AyeDubbleYoo

Have to disagree there. Watching him, not acceptable.

As long as the penalty is financial rather than sporting then it's more like a strategic decision about how much you spend. Similar in baseball where you can spend over the limit and just pay a luxury tax. Even the points deduction is fixed and known, so I suppose you could even swallow that in desperate circumstances. Obviously anything based on revenue still benefits the already-rich.

Except financially

Well we know that, question is when.

Hmm, not sure. Personally always find the summer window interesting, except when our best player goes on strike of course. Do you not expect the stability in the exec roles to now help us do better with recruitment? Touch wood should be the first window since the takeover where we have people in the right jobs with some experience. Not saying it can't go wrong like.

Both the stories I read about Howe and the back room team suggested we had money due to not spending in Jan. Granted not as much as the cartel.

Crazy it’s even been posted.

Gordon really has to stay for me, otherwise we’ll never be able to put together enough quality in the forward line. And selling your best attacker two years in a row smells bad.

Quite a few things that people ascribe to Howe are more like urban myths that have been repeated so many times they're accepted now.

Can't be any other way.

Read the similar Douglas article in the I. Sounds very positive overall, concerns but honest conversations from everyone and a plan to move forward. Liking the sound of it.

We’ve had a frustrating season but my main point is that if you don’t love Eddie Howe more than members of your own family I can’t begin to understand it.

I would never boo a team that I'm generally behind TBH, but obviously understand why people hate losing to Sunderland so much.

What position to see getting Europe? We're 7 behind Liverpool but only 4 behind Brentford and Everton.

Whatever the reason it's a real shame he hasn't become the best midfielder in the league. He has the talent and should really be shining every week. Still very young obviously.

I feel like he'd benefit from narrow wingers playing off his feet than loads of crosses into the box. Actually why I always thought our selection (apart from Murphy) would work well with him.

The 'season is over' stuff is genuinely crazy. If we'd drawn or beaten Sunderland we'd only have 1/3 more points, would it be over then?

Exacerbated when we don't have any decent midfielders available and have a smattering of starters in most games who struggle to control the ball.

Well exactly. Even if he’d got 9 or 10 we’d be absolutely fine with the transfer. Point is it was supposed to be quite a safe bet, which would partly justify the decision to pay the fee. Ideally you wouldn’t need to scramble for 2 strikers while being rejected by them all and losing your best player, obviously.

We’re not trying to make him into a midfielder, we’re trying to go find a way to play him while also maintaining the crazy Gordon press. Also, he hasn’t been ‘shoe horned’ into midfield, he’s playing there when everyone else of note is injured.

You also need a higher number of better players.

I think 40m or so is probably the starting point for any proven PL performer. Who has scored goals, maybe 45m. Team don’t need to sell, add more. Main point is that he could never have been expected to contribute so little. In fact it shouldn’t have been a gamble at all, it should’ve been a safe-ish bet.

You won’t find me bigging up the Wissa transfer, but he should’ve been more like a slight overpay than a complete disaster. There was no reason to expect he would contribute nothing. And a serious injury on arrival has to be factored in as well. Of course you can always argue there is a better and cheaper signing elsewhere, which is fair enough to some extent.

Wasn’t what?

They’ve never worked together before so I don’t see any reason he’d be a stooge. They talked before he was appointed, which for me has to be positive and mean their relationship should be decent.