brummie

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.

Yeah, poor the plucky Liverpool fans with their 30 years of fucking champions leagues, fa cups, league cups, all that stuff. I was thinking the other day, we are now at an entire decade of uninterrupted fucking horse shit. And even then the preceeding 'good years' peaked at finishing sixth three years in a row, I am just lucky i am old enough to remember the league and european cup wins because two league cups in 38 years is fucking shit. And yes, I know who i am talking to here, and it's even worse for you. Boo hoo, we haven't won the league for 30 years :-( - well done to the gloryhunting wankers and their vomit-inducing understanding of the term 'lean years'.

I'd have had to leave the room.

I'd genuinely rather watch an ISIS video of my own beheading on loop than watch that once. *shudder*

They'll finish 8th-10th no matter who they buy.

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.

Amazingly, on account of them being cheaply knocked out Kappa tush, our new kits are quite nice.

The door's closed and you're not coming in to this club, you vile arriviste plastics.

Ha ha ha, this is brilliant.

Ah, fuck off football.

:lol: Finds something that irritates him in the first 5 mins, whinges relentlessly about it for the rest of the game. Even when its often at odds with what you’re actually viewing. The dope next to him is just as bad, just call the game ffs we don’t want hear your opinions or your sycophantic ramblings. I actually think it'd be more interesting if McManaman just sat chatting in the background about something totally unrelated. Coronavirus or quantitive easing or something. House prices, that's his speciality. In that case they've got the wrong person from that decade of Liverpool meh-ness, they need Robbie Fowler on. I believe he owns, and rents out, half the housing stock of Liverpool these days.

The quality of commentators and punditry in football is so so poor compared to cricket, NFL, NBA - pretty much every other sport. Some of these pundits played under Bob Paisley, Ferguson, Del Bosque, Bobby Robson, Wenger - some of the most intelligent and tactically astute managers in the game. Is it too much to ask to come up with something intelligent, one piece of insight, occasionally? What I think it might be is stuff like NFL, cricket, baseball, there's enough down time for them to start a dialogue - TMS commentators going on about cake and stuff. Whereas football is fast enough to now allow much of that, but slow enough to allow the likes of McManaman or - and for me, he's the worst, Danny Murphy - to fill the gaps with their wittering on about whatever they're fucking obsessed with. It's like being forced to watch a match in your local with the pub twat sat next to you, chuntering on for 90 minutes.

:lol: Finds something that irritates him in the first 5 mins, whinges relentlessly about it for the rest of the game. Even when its often at odds with what you’re actually viewing. The dope next to him is just as bad, just call the game ffs we don’t want hear your opinions or your sycophantic ramblings. I actually think it'd be more interesting if McManaman just sat chatting in the background about something totally unrelated. Coronavirus or quantitive easing or something.

I wonder, has anyone, ever, ever in the history of mankind - and I think we could get a noted historian to look at this, say, Simon Schama or that fit red headed bird with the nose piercing from Channel 5, her - ever, ever remarked on how much Steve McManaman adds to football commentary? Glen Hoddle used to just drone on in the background like a low end Surrey estate agent reading through his listings, but McManaman has the tone of someone sat with a pint they've been nursing for three hours, putting the world to rights, and making you wince as you just know at some point soon, he's going to start on about immigrants. What does he add? A rare occasion of the pretend crowd sound not being the most irritating thing in the audio channel. I also think these crowd noises were mostly recorded at Ajax, it always sounds like that "jelelelelelele Ajax Amsterdam" chant, cut just before they say Ajax with some randomly sourced clip added at the end.