wormy

Does he think he's being insightful with comments like that? Does he not actually realise he's hanging the players he needs to rely on out to dry?

Lining them all up against the wall for some blasties.

That penalty shout. Referees are a fucking joke.

This makes me sad.

Tbh I'm now of the opinion that we need people like Gayle from this perspective. He's one of the few players that argues with the ref, too. For years now, I swear we've had the calmest team in the league as far as putting pressure on a referee. The useless fuckers are too dumb to do the job properly of their own accord, you need to put that pressure on them.

Fans whistling after their cunt of a player just wasted most of injury time with a horrendous challenge.

Townsend and? Genuinely can't remember Loftus-Cheek on loan?

Holy fucking hell.

So irritating that quotes override the ignore function.

Ah well, it's good to know that a slightly higher line resulting in nigh on the same possession statistics means 'having a go' because they have better outlets up top for the counter attack.

80% possession. This must be the most embarrassing five minutes of football Palace fans have ever witnessed on their home turf.

If Man City had their shooting boots on..

If Rafa leaves while Ashley is still in charge, it'll probably be the climax of a course of events that means I fall out of love with this club. As such, I'll piss myself at the reactions of the people currently calling for his exit, when it dawns on them that Ashley's foregone the signing of a new player so he can invest in a top of the line pacemaker ready for Kinnear's return.

I'm in agreement on the bolded but feel this is another hindrance from our transfer 'strategy'. The initial price may be doable, but I feel Ashley massively fucks about on the wages, too. For example, didn't Gibbs go for only a couple more million than we got Manquillo for? But he's probably on three times as much a week.

I've decided it's either takeover update or Rafa's ripping the thumb to shreds over transfers. Those are the only two things it could possibly be.

Takeover complete.

They’re the away team you expect that though. You don’t expect that from the home team but we are every single time. The way they set up is similar to us and has been all season. I'm refuting his point that Hughton is "having a go" at teams this season, when he just isn't. At home they certainly have more of a go than we do though or they certainly have in the games I have seen. They set up like this in the game at the Amex when they beat us 1-0. Have struggled past Watford at home 1-0 and Burnley 0-0 in recent weeks. Must've "had a go" at Liverpool though, seeing as they got dicked 1-5. But at least it was probably an honour to be dicked 1-5.

Probably a question that would be better asked in the match thread but I dread to think how that is looking right now. : Was it actually his tactics today? I was only able to tune my TV from the 15th minute to half time. Rather than it being a game plan to sit back. One second a player under pressure would hoof it to no one, the next they'd try and play it on the deck and it was a wayward short pass that got intercepted. The next they'd try and dance their way out of trouble and run into the opposition.

You use commas for ellipses, think Lejeune cost 7mil and spell Daryl with a double R. Do you have a Sunderland post code? How much did Lejeune cost then?. No I don't have a Sunderland postcode heaven forbid anyone that even challenges or questions anything that happens with our club is branded a Mackem by some kid who cant see through the black and white glasses Looka the bigger picture here love Rafa all you like, praise him all you like the cold hard truth is hes taking us down and will be deemed a failure when he does so You telling people to look at the bigger picture? Have a word with yourself you fucking clown. Another one of those classic phrases that mean absolutely shit all in most contexts that people use them in.

Unbelievable. He's made mistakes, no one denies that. I've not agreed with his team selections (even today I was surprised to see so many agreeable reactions in the pre-match thread). But the tactics? I don't enjoy them, but we've seen what happens when this team tries to attack. We're not actually that good at it. So we might score, we might not. But we sure as fuck will leave holes at the back, implode and concede. Because we don't have that good a team. Who's at fault for the individuals Rafa has to pick? Mike fucking Ashley. The very fact that people are now starting to blame Rafa for 'choosing' the players he has at his disposal and absolving that fat cunt of his responsibilities is what incenses me more than anything right now. How many times does it need to be highlighted that he's had the carpet pulled from under him twice now, leaving him scrabbling around for a player that even slightly matches his needs, whilst keeping it within the comparative budget of your average Championship team? But yeah, he should be signing better than dross or discarded youth that we may get lucky with. Fuck off.

Is it Rafas fault that Yedlin can't defend? Is it Rafas fault Dummett can only HOOOOOF? Is it Rafas fault Hayden is out of his depth? Is it Rafas fault that Atsu is our only semi decent winger? Is it Rafas fault Joselu is the Spanish Luuk De Jong? Open your eyes HTT. The squad lacks quality to such a degree Rafa doesn't trust them to think for themselves. He doesn't want them taking to many risks, because there is a higher chance we loss possession, are out of shape and get done on the counter. So instead he knows our numerous limitations, and as a result its COMPACT COMPACT COMPACT. If we had even 3 quality players maybe he would encourage more expansive football. But it's backs to the wall because he has no real choice. He signed most of them so he has to take some responsibility for that. FFS.

Because he built a team that got promoted but then could compete in the premier league. Were not Man Coty we can’t buy a new team every year. Benitez literally had deals lined up for Premier League players in January. He wasn't allowed to do it. Dreaded context. How dare you? It's outrageous. I don't care that Rafa has been restricted every transfer window. He simply has to be buying better seventh choice transfer targets.

If you surrender possession, sit back, play with no urgency and make poor subs you don’t win games... But hey, at least if we follows the words of the great King himself and go toe to toe, it'd be an honour to be pumped raw with no lube each week.

Funny how Hughton didn't get Aguero money or a cool 50 million to spend in their promotion season and Brighton are still doing well isn't it. Rafa is under performing, and I hope he still turns it around but, things just seem to be getting worse rather than better. They also didn't literally lose 13/14 first team players from the 2015/16 either though. We had about 10 players remaining after all those transfers so had to bring in at least the same number of players to cope with the extra 8 (or 11) league games in the Championship. Brighton's team had been geared for promotion for years and the likes of Dunk would have easily been worth £15m, Knockaert the same (in this market), Dale Stephens £10m or so, whereas the bulk of our signings ranged from £2.5m to £5.5m, bar 2 notable exceptions. Pretty much all our quality was sold to generate that £90m - £55m was put back in to sign 14 players - an average of £3.9m per player and you just need look at transfers in that league from this season to see that that figure really isn't that much - Assombolonga £15, Neves £16m, Rhodes £10m, Braithwaite £10m etc. Brighton were at least equal to us last season, if not better as they were 7 clear with 3 games to go once their bottom line of promotion was secured. Make no mistake, if 1 was promoted and the other 4 went in the playoffs rather than 2 automatically, then we wouldn't have won the league, so we were at least equal and for whatever reason, their transfers this season have been better - Ryan has made a big difference, Davy Propper. We had Atsu last year, Joselu and Manq have arguably made us worse, Murphy non existent, so you could argue we are actually even worse than we were last season as only Merino has come in and had a decent impact. Is location a problem, are we more restricted on wages (really can't see Joselu, Manquillo and Murphy being on more than £100k between them)? But I can guarantee if Rafa had his way, he wouldn't have went to Mike and said 'Mike, whatever you do, please please give me that Joselu lad who can't get a look in at Stoke, he'll make a hell of a difference". We've had a bunch of top championship / fringe Premier League players bundled together in one window and while that cope have coped had 3 or 4 players been brought in at £15m-20m a skelp to add a bit of quality to a try hard but limited group, but we all know that didn't happen, so I'd argue that we are at a worse level than Brighton now. People need to realise we are literally operating on a bottom 3 to 4 budget now (far lower than the likes of Everton, Leicester, Palace, West Ham, Watford etc) and if you were born after 1980 or so (which a large chunk of us on here will be) then for the first time in your life this is the first time that has happened - forget the top 6, we are miles behind 75% of the league. When Keegan took over and in a far worse position he bought players he thought could get us out of the league but would also make an impact in the premier league and the rest is history. Don’t think that happened last year and compounded by the fact tha Yes. The footballing landscape allows us to replicate that on our budget.