The Bonk

Also contributed to them being able to get to the playoffs. He was world class last year, shame he’s not at the same level, but there’s other players having worse seasons than him.

Cassano talks shit about every Italian star player. Watch them win the Euro’s again in 2 years.

The flop sold it, no doubt.

Looks so much better for Italy, even his dead ball play seems much more threatening. He’s a top player with complimentary players around him.

That’s what drove me insane watching that unfold. No reason to have a fistful of his shirt, lazy and brain dead defending.

He’ll be there next season and they’ll give him a new contract. Bank it, it’s the Arsenal way.

Means we have to beat them next weekend, nee problemo.

Fair points and I hate to say it, but prices will keep going up to attract a higher earning match going fan. I used to work for an agency (subsidiary of InFront Media) that built digital products and strategy for football clubs. I specifically worked with Chelsea, AS Roma, Juve and Napoli in my time there. Chelsea were the catalyst for "football tourists" under Abramovich and built an entire digital strategy to breakdown the ARPU (average revenue per user) of every match going fan. That data was then used to work with commercial partners to increase the value of those relationships and open new revenue channels. I'm sure this is a continued strategy under Clearlake and Todd "the human capitalist" Boehly. This is happening at NUFC, I guarantee it, Hopkinson has been doing this his whole career and he worked under Guy Lawrence at MLSE, who was also CEO at Chelsea when I worked with them. What sucks is that due to PSR (now SCR), the typical, local match going fan is going to be priced out of league games in favour of higher ARPU revenue "football tourists". This is the only way to keep this club closer to the big clubs who have had a decade plus of building these revenue streams. If the club is competitive and in Europe, everything will get more expensive over time to maintain growth. Another thing Eddie does well is player improvement, which in a handcuffed SCR world is highly valuable to a club like us that will need to sell on better players to keep adding to the depth of our overall squad. There aren't a lot of managers that have this ability or Eddie's track record in doing so.

Is he? Been in the role like 6 months. Maybe give it a year before we reappoint the CEO.

I don’t think he was hired to have input into the Football side of things other than finding revenue to support those that are? I was working on a few native apps (Leafs, Raptors) which were under his team’s portfolio. He had a lot of input into fan experience and engagement from what I remember. (12 years ago)

Yeah, but are any you’ve listed elite or better than Eddie? Iraola seems to have his number. I’ve worked with Hopkinson’s team when he was at MLSE and presented to him, other executives when the project was near completion. Smart guy, very good on the commercial side. Bit weird seeing him at our club in all honesty. He’s also quite good on the operational side too and hopefully he brings some stability to our back office. Wilson seemed decent at Forest before Edu rocked up, so hopefully he can make us look less of a mess in the transfer market this summer.

Haha….what’s your plan for interim then?

Who’s your guy to take over from Eddie? I honestly haven’t given it any consideration.

You want him gone now? Like immediately?

Valid points, I just want the guy to have time to put things right. CL level football and going deep in all the cups is not sustainable for our squad level without some luck, which we haven’t had much of. Isak leaving really fucked us, guy was lethal and could kill off games on his own. Our defence has been pretty good under Eddie up until this season. Tripps, Burn, Schar are all in various stages of decline, Botman injured so much he’s lost his edge, Thiaw been good but has the odd clanger in him. We need better players, hopefully Wilson can find some gems that aren’t overpriced domestic players.

He looks so fucking gutted, wasn’t able to watch this earlier (took my kids to Comicon). He’s done so much right here that he deserves to see us through this transition. 13 years of shit and in 5 years he’s got us near the super clubs, with a squad not nearly as deep. He looks just as hurt as the rest of us, poor guy is shaving years of his life managing us. I really hope he can get that 7th spot and play some Europa football next year. On the other hand, no Europe would give him more training time with our underperforming players.

He needs to go on a run for the remainder of the season to save his job. A season where we should have progressed based on what we spent in the summer has been largely stagnant or slightly regressive if you look at our average performances. Love Eddie and want him to succeed, but today and a good portion of the season the results are not good enough.

Hopefully we have greater player depth to handle it next time. I'm with you, didn't hate the amount of games, quite enjoyed playing in Europe through to March, which we didn't get to do last time.

Icardi comes on at some point, you'd think

Problem is the amount of games it takes to get there knackers us on all fronts.

Looked shaky the first half until the pen, but I give them credit for turning it on and being ruthless when we were rattled.

Yup, my thoughts exactly. We were right there with them until the half and was buzzing at 2-2. Shame the scoreline is so obscene.

Waited until the last 45min to have our worst half. Shame, they deserve more for their efforts than what the scoreline shows.