Yorkie

Joey man you love raging and then sharing whatever it is that's baited you.

More games = more money Pacify ESL clubs

Do you need a ticket for tonight? Me and thousands of others! Would love to get to a CL one but if there's spares going about I'd sooner see them go to members who've toiled away with the ballots. I didn't bother with the membership this year.

I really like Gordon and can't stand a lot of the flak he gets but am definitely done listening to him on his philosophy. It feels like every since he's got into the habit of publicly big-talking, his form has regressed.

Can I have your ticket if you've got one? 😉 (I broadly agree but European nights at SJP are always at least a bit special)

Feel like I've seen a load of occasions in the last few seasons where everyone on the pitch is just stood waiting for Local Hero to finish.

Juve Sporting a great watch so far

No.

More ammunition in the "everyone was sick as fuck" theory re the West Ham performance.

Our best runs of form often come in bursts where we have lots of games in a short space of time - and there's no excuses for how bad we were on Sunday - but I reckon the odd bit of time on the training ground is probably helpful like. Certainly in terms of integrating new players during pre-season. It's a pretty commonly-held view that the manager does a lot of his best work on the training pitch, or did you never buy that?

Yeah. The Ramsey slagging is pure "we've just lost a game" craic. He's looked really promising so far, though I thought he was quiet against Benfica. Looking forward to seeing more from him. Worth remembering that he's a Longstaff upgrade, too.

So basically we're debating the virtues of letting a young lad sit on the bench or not, knowing full well they're not actually going to play, as if they've won a competition or something. Feels like really scraping the barrel in terms of finding reasons to be critical. It doesn't matter at all. People got their knickers on a twist over this during 23/24 too, with having two/three goalies on the bench. Unless those academy players are genuinely ready to be on a PL pitch (and they're therefore being unjustly held back), it is utterly irrelevant who's warming the bench if they're not going to play. I believe very strongly that enhancing our academy is critical to our long-term success. Whether that's for producing players to play for us, or producing human capital to feed PSR. However, this idea that there's some cultural issue at the club or with the management about not giving young players a fair chance is completely baseless.

I remember this sort of chat pretty well in 23/24. One of the lads on the bench in Paris is now playing college football in the US, and another was at Spennymoor for a bit before becoming a free agent. I think if these lads aren't in the team, there's probably good reason for it. Keep peddling that daft argument, though.

Just another ripple of PSR. Not only could we not sign our first choice targets, or avoid a hideously distracting and drawn-out saga re Isak, but we couldn't recruit quickly either. Said it multiple times over the summer but the turning point for me was Pedro, who signed for Chelsea (instead of us) nearly eight weeks before we finally landed Woltemade. Disclaimer: I'm not blaming PSR for our inability to make two passes in a row for 45 minutes on Sunday.

A point a piece in the mackems derby.

I'm not convinced we'll see an outright turnaround. Firstly because I think the notion of having a 'turnaround' indicates a downward slide that has been continuous for a while, when in reality - prior to yesterday - we'd won five games in our last six. We don't need a turnaround, we just need to improve our performances on the road in the league. My prediction is that our league form will continue to be choppy as the team is a little bit deficient and we're putting a significant effort into the cup competitions. Meanwhile, I think we could very well go unbeaten in the CL until we face PSG on the last day, and I think we'll progress in the League Cup.

The likes of Wolves probably don't have much choice right now. It's very difficult to make a progressive appointment in their current predicament, meanwhile the standard is so high in the Premier League that it's risky to take a gamble on someone with no prior experience. My recollection of them under O'Neil is that they were a mix of bad and unlucky before he got the chop, but immediately knowing his way around the building, and having an existing relationship with most of the squad, could help them steady the ship a bit. A la Hodgson post-Vieira.

@Ruddy Marveauxlous if you're worried about people reacting poorly to you sharing sensationalist drivel from what I assume is your own website, you probably want to develop a thicker skin. Your report is DE-NIED.

Which of the wingers imported from abroad this summer seemed like a more certain investment than the one we got from the PL, who had 30+ PL goal contributions in the last two seasons? Obviously you have to discount anyone signed by the ESL 6, so that leaves us with the likes of Pino, Kevin, Ndoye. Who would you have preferred? Signing goals from the PL is quite clearly the best approach when PSR leaves absolutely no margin for error. It guarantees nothing, of course, but you take the approach if you can. That's why Madueke, Outtara, Grealish, Dibling, Mbeumo, Kudus, Garnacho, Sancho, and Elanga all moved within the league this summer. It's not some wild approach only we have decided to employ. The jury is out on Elanga. He's had a bad start in the league, but then few have had a good one.

Yeah, I'm always nervous for those sorts of games. I get the frustration at being the benevolent ones but it's not like West Ham were going to continue never winning at home. They were good yesterday; pressed us well and when they were able to, executed the low block very effectively. Nuno is a good appointment for them and they should have enough to steer themselves clear for another season of bowl-circling next time. It's still a terrible result but as usual the cries of 'embarrassment' and 'disgrace' are way off and based on the idea that we should just turn up and win these games.

You're discrediting your entire argument by referencing an awful performance that wasn't repeated again until a year later. It literally provides evidence to the contrary, considering we had an absolutely amazing season in the end. We were absolutely terrible today but the jury is out on whether it indicates we're in for a bad season or if it was just a defeat.

Two similar games in however many it is since that West Ham game is not "more common than not"

It's not ideal, but it's also not that bad, and slagging off the recruitment team for not addressing that pretty narrow issue given everything else we had to deal with (and in the context) is very OTT.

Hate digging up summer conversations but this is just such unfair criticism. We had so much to do this summer, with far, far greater priorities than making sure our third choice LB was better than Dan Burn, and was someone happy to sign on the basis they were unlikely to get a kick (note we couldn't even hang onto Targett). It's just rough luck that Tino and Hall got injured at the same time and, despite what you read, Burn generally isn't terrible there. He was absolutely exceptional in midweek for starters.

I mean you say that but we're still comfortably in all 4 competitions and looking likely to progress and we still have 28 league games to go... That's probably fair. What I'm getting at is that we're doing well in the cups possibly at the expense of our league form. The worst performance I've ever seen from us under Howe came in the league, four days after we delivered a brilliant one in the cup, in which we absolutely bullied a much better team than today's opponents. We're Cup Team-ariffic atm. It's a nice throwback in a way. To my granddad's era like, but still.