AyeDubbleYoo

Eh? What he’s done before is evidence of being good isn’t it? It’s not like the people who want him out have deep and reasoned tactical analysis behind them

Why are you obsessed with Andy Howe?

I understand it from fans but I still think it would mental to give it too much weight in a big decision like who your manager should be.

If you mean the CL I think I’d expect to bounce in and out of it regardless of our manager. There’s only 4 or 5 places for 7 or 8 clubs.

I don’t think Sunderland played well either TBH, they looked crap.

But that’s not what credit in the bank really means, is it? It means he’s shown he’s a good manager

I think the biggest problem is still the lack of top quality players in our squad. We’re just not able to reliably keep the ball well enough and pass it decisively enough to create that many good chances. And this is also the reason we can’t keep possession and really dominate a match. Probably with Bruno, Tonali and Mikey available we would look a lot more confident.

And the good signings too I guess.

Sure but you judge that on more than just the last few months don’t you?

We’ve bought replacements for nearly every player who Howe is supposedly too loyal to. Burn with Botman, Longstaff with Tonali, Murphy with Elanga. Problem is they haven’t been improvements and/or they’ve been injured.

Come on Nick, I need an excuse to order that Germany kit.

I thought we’ve said that we have a site for the training ground?

Say what?

Quite a big swing based on one game.

If @Yorkie can fix it for me as a blue I’m tempted like.

Has everyone seen the new Germany away kit? Sehr sexy on wor Nick.

I really like Delap I just can’t take the fallout if we sign anyone else from the PL

Yeah, I understand the concerns, I'm also really hoping that having a new executive team in place is really going to help. I never expect anything from January so that doesn't bother me, but we need a good summer for sure. And some better luck.

I broadly agree too but it’s a bit of a truism to say we need smarter, cheaper and better signings. Everyone wants that, it’s obvious. I think pretty much all our signings have had sound logic to them, and we’ve also gone for highly rated players like Khusanov who went elsewhere. I don’t think our transfer department is near as shite as people like to suggest.

Well both really. Presumably the players that those clubs target are below the level of the ones the top clubs go after, otherwise they would be finishing higher. There are examples like Mbeumo who turn out to be top level, but the majority don’t. Everyone agrees we want cheaper and better signings who turn out to be brilliant and we can keep. You won’t get any argument from me on that, just not sure how much that tells us about what we should actually do. Either way we do need to develop our recruitment department and the data we have about potential signings. But I still think we’ve made some great signings since the takeover, just last summer’s arrivals have underperformed and we lost Isak.

Football journalism is the easiest job in the world. Club needs CM, just name 3 of the best in the league. Job done.

If you’ve been saying it for 2 years you definitely formed that opinion too early.

Saw a Reddit thread about it but no way I’m listening myself. Never listen after any kind of negative result.

I don’t have a problem with selling the odd player. The issue with the southern spreadsheet club model is more finding signings that are of the right level to help us get better while also not being on the radar of the top clubs.

This is the difficult point. No doubt we have to be smarter, especially if we want to a larger number of signings. But we do have to aim much higher than Brighton and Brentford.