Chris_R

Fans being attrocious is one thing, sure, but you get to play in a massive stadium, the weather is great, the pay is phenomenal, and playing against lesser opposition most of the time isn't really that bad a thing either and you're not expected to run round at a million miles per hour like in the PL either. I'd rather play in Madrid in La Liga than Newcastle (Or Man U / Arsenal etc) in the PL, easily.

Agreed. It would be impossible to tell it from the Pardew thread.

The assumption that because Bruce sometimes managed teams that were mid-table means he's not incompetent is a fucking wild claim. 1) Good players instantly get top managerial jobs when they retire. It's bonkers, but it happens all the time with no evidence to suggest they'd be remotely competent. 2) Not all clubs are equal. Finishing 10th doesn't make you the 10th best manager. You could have had the greatest squad in the league but you're shit, or the worst squad and you're a genius. 3) Even if all teams were equal (which they're not), finishing top proves nothing. If all the teams were managed by actual, literal seagulls for a season - with the seagull pulling names and formations out a hat, squawking at the players pre match and giving post match interviews - one team would still have to finish top, and one would finish bottom. The managers were still bloody seagulls though, so you can't necessarily say the one that wins the league is doing a good job. It might still be shitting all over the place, stealing chips and just making a fucking nuisance of itself. The only way to judge a manager is what he consistently does over his tenure at various clubs, comparing what he inherits to what he leaves. Does he improve teams? Are the fans gutted when he leaves? Does he make a positive difference? To all these questions, where Steve Bruce is concerned, the answer is almost always "no". Most fans of his former clubs, if given the choice, would probably prefer the seagull.

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But but but but their stadium is so much better than ours? Why would they need the investment in it?

Yeah - a right way and a wrong way. This isn't solely at you, but the whole "it's a matter of opinion / I'm entitled to my opinion" thing that we see in society from time to time is fundamentally flawed. I mean everyone IS entitled to their opinion in so far as we cannot physically prevent them from having one, but not all opinions are equal. Let's say that I say the moon is made of rock, and someone else says it's made of cheese. The cheese-moon person is absolutely entitled to their opinion, but it should not be given equal weight to the counter opinion that the moon is made of rock, when people have been there (don't even fucking start ) and actual moon rock samples have been brought back and analysed. Same with vaccines. And Brexit. And Trump. And 5G. And flat earthers. And racism/homophobia/transphobia. Religion (Yes, that's bollocks too. All of it.). And so on. We continuously are told that they're "entitled to their opinions" which results in them being given a platform to spout bollocks to the detriment of society as a whole, when really we should deplatform them and ignore them, and let them just scream into a void somewhere rather than legitimising utter nonsense by lending it even a slither of credibility.

Of course they didn't want to play Championship football, but we could have - in theory - forced them to. They had contracts. Net spend is absolutely relevant. You may not like to admit it, but it is. Benitez had to sell to buy, and he did. If we'd kept say Sissoko for whatever reason, as we absolutely could have done, then he'd have had less to spend. The 2 things are inextricably linked. If you cannot see that, you must either be trolling or stupid. Either way I'd rather do something else than continue this conversation.

What a nonsense argument. If the club had sold, I dunno, say the training ground and invested in the team, then sure the net spend argument would be redundant if we tried to count the sale of the training ground in the net spend - That's your "selling a watch to buy a car" argument where the sale item is irrelevant to the purchase. But that's not what happened here. Here the team was weakened by sales, then strengthened by purchases and so net spend absolutely is relevant. Here it's more about looking at a collection of cars and assessing its worth. If you sell your watches to buy a few new cars, of course the car collection gets better. But if you sell some cars to buy some cars then the "net spend" is relevant in assessing whether you made good purchases. I can't believe I'm having to explain this with crayons like this, so I can only assume you're trolling at this point. Discounting net spend is laughable because it's 100% related to what he could field on the pitch vs if he bought without selling. You can't genuinely say with a straight face that our squad we got promoted with was identical in strength to that promoted squad PLUS Sissoko, Wijnaldum, Townsend, Janmaat, Cabella, Cissé etc as if we had never sold them, because that's just nonsense.

He spent a negative amount of money.

Media: "Bruce averaged about the same as Benitez", which whilst it might mathematically be provable, it's absolutely baffling that people swallow this. But they do, time and again. Benitez took a shit team and made them good over time. Bruce took a good team and made them shit over time. These 2 achievements are not the same. Then add in their relative net spends. Benitez achieved what he did with a negative spend, Bruce spent a shitload to actually go backwards. Then the flag on top of the turd on top of the cake is how Bruce treated the fans, and belittled any hope we might think we should have, playing down expectations to match his own incompetence. I know football is about opinions, but it's incomprehensible that anyone on here is trying to legitimately equate the 2 managers in any meaningful way.

He did not. It just the players took a while to unlearn what Rafa had drilled into them because they're professionals. Bruce was shite from day 1, not just as a manager but as a man: as an ambassador for the club and as a representative of the hopes of the fans. In all regards, he was shite from the start. I can't even believe anyone thinks that's a discussion worth having.

I don't entirely disagree with your overall point, but regarding the bolded bit, was it because Rafa had control of everything? Or was it because we had Ashley and Bruce, and there was no desire to do anything other than tread water for the minimum possible cost? De Zerbi is doing great, but I think it's way too early to say they haven't missed Potter or Ashworth. Bruce bumbled along fine using Rafa's players and coaching for the first year, it only unravelled after that. Lots of people, especially his mates in the press, were trumpeting the exact "Look, he's doing as well as Rafa, Newcastle aren't missing him at all" message for quite a while until he managed to get his "methods" into the players and everything unravelled. Not suggesting the same will happen with De Zerbi, as he actually does seem good and like a competent coach, I'm just saying you can't really say yet. Same regarding Ashworth - Brighton will be working through Ashworth-initiated transfers for a window or so yet, it's only once that pipeline empties and they have to fill it with new players from the new team that you can really judge it. Again, it may be absolutely fine, but it'll take quite a while to establish that for certain.

Joke penalty, but we deserve to be behind. We've been awful.

Has he fallen into a black hole?

Saying Schar didn't mean that? Get fucked. He's a superb passer.

They were saying Boo-urn

Ironically, so many West Ham fans have left early to 'beat the rush', that leaving at full time will be the quietest time to go.

He's right though, it is. It shouldn't be, but it is.

To be fair, that solves a lot of frustrations.

Frankly I've seen enough of Burn for a while, desperate to see someone else (Targett) get a chance there No disrespect to Burn, love the bloke, he's been far better than I expected and I'd never question his commitment but for a big lad he is shit in the air, is too slow and doesn't offer enough going forward. He's getting roasted this match, and keeping him on past half time could cost us. I think Howe is too loyal to 'haul him off' though, but it's what we need.

Obviously I'm overjoyed, but I can't deny I'm slightly annoyed that Wilson scored, because I want Isak back in the team ASAP.

Book every footballer, every time, for each instance of dissent, starting today. Are you seriously telling me that won't completely stamp out dissent by the end of the month? It's a behaviour, a choice. Rugby players aren't done special breed of human.

Any dissent, instant yellow card. If that's 5 players surrounding the ref, book them all. You'd only have to do that for 1 or 2 weekends before everyone behaved. It's an easily solvable problem, if there's the will to do it. There's no cultural barrier out anything to do with the popularity of the sport preventing it being changed. I'm not suggesting we *should* stamp out dissent entirely, as entirely sanitising the game might change the nature of the sport at a fundamental level in a negative way, but we certainly could. And very easily, and very quickly.

Unless I'm missing your point, I think that's nonsense. There's rugby towns in the UK where rugby is as popular and the fans as passionate as in most footballing towns. India, Pakistan, and Australia get massive, fanatical cricket crowds. Yet you still don't see this. It happens in football simply because it's allowed to happen in football. And it could be stopped in football very easily, starting tomorrow, if we wanted to stop it.