubs who want to buy Bruno early in the summer while also ensuring all the proceeds go towards this season's FFP calculations, allowing us the most possible flexibility in restructuring the squad. It works well for everyone imo.

Obviously someone could try to buy him after the deadline but at that point there is no incentive for us to sell or for them to buy at an inflated price. 

This one is all on Bruno. If he wants to go, he will go for 100m next month. He'd go with my best wishes. If he doesn't want to go, that's fantastic, and he won't be going. I think the club has drawn a line under the interest by saying essentially - "Put up or shut up". Clubs have a month to make the move. If they don't, that's that. To me, it's an ideal way to handle a situation like this. 

You run out of superlatives. The finishing ability, the composure, the demeanor, the way he blends into the team and provides more than just pure finishing, the fact that he seems to love it here, there's not a better fit for us on the planet. No point in debating whether he's a top (x) striker in the world, he's 1 of 1 for us right now. 

And he's not Shearer, but that's OK. No reason to ever compare the two.

Ange and Maddison both sounded completely despondent post match. Like they'd been through a disaster, which, well...

He genuinely looks like Thierry Henry out there. On a different planet than everyone else. His composure is unreal. His first touch, his control, he's intelligence, I wouldn't take 150m for him, he is irreplaceable.

Imagine not believing in this guy... couldn't be me

Perfectly phrased

Looking back at the timetable, it seems that this all became public after 12 October, so it's not as if he was daft enough to bet on football after all of this emerged. 

This is a continuation of his previous infractions and I would hope common sense would prevail and his lengthy ban would suffice as punishment, but knowing the FA, I doubt it.

Feels as if the season of short squads, injuries, and upheaval is catching up to us. We just look mentally and physically tired every time we step on to a pitch. It's been quite some time since we've looked anywhere near our best, and I think it was always going to be inevitable that we would feel the pain of having squeezed by as long as we did. I think it's silly to blame Howe specifically, as he's merely a part of the whole club philosophy when it comes to training and squad management. I do think we will need to reassess how we do things this summer and prioritize depth more than we have. But it would be harsh in the extreme to make sweeping changes on the back of what feels like an inevitable drop in form. 

To me, it simply means this summer will be absolutely critical not only in terms of player recruitment, but also a reimagining of how we balance the squad and how we handle our fitness levels.

8 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

Additionally, hiring the Brentford moneyball master would be deciding to suddenly implement a very particular approach to recruitment, for which there's no evidence of us actually desiring to do so up to now. Is there anything to indicate that such a model would work for a team with aspirations of Champions League football, as opposed to promotion and consolidation? If we were to go in that direction I'd hope that it's because we've identified it as the approach which works for us, rather because he's a 'name'.

 

On that note, I think it's plausible that we didn't know exactly what we wanted when we appointed Ashworth, and so the murmurings about the role not being what he expected potentially ring true to me. With that in mind, Eales & Co may now have more clarity on that, and we might therefore see someone appointed to a different title and with a different role - rather than a straight swap. So it could be someone we've not heard of or expected.

 

I think this is well stated. 

We are in a different position from a financial standpoint than when we hired Ashworth, but more importantly, we are now fully staffed behind the scenes. Knowing how things went with Ashworth, we may well decide to change the remit of the Sporting Director role. Or replace it with something else. Whatever the situation, I would expect whoever is hired to be indicative of that chosen direction.

There is a great deal of speculation and argument over a lot of things none of us can know or will likely ever know:

1. The specifics of Ashworth's role in our transfers

2. The specific things he has done to create and build out our infrastructure 

3. The nature of his relationships with the coaching staff and the owners

4. How indispensable (or not) his specific knowledge and methods are

5. How much of our methodology leaves with him and would have to be rebuilt or reimagined

We can speculate all we like, we can claim to talk to friends of friends, we can scrutinise public comments, none of it will actually help us have concrete information to address those issues above. 

At the end of the day, he is obviously very good and very well-thought-of within the industry. And it can't be a good thing for us to have to pivot to a new Sporting Director after only a year or so. But to say it's a crushing blow or to say that Ashworth was worthless are equally knee-jerk reactions that aren't supported by data. We will never truly know those answers, and that's OK. 

The fact remains that we are supremely wealthy as a club and are extremely attractive to prospective employees. I have no doubt that PIF, Staveley, Ghodoussi, and Eales will find a fantastic candidate and we will continue apace. 

And yes, they can either pay £20mm or get fucked. Zero motivation, I'd imagine, for anyone to do Ashworth a solid here. 

With the importance of this role and the sheer amount of proprietary knowledge he would have, I'm not surprised we baked in a massive gardening leave into his contract. Him leaving immediately would damage us greatly in the short term simply from an information standpoint. I'm thrilled to see us taking a hard stance. PIF will have no problem paying him for putting his career on hold if it means keeping our secrets from them until 2026. Money well spent.

More like Dan Ashworthless if you ask me

We didn't crumble in the last 20 minutes because we weren't dog tired from having played 4 matches in 10 days or something crazy.

There's not much more to it than that. If we had a deeper, healthier squad, we would have been seeing this all season. As it stands, once we've been given some time to breathe, we can play this way again.

A rested Howe team is a dangerous Howe team...

Fabulous performance so far. Isak injury puts a big stink on it, though. Just that kind of year, I guess.

Unrecognizable from some of our earlier away performances, THIS is the team that I've used to seeing.

Xabi Alonso is a million fucking miles ahead of Gerrard as a manager. And a billion ahead of Lampard. We can only hope it somehow ends up being Gerrard. It's nailed on to be Alonso and he's a good choice. 

From a brief look around the internet, he jumped into the U18s at age 16, was spending some time in first team training this year, highlights show him to be capable of seeing a nice pass and having enough pace to get into dangerous positions. Definitely looks a player.