AyeDubbleYoo

Don't know about anyone else but my immediate answer is Alan Shearer, he's one of the best at his job and he's at the peak of his career. I find it helpful to do a thought experiment about what I would feel like if I read this afternoon that Eddie had quit. Would I be happier or more worried about the future of the club? No doubt in my mind I would be more worried than I am now.

While I don't blame Howe for making the call, I also think it was a mistake to drop Woltemade as soon as Wissa was fit. Of course you have to factor in rotation that is required and the fact that Eddie probably expected guaranteed goals from Wissa.

Forgot to queue, fixture fatigue really setting in. Not sold on these 8:15 ones either, despite thinking it wouldn't be much different.

I guess we decided that having Murphy-but-better was preferable to going a completely different direction with a left-footed RW who primarily wants to cut in. I was surprised but I suppose we had a formula that was working to get us lots of goals and we wanted to mainly continue it.

I’d go further, he’s a nob.

Stick to tennis.

Luke Edwards is a contrarian wind-up merchant twat.

Botman is massively underrated on here I’d say. He’s class.

True but I’m not impressed with Pope watching it back. He starts to come forward, changes his mind and ends up half way out, is stood very vertical and not ready to make a save. Maybe the early shot surprised him, TBF.

We did try to replace him.

Yeah, hard to say exactly of course. I feel like it’s possible that the club just got those appointments slightly wrong and Howe was required to do loads of work. Then for whether reason Mitchell and him didn’t gel. Hopefully it doesn’t mean that Howe is mental enough to demand total control of a PL football club because that managerial job doesn’t really exist. Also hopefully we have improved the back room operation and it can supply Howe with lots of good affordable targets that will help him this summer.

Without Romero they’ll lose.

He could be used to it out of necessity of course, kind of like he had to do here when he first arrived and we had no structure. But even then we’re saying that he’s not clever enough to recognise that literally every other elite club works in completely different way? He’d basically be saying he could never work at a PL club. He’s an expert in modern football, it would be a massive failing if he has just not noticed what the actual role of a manager usually is.

I still think this assumption that Howe wants total control of everything in a manner that hasn’t really existed for a decade or more is dodgy. I don’t get why a young and intelligent manager would supposedly be behaving in the manner of a 80s or 90s dinosaur. Doesn’t ring true at all.

Hmm, OK, I just don't think a young new signing is going to be taking the ball off Bruno if he wants to take the penalty.

No chance he passed the buck, surely. Fairly mad suggestion, surely the captain said he was taking it.

Very slowly.

Except we aren't doing that are we? We're rotating and making changes all the time. I was just suggesting that giving the same team a run would probably help to build relationships and patterns of play. But it's not really realistic for us with the squad situation and the fixtures we have.

Yeah fair enough, I don't really disagree but also not surprised that a professional manager won't go that far.

Que?

Even these are highly questionable though, Murphy is a disaster waiting to happen and I don't think we have any knowledge that Thiaw is a good fullback. We also don't have a RCB to come in for him. I know you could argue that starting Trippier is so bad that any alternative is better.

Well exactly, that's part of my point. Those are the majority of fans in the PL era as far as I know. I'm sure there are radical solutions involving replacing those people and making tickets dramatically cheaper, just not sure if they would ever happen. I know there are things we could do by moving people around and having more safe standing areas for the dedicated singers.

Yeah fair enough, I just always wonder about what level of atmosphere we can reasonably expect.

Impossible because Longstaff can't run.

We would fucking hate to be managed by Tuchel man, come on