Conjo

So annoying that it's seemingly always these controversial decisions that opens up the game for the bigger teams against us. Maybe it was the right call by the ref, but it wouldn't have been a massive talking point if Schar had gotten a free kick either.

That's a really good point I've never really thought about. Maybe we could have gotten a "better" manager with more experience and better track record, but would that manager have been as dedicated to his job as Howe is? I doubt it. Howe definitely feels like the right person at the right time type of appointment. Hope he stays for a long long time.

"I want to create my story. I want to create history." Wish more players had this mindset, which would make top flight football more even and competitive. If you're good enough, you can always join Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man City, PSG, Liverpool or whomever are the biggest teams at a certain time to win something, and although winning titles no matter what is a great team achievement, how big of an individual achievement is it when you're surrounded by the best players in the world? Imagine Bruno winning the PL and/or CL after coming here, dragging us out of a relegation fight and be a focal point in turning the club completely around to one fighting for titles. He would be considered one of our best players ever, and more widely remembered for his achievements here than any other player of similar ability playing at one of the historically bigger clubs.

Bulk deal for Ritchie, Clark, Hendrick & Gayle? We'll give them £5m lump sum they can use as they wish to cover parts of their wages.

This is a great site to illustrate different scenarios: https://tactical-board.com/UK/big-football Anyway, one thing I hope the team can get better on (or get more confidence to do), especially since we have good passers of the ball in Schar and Burn, is to be a little more adventurous when playing out from the back. So many times in a similar scenario as below when opposition team is closing us down when our CBs has the ball, we lump it up (red arrow, either directly, or back pass to Dubs who boots it up) because we don't want to take the risk of losing the ball deep into our own half, while a fairly simple high pass (blue arrow) to one of our full backs is open which would relieve a lot of pressure and give us a better chance of advancing the ball. We never do this atm.

Would absolutely love it if we manage to shut Liverpool down and frustrate them to a 0-0 draw. If we score an early goal first, similarly to against Tottenham, or Liverpool take the lead I think we'll struggle.

It probably sounded harsher than intended. There's no doubt he did well other places as well, but I wouldn't say he did great (ref. for context earlier discussions above on good vs great). Fulham had just been taken over and he had a PL budget in division 2. Man City had just been relegated, retained most of their PL players bar Paul Dickov and added Pearce, Bernabia, Jihai Sun, Macken, Niclas Jensen, Berkovic and a few others and contrary to most relegated teams had a massive net spend. While the scoring record was amazing, automatic promotion was the minimum expectation. First season back to the PL they got Anelka, Schmeicel and Foe so in terms of their squad 9th isn't really that impressive. Good, not great.

Would be nice to see him play before end of the season just for the feel good factor.

Feel like I've read these posts from you a thousand times before HTT I agree he was a great manager - for us.

Pleasantly surprised at how he has performed in a back 4. Deserved the contract extension. It will be interesting to see how he reacts if we bring in someone to compete with him and he loses his regular spot. He wasn't happy under Bruce, but was that simply due to not playing, or was it because it was obvious he was the best CB at the club?

Keegan was a great manager for us, but it's difficult to argue he was a great manager since he didn't really accomplish much outside of his first management job with us. Listening to the Howey interview that was posted on here recently I was laughing when he was answering questions about how Keegan was in training and during team talks ahead of games. My impression was that they mostly played 5/7/11 a side games during training and pre-game preparations were basically him picking a team and telling them to go out and excite the fans. Doesn't exactly scream high level coaching

If it wasn't for the amount of vultures ready to pick up the torch after him I'd be happy on behalf of football in general. Now it's just sad for him personally and the family and friends he leaves behind. RIP.

Cringed a bit reading about the inspirational quotes posted around the area which I get massive Karen home decoration vibes from Other than that though, what a job Howe has done. He's definitely in the mix for manager of the season imo. I did like the "Never be too big to do the small things" quote though, but would prefer that to be an ethos of culture instilled into the club/squad rather than being displayed as tacky kitchen decor.

Agree that the CL and european competition is shit these days. The bare minimum should be a guaranteed place in the CL group stage for every team that won their domestic league. Couldn't care less that fans of 5-6 teams and neutrals might find a few matches not interesting or assume them to be less competitive than if they played a 3rd-4th placed team from a bigger league.

Feel like crap today thanks to browsing that account for an hour past sleeping time last night. Was worth it.

Must have misunderstood you. Thought you were talking about them staying up, but ending bottom, not that they would aim for consecutive promotions.

I haven't seen very much of him tbh, but that's my impression at least. He seems like an upgraded version of your Jack Colbacks/Tom Davies . I hope we get someone stronger and faster in midfield.

I'm tired of listening to fans singing Hey Jude after every fucking match these days, but the alternatives to easy songs everyone can sing along to isn't great so when thinking about it, it may not be so bad after all? We could be looking at a scenario where we're having life is life on repeat.

Teams that get promoted to the championship historically has a decent chance of staying up. The last 10 seasons I think it's only been one or two seasons where 2 of the newly promoted teams have gone straight back down. 2 seasons none of the promoted teams got relegated and the rest 1 of the promoted teams went back down.

Bruno and Paqueta would do well together in any midfield composition.

Impossible to say. It depends a bit on how you define "start" really. It also depends on how we play, not only the results, and how the transfer window goes. If Howe gets good backing in the summer, but we open the season, say 10 first games, Bruce style both in terms of results and performances then I won't be upset. If we lose the first 2-3 matches and he's sacked I'd be quite upset as he needs to be given time to bed new players into his system. If we're flirting with relegation spots after 5-6 games but we've been playing good football but been let down by individual mistakes and/or poor officiating I'd also want to give Howe more time. Too many scenarios to give a definitive answer, but in general I want Howe to do well, and I hope he gets the opportunity to turn things around if results are below par.

Think Howe said in a pre-match interview not so long ago that they had received a response from the FA, and that he was satisfied with it.

This was my impression as well. Don't think they will get the results they need if they set up and play the same way they did against Liverpool against lesser teams. If they want a recipe on how to stay up they and their fans should rather look at their game against us and Man Utd for their home games against Brentford and Palace. The atmosphere in the stadium must have been awful for us and Man Utd to play in, while inspiring the Everton team to put in those extra few percent of effort to grind out a result.