Yorkie

If we never scored I think every game we played would finish 0-0.

Meh

Would love it if people would get off Gordon's back for a bit. Another big night from him so far.

Don't miss bonny lad

Absolutely exceptional from Gordon. Really stepping up again tonight.

Penalty

It's hardly simulation. Don't think he's tried to con the ref at all.

Ramsey sent off. Cool.

Mbeumo misses a sitter. Ergh come on lads. Please have some quality

Joelinton has been 3/10 and 8/10

Hall owning Mbeumo so far

So frustrating.

Didn't think that went out, assume they'll probably score

Good foul from Ramsey. Shut up McCoist you annoying div.

Good God Elanga's crossing.

A lot of fart so far. Dying for a shit.

Incredible let off. Feel that Tripps is probably gonna have a rough night.

As long as we sign a proper number one I could live with it. We do need a backup goalie and I'd be happy to say so long and fare well to Popey at this point; feels like he's run his race here.

Why? I still look through a lot of things through the "it's not the Ashley era any more" lens. Would highly recommend tbh.

My impression of Verbruggen is that he's a classic shithouse of a goalie that's always made a big contribution to them fucking us over at SJP. No idea how good he is really because I go out of my way to avoid that club, but our next signing for that position has to be absolutely spot on. Brighton are a bona fide talent farm so no beef in principle with us shopping there. A quick glance at their forum seems to suggest the prices being quoted re Bayern and (surprise surprise) Chelsea are tempting, but they do fucking love selling players.

You put primacy on the league position. All of the other things you've talked about aren't going to be particularly different/disappear whether we finish 8th/9th or 14th/15th. We can't unsign Elanga and we're not going to be suddenly very slick on the road. We'll pick up the odd result here and there at least, and the other teams in this cluster are all fairly inconsistent.

Well fine, if you think he should be sacked for all those reasons then that makes more sense. If we are done as any sort of force under this manager then we should look to replace him. I was responding to this:

I'm not saying they are. I'm saying that basing your decision to keep or remove the manager on something as arbitrary as 'did we finish 14th instead of 13th' is senseless. Also Ange is definitely absolutely shite, howay. Never cut out for the PL.

But what difference does it actually make, compared to all the other ways you might measure the suitability of a manager? @HaydnNUFC referenced Ange earlier; that's the perfect demonstration of it not being about the binary results. Ange won the Europa League but got peddled cos he was an absolutely dogshit manager and needed removing if they had any hope at all of progressing. Where we finish this season will be a fair and true reflection of how we have performed in the league this season. But it isn't necessarily an indicator of where we'll finish next season. That's the difference between Howe and Dalglish/Souness. Their finishes clearly were a demonstration of what was to come if they had stayed. In Howe's case, he has a mountain of evidence to suggest it's a blip rather than an indicator of the direction of travel.