ikri

Supermac just says that everyone is shit, out of their depth, etc. Eventually when they run into some poor form he can claim to have been right all along about them.

If he does well then he'll want to take credit for that. If he takes credit for good performances then Ashley & Llambias will get pissed off with him for not crediting them instead. Ashley will then line up another manager to come in and give him his proper credit who in turn will take the credit for good performances. Lather rinse repeat. The only way to be a successful manager under Ashley is to fail.

At least when we were relegated it seemed that we'd be able to rebuild a side, cutting loose some of the crap that got us into that position. Ashley was going to either have to sell up or stick around to rebuild with a sane manager. Our younger players would get a chance to develop. This though feels worse. Another relegation seems an absolute certainty, the decent players we have will be the ones who will leave. We'll be stuck with the high wage earners that no one else wants, players like Smith who hardly get a game for us now but earn 2-3x what better players are on will hang around like a bad smell whilst players like Enrique and Carroll will most likely leave. With every other low moment the club has tormented us with there has always seemed to be something positive to take from the situation but with this I cannot see where we can go other than down. The position that Ashley & Llambias have put the club in actually feels malicious rather than the rank stupidity that led us to earlier low points. I would quite happily see the club go into administration just to get rid of the incompetent, malicious fuckwits running the show at the moment.

My loyalties aren't transferable, only if the club ceased to exist could I contemplate supporting another.

I could accept Hughton's dismissal if a better manager was brought in to replace him, but to replace him with a cretin like Pardew beggars belief. I think I'll be keeping my feet warm on Saturday and not attending

Anyone know the name of the casino? I fancy a crack at managing the club too, my Football Manager CV is pretty decent. It was the 50 club, don't think it's in operation anymore but may be wrong. It's ran by London Clubs - they run Alea Casino in Nottingham 235 in Manchester, Golden Nugget etc. I did a short placement there a few years back when I used to be a croupier. Did you meet Ashley or Llambias? If so you're probably on the shortlist too.

Anyone know the name of the casino? I fancy a crack at managing the club too, my Football Manager CV is pretty decent.

With all the appointments we've made over the years, even the shit ones, there has always appeared to be a reason or at least something positive to take from their appointment. With Souness I thought that it was possible for him to instil some ruthlessness and discipline into an already good team With Allardyce I thought he might be able to assemble a decent team on a budget With Kinnear it was always a short-term appointment and there was always the possibility that he might die at any moment I cannot see what Pardew could bring to the club that Hughton didn't already do. I can only see that the squad won't respect him - half of them are experienced internationals, Pardew was recently sacked by a League One side - the crowd won't respect him and the media won't respect him. He'll be a dead man walking from the moment he signs his name on a contract

I'm sick of it. Sick of trying to defend unjustifiable the club to mackem & smoggie cow-orkers Sick of trying to figure out what the fuck Ashley & Llambias are playing at Sick of the club taking one step forward & two steps back If the club can appoint a decent manager as Hughton's replacement then I can accept Hughton's departure, but if they appoint some cretin like Pardew I'll be livid to the point that I don't know if I can justify keeping my season ticket any longer after nearly 20 years of having it.

Serendipitous timing

Probably the best of a bad bunch Martin Jol Steve McLaren Martin O'Neill Could do worse Paul Le Guen Temuri Ketsbaia Lee Clark I really don't want to see anyone from the rest below but their names are out there already. Just shoot me (pretty much nailed on to get someone from this list) David O'Dreary Alan Pardew Alan Curbishley Ray Wilkins Glenn Hoddle Any other mediocre managers from the 90's who haven't had a job since Batshit crazy Diego Maradona Joe Kinnear Jürgen Klinsmann

Sure I've posted this in another thread about Ashley: Ashley is a self-made billionaire and a renowned gambler, he's had enough success of his own making that he may by now believe that he's beyond mistakes. He's probably wrong.

No. He's a poor manager & would be a huge step backwards from Hughton

Crazy decision

Garbage

No he hasn't. We've got a poor squad in comparison to a lot of the rest of the league, but take out our best 3 players - arguably this season Carroll, Barton & Tiote - and are you saying none of the others could get in a bottom of the league Dutch team? Bollocks. Also, he's not taking about entertainment value as a lot of people in this thread are, he's talking about skill levels. Last year was the first in 5 years at least one English team had not been in the final of the "Champions" "League". Currently English teams are 1st, 1st, 1st & 2nd in their CL groups, while no other country even has 4 teams in the group stages. Yet this season is only a third of the way in and there can't be many teams in the PL who have not already beaten one of the current CL teams in the league or cup, we've beaten two of them and even West Ham have beaten Spurs. In fact teams have not just beaten these CL teams by backs to the wall defending and getting lucky on the break, but have outplayed them. A lot of games in our league may be dull, but a lot of that is down to very good defenders nullifying very good attackers. Don't try and tell me it's because most of the players have no skill and are crap, because that's just complete bollocks. I don't agree with him at all that if you take out the 2-3 top players from a team then the remainder would struggle to get into the worst team in the Eredivisie and nowhere in my original quote do I say that I agree with everything that he's said. However, if you take the top 2-3 players out of most teams in the Premier League then they do struggle, more so than you might normally expect (you don't expect Liverpool to go from Champion's League qualifiers to relegation candidates just because their best two players are struggling).

He's got a point, outside Man Utd, Man City, Chelsea & Arsenal I can't think of any team that could cope with the loss of 2-3 of their key players for any significant length of time. Look at Liverpool, with Torres & Gerrard either injured or lacking form they looked like relegation candidates, we lost Barton & Tiote and looked abysmal, Wigan without N'Zogbia looked odds on to beat Derby's low points record.

What do you expect? He's obviously a criminal.

Fulham had obviously done their homework on us, Carroll routinely had 3 players marking him at set pieces, Jonas had 2 players tracking him throughout the game. We should have taken advantage of their defending with Carroll dragging his markers away from the rest of the team to allow chances for others (there was a free kick in the 2nd half when that actually happened & resulted in a shot for Carroll). Our biggest problem is our lack of a Plan B, our only real way to change the game today was to bring on Routledge & Ranger and whilst Ranger did chase down a few balls he didn't make much of an impact. Lovenkrands was better than he has been in other recent games but he didn't take his chances. I'd say something about Nolan, but the only thing I can remember him doing was to chase back to win back a ball that he had just lost. Fulham got away with loads of fouls & the referee had a bizarre game. I thought the boos at the end were for the ref, not the team.

His substitute routine changed when Calderwood left

When we play teams who actually try to attack us we deal with it well and exploit the space that's created by their attacking play. When we come up against teams who pack the defence and midfield and sit 10 men behind the ball we really struggle to break them down. It's why we needed a player like Ben Arfa this season, someone who could create something out of nothing. If we'd scored first tonight, forcing Blackburn to come and attack us it would have created the space that we need to play football. Them scoring first just allowed that fat cunt to let his side sit back and hit us on the break. Until we can find another player like Ben Arfa we're always going to struggle against teams like Blackburn and Stoke.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/1778/andyandsilentkev.jpg (can't be arsed to work too much on that, besides Kevin Smith has a really really fat head)

Bet we're still the last game up on MotD

Amazing result

I'm a Pleat fan. Gets the odd thing like nationality or pronunciation wrong but he genuinely knows his stuff. He absolutely loves Hughton and Colo n all. He seems a little senile at times, just in the first half he claimed that Enrique was South American and confused Tiote with Ameobi and Jonas with Carroll. Other than that he does sometimes talk sense which immediately puts him ahead of most other commentators.