AlanSkÃrare

He'll walk. Was told through work he was incredibly close to walk in January when Ashley demanded that he "dedicated a win to him on live television" but decided to drag us to promotion. Ashley needs to be forced out once and for all with full power now.

Thanks Rafa. In another life this could've been so different.

Not that it wouldn't have mattered but jesus fucking christ what are we doing

I hope it all crashes. This is pointless until Ashley leaves.

This.

It's full stop about advertising Sports Direct and it's hysterically depressing. You know it all the time, but at certain times it just gets to you, like the chilling reminder of the fact that NUFC is just a charade. It makes me so fucking angry what he has done to the club, and still is doing. When Rafa goes there needs to be riots.

Can't help but thinking that having the guy who used to run to get sandwiches from Gregg's for board meetings now negotiating and dealing with transfers can be part of the problem.

He was handed players with good potential and reduced them to complete garbage and lost all the games 0-4. Carr looks worse because of him and knows it, he told me in person.

Worrying signs. Performance levels have been dodgy, results kept coming, but we've not looked very good for quite a long time now.

He's a scar from Pardew. He's seriously afraid of having the ball at his feet. He looks at it with fear. It takes a decent amount of time for him to get his feet right before he passes it to someone very close to him. There are two telling facts: 1. Under Pardew he was given a 6-year contract. 2. Pardew wanted to sign him for Palace. How we're still dealing with him, partly due to an inexplicable glorification because he appeared form the academy, is horrendous and a testament to how poorly run the club has been for far too long.

Not going into today's game: Colback's performance was more or less nothing different from what he's serving up in 95% of his games. League One player. Needs to go.

We've been in desperate need of his type of winger for much of the season. He's direct and that creates space for more players up front. At times Gayle has felt isolated as Diamé won't move enough and Ritchie/Gouffran are sitting too deep. Atsu takes aim at the opposition box almost every time he gets the ball. If we're not signing anyone like him we should make this permanent. He has qualities.

He can't tackle, pass the ball forward, run properly, shoot or win a header. He hides when we need people to step up. Benitez seem to have realised this now as he hooks him all the time. If Rafa stays (big if), I think Colback could be out.

I met Alan Shearer today. My head is still spinning 10 hours later.

Very understandable decision. One of football's big problems seem to be the notion that past moments of glory should entitle you to take part going forward. The same with Rooney now and Wenger to some degree as well. There's also this strange idea that managers' are basically always mistreated when they're fired. It's the very nature of the job, very, very few of them are capable of improving their teams and clubs over an extended period of time. Clubs that choose to look elsewhere for progress, rather than stay with managers to be kind, hoping for things to turn around, shouldn't be criticized for it. They're cold-blooded businesses, there's no room for sentimentality or friendship if you want to keep moving. There are of course situations when patience run out too fast, but more often than not managers get sacked when all evidence points to them not being able to take the club forward. I think Ranieri has looked absolutely clueless this season. Add the sort of mystery surrounding their amazing form last season, and it's hard to see what ideas he wants to revert to, what in his methods is actually going to develop Leicester. Like Hull and Swansea they should look for a progressive manager who's capable of developing the squad and get them playing football that pays off long-term, and not be blinded by experience. Perhaps going for someone like Wagner is a good idea.

The money was clearly there. Rafa was given a £30m transfer budget and generated a further £30m of transfer profit on top of that. Even the biggest Ashley apologist can't go down that route. Just because we made a transfer profit doesn't mean there is money in the club. I think the club is experiencing cash flow problems. I'm going with the more believable story that Ashley has spat his dummy because he expected us to be well clear at the top of the league by now and isn't prepared to give Rafa any more cash. Expect Carr has been in his ear to complain about the type of player Rafa has brought into the club as well. Aligns well with that time he was furious with us for not getting fourth after signing Cissé.

Poor performance again. Too many of them in the last month or two. Not only a question of the quality of the squad or its depth - some of Rafa's approach has not been convincing lately.

It's the same as always with Ashley, isn't it? We sign players if we're not on course to achieve Premier League status, we stay quiet if we are. Massive investment in 2012/13 and 2015/16 to try and avoid the drop, nothing going on in 2013/14 or 2014/15 because we were looking likely to stay up anyway. Papiss Cissé is pretty much the only time we've done something in January over the past seven years despite doing well enough, but by all accounts given of that transfer Ashley was under the impression that we'd get Champions League (money) if we got him. Don't expect us to push anything through. Interesting to see how this pans out when we're up there again. By the sign of things, Benitez won't be allowed to build on platforms.

I can semi-understand the Pardew stuff. But some are suggesting we could easily do better in the summer. We are not going to sign 2 wide players better than the lad in the summer. Why? He's got 27 goals in 240 senior appearances. There are plenty of players that contribute a lot more in terms of assists, goals and who do an awful lot more for their team's attacking dimension than Townsend. He's decent on the ball when the game is shaped in a way that suits him. He's easily shut down by competent opposition managers, he enjoyed a short, purple patch under Rafa this spring but has failed to show that sort of form during the remainder of his career. Add to that the fact he went to play for the idiot at Palace, and I really don't see what's laughable about wanting better in the summer rather than enjoy him bullying poor full backs in this league for three months.

Actively don't want him. Think we'll get promoted anyway, think we'll need smarter players to make progress in the Premier League. He's good on the ball in certain games, extremely frustrating in other and offers too little movement off the ball to be effective in a front three (which is pretty much what we're playing with Rafa) over the course of a season. And he signed for fucking Pardew. Wait and go for someone else.

Interesting, saw you mention it on Twitter. How long ago was this? Late September or early October.

Did write this at the time I think, but met Graham Carr a short while back. Seen some of the NE journalists pushing the angle that he's never seen his influence decline, that is categorically not true. He sounded as if he was just waiting to end his time with the club, said he felt he was unfairly given blame for some of the signings that were then managed poorly (mentioned Ben Arfa as the most telling example, but also Yanga-M'biwa, saying how he was obviously good enough for Lyon but not us). He also said, explicitly, that they'd given most of the control to Rafa and shrugged his shoulders at the signing of Murphy. So, whether or not there has been any change now, control over transfers was undoubtedly shifted to the manager last summer.

This. And over time we'll grow incredibly frustrated with his one-dimensional trick.

Could've done with Mitrovic tonight. First half was great apart from conversion. For all good that Gouffran does, he's not remotely dangerous when attacking with the ball, we need wingers that support Gayle, like Atsu and Ritchie. And Diamé has been really poor since joining, a big problem for us tonight was his decision-making when he was put in good positions. Not really blaming Rafa, this will be enough to get promoted, but we've wasted a fantastic opportunity to get to the semi-finals, not buying the "we'd get humiliated anyway". Unprofessional from everyone when we'd taken the lead, that's what cost us.

Not seeing the development here, he's basically the same player that Pardew casually threw in two years ago to save himself after we picked him up. If anything, he has gained some sort of over-ambitious tendency, trying to use his technique and skill at times where he'd be much better off doing it simple. A bit worrying, hopefully Rafa and his friends can coach him in the right direction, all the talent is there.