brummie

Good grief.

Genuinely just had to google him.

No, it means Hourihane has more competition for a place. Grealish signed a new contract two weeks ago. He seems to do an okay job for you but Barkley is a massive upgrade on Hourihane unless he's completely fallen off a cliff Hourihane is a weird one. Scores goals, has a brilliant free kick on him and often provides assists. But he's one of those who when he has a bad day is utterly invisible. Like Shelvey, minus the bit about freekicks, goals and assists then. To be fair, when I say what Hourihane adds, I am talking in the context of what we got from our team last season, which was massively underwhelming, so relatively speaking, he adds something.

No, it means Hourihane has more competition for a place. Grealish signed a new contract two weeks ago. He seems to do an okay job for you but Barkley is a massive upgrade on Hourihane unless he's completely fallen off a cliff Hourihane is a weird one. Scores goals, has a brilliant free kick on him and often provides assists. But he's one of those who when he has a bad day is utterly invisible.

No, it means Hourihane has more competition for a place. Grealish signed a new contract two weeks ago.

Good signing for us. However, i hope he turns out better than the last midfielder we borrowed from Chelsea - Drinkwater, who put in, genuinely, three or four of the worst performances I've seen for us since my first game 45 years ago.

Sky Sports have had that toothless fucking tramp Cotterill whatever his name is outside the Dortmund training ground for days now. I bet he puts some funky stuff on his expenses claims.

It's Bruceball. It's not like there's a plan his team fail to enact, it's that his players have no idea what they're supposed to be doing. Beyond a slap on the back and an encouraging word, Bruce just doesn't do tactics. It's the same everywhere he goes. To be fair, if you're a support of, say, Hull City, and he's getting results when you're not used to getting results, he's probably the second coming. If you're a Newcastle or Villa fan, though, where the expectations - of at least something entertaining to watch - are just that little bit higher, he's totally out of his depth. Us and you are the highlights of his managerial career, and I think one spin-off of that is that he feels extra pressure to get results, which too often translates into "do your best, try not to lose". As I said on that Bruce thread, I distinctly recall my dad, when Bruce was at Blues, going on about how the results were OK but the football was the worst he'd ever seen.

Yet somehow they seem to manage to be immune from FFP.

I know nothing about him. All i will say is there seem to be loads of Traores in football these daysl Was he not at Chelsea - then loaned out everywhere? You could probably say this about any footballer in 2030 I'm actually on loan from Chelsea myself. I signed for them in 2007.

I know nothing about him. All i will say is there seem to be loads of Traores in football these daysl

My Dad is a Blues fan How does this happen? A lad I know his father is a Spurs fan yet he's an Arsenal fan. I simply wouldnt have been allowed to support Sunderland like. I'd probably have gotten away with supporting someone else but not Sunderland. Yeah but this city has 3 clubs in it, families are split, too.

I can only ever see his name as 'Jack Wheelchair' as per USSoccerGuy on twitter.

I honestly think some managers just don't have the nous to do anything other than 'their thing' (although sometimes that thing is something they do well). I remember when MON joined Sunderland I posted on here a long explanation of what his weaknesses were and what predictable stuff would happen at Sunderland, and it turned out exactly as predicted. It's not because I am Nostradamus, it's just when you watch a team all season, you really get to know how the manager operates, in a way pundits do not. In fact, I'd say one thing MON and Bruce have in common is that british manager love-in from pundits. Oh, one question - have you had Bruce's son weighing in on Twitter yet? That didn't go down very well.

The team we finished the promotion season with was almost entirely made up of loan players. People went on about us 'doing a Fulham' with all those signings, but the fact was, we had no choice, we had something like 15 professionals at the club once they'd all gone. Also worth remembering, Bruce wouldn't have had us anywhere near promotion either, what Smith pulled off was immensely impressive, and I am still not quite sure how we managed it. Bruce's management model, at least at that level, is get together a 'bunch of lads' with experience, loan a few in if necessary, gee them up, slap them on the back and hope for the best. With us there were never really any discernible tactics, it just looked the same every week, and the hope, I imagine, was that by virtue of those older, more experienced loan players, we'd grind enough sides down to get ourselves up there. Every week was like we were on a loop - even the press conferences were the same every time, same comments, same answer to all the questions. I don't hate Bruce as a person, but he did himself absolutely no favours whatsoever with his inability to ever accept he'd done something wrong. For us, for example, the real point of no return was always going to be mentioning us not liking him because he used to manage Blues. Once he'd got to that point, it was obvious he was never going to win people back (I imagine you'll get your own version of this with Sunderland soon enough). My Dad is a Blues fan, and I remember when Bruce was there, and doing ok with them, he'd always say "Yeah but it's terrible to watch, there's no game plan or shape to the team, it's like watching us trying to bore the other side to death". Fast forward several years and he's with us, and I was saying exactly the same. Another former Blues manager, Alex McLeish, with us brought some of the most horrific defensive, hopeless football I've ever seen, and there was way more of the "don't want a Blues manager" talk around him (genuinely nonsense, it wasn't that he'd been there, it was that his football was awful and he'd just got them relegated, how are you meant to get excited about that?). The difference is, for all the horrific stuff that went on that season, if you asked 100 Villa fans which of those two managers they felt most well disposed to, 90 of them would say McLeish. God, writing this has made me think about what a couple of utter fucking basket cases Newcastle and Villa are, two clubs who have been on an endless merry-go-round of shit owners, no-hoper managers and crushingly negative football. I thought it was supposed to be fun, but we've had a horrible decade. I don't know why I still bother sometimes.

I think he's going to have to deliver at least mid table or so or he's gone We apparently had lined up someone connected to benfica but then unexpectedly stayed up. Wes Edens, one of our joint owners has a history of not fucking about with coaches at the Bucks, I believe. What I will say is that these owners are genuine, they've not put a foot wrong so far and have promised to pony up they money and thus far have done so. It was 250m plus before the end of the season, injecting capital to a club that that fraudster Xia had literally days from a winding up order. Re Smith worth remembering he took us from mid table and on ten wins in a row to promotion, and then, despite having practically an entire team to buy, kept us up.

It's not that long since they got an eye-watering, credibility-stretching £12m out of us for Scott Fucking Hogan, either. Added to the 12m we paid them for Ezri Konsa (although that looked more and more like a good deal towards the end of last season).

Strange one. Deeply unimpressed with him prior to his injury. His technique is very good - with the strange exception of heading which is odd as he's about 8ft tall - but he's not the hardest of workers. He's also prone to being one of those 'throw your arms open and lumber around looking like you've just sat in dog shit when things go badly for you' types which doesn't go down well with the fans. Think he got 6 in 20 before the injury, which isn't dreadful. During the same match at Burnley Wesley AND Tom Heaton both did an ACL. Bad luck. One thing I will say, though, is Douglas Luiz looked pretty ropey for most of the season but was absolutely outstanding after the restart, so maybe we're being harsh on Wesley. I also think our opinions of Wesley were revisited after we bought Samatta (turbo-shit) and also had Keinan Davis turning out for us (literally never scores).

It's a lot of fucking money. I'd like us to buy players other than overpriced championship ones every now and then as well. Although at the same time, our fans have been clamouring for some money to be spent. I dunno.

Although I am not hugely bothered about Wilson (ie losing out on him), we are currently looking at starting the season with the same abysmal options up front we finished last season with - Samatta, Wesley (who is not even going to be fit) and Keinan Davis, a man who not only is incapable of hitting a barn door, he'd struggle to locate the farm on his TomTom. He's an ok signing, I reckon.

I've heard you lot and Villa are battling it out for Diego Swarfega.

Still the greatest. Amen, brother, amen.

Respect for the GSH avatar. *nods*

imagine I quite like Elmo. Has a tendency to not be used very much but when he is, makes important contributions. Not a starter, though. I tell you someone else who loves Elmo, too. Steve Bruce. If Elmo leaves us, I *bet* Bruce picks him up. Then you'll get to look on in confusion as you see his special 'tactic' of keeper hoofing kick up right of field towards Elmo on loop ALLFUCKINGSEASON.

We have got the third richest owners in english football. Sawiris is one of the richest men in Africa and the largest individual shareholder in Adidas and Edens owns all sorts of shit, including a large chunk of an NBA team. Our problem is not access to cash, far from it, it's FFP.