brummie

That geese thing (which if you google it, is actually quite impressive) is used in about 90% of all management books ever written.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49962935 Same old 'it's just banter' that could've been easily avoided in the first instance. The club have responded pretty well to it - and it's 20 or so pissed up kids at an away game singing about McGinn being Nakamba's 'master', his dad being a rasta etc etc - idiotic but they probably don't even realise that that master line is so offensive. Anyway, fair play to the father of one of the kids, as:

What happens next is he'll have a go to the media about the booing, along the lines of 'they need to be realistic' and 'a bad performance and it's off wi me heed'. His idiot son will then start getting stuck into people on twitter. Totally ignoring that we had these exact same arguments when he was here. The difference now is that, in the championship, those non-tactics, the dreadful dirge hoping someone shows a bit of class and gets something, that works way more often in the championship than it does in the premier league.

His prick of a son will start weighing in soon enough, too.

This from him today: ... is a great example of how he's his own worst enemy. Rather than use it as a chance to maintain a dignified silence on it and just soak up the positivity of winning, he's effectively doubling down here. He really is fucking stupid at times - why perpetuate the animosity? He's now just setting himself up for a fall if the next two games don't go so well. That is exactly what he was like with us.

I'm more shocked by the fact he appears to have 1.6m subscribers. Who gives a fuck about all that other stuff. *plugs cock into wall socket, solders nipple*

Deserved that. Did well at Spurs against a team whose last game was the CL final, came back from a 1st minute penalty and a 12th minute deflection against Bournemouth and should have taken something from the game, buried a hoodoo tonight against Everton. Mild optimism. Great atmosphere in the ground, too. After 8 years of watching utter turgid shit and a goal every other game, it's nice to feel a massive bond between the fans and the team. It feels different. Although in the end, it probably won't be.

"I think we had the better opportunities" - get used to hearing that, even when patently untrue. "i know the supporters, I'm one of them" - get used to hearing that done to death, too.

That's 80 percent of football reporting these days, especially from local outlets.

He'll probably try for James Chester as well. Although slightly different as he is excellent. Only problem being rumours re him being physically fucked after, errr, Steve Bruce got him to play through injury for about six months.

I would be surprised if he didn't move for El Mohamedy - he loves him. I quite like Elmo. If you do buy him you'll get to see Bruce's weirdest tactical innovation - big diagonal lug up the park from the keeper for Elmo to ping into the box. Weird.

Aye, we only employ people called Steve now. Cheers for the insight. The only real hope I suppose is that one of the Steves can drill the players on tactics and formations while Bruce does whatever it is he does and it doesn't end up like it did with Carver and Pardew. Slim hope.... There's another one, I guess Clemence has gone with him?

Hi Thanks for the nice words In the early days, we were in the championship, we'd just emerged from a spell of - no exaggeration - 5 or 6 years of utterly horrifying bilge. Anything was an improvement. We were playing shit teams, so winning far more. For a while, the loan players he brought in started to click a little and things looked better. Bruce's problems really emerge when the team is up against it - he starts blaming all and sundry, everyone but himself - the fans, the players, pretty much anyone. He lost a lot of support when he started doing that. He also played the "some of them will never like me because I used to manage Blues" card, which is exactly what you're going to hear re Sunderland at some point. What you have to understand about him is that he doesn't really have a football ethos - he is from the MON brand of 'slap them on the back, get them pumped up and send them out there' management. That works to a certain degree, but no further. Beyond that, it really is up to the players to make things happen, because they'll get no tactical guidance from the manager. The best example of those limitations is what happened in the play off final against Fulham. The contrast between us (barely a shot on goal) and Fulham, a team set up to play in a certain, attacking style, was brutally clear. The other thing about Bruce is that he's a 'streaky' manager - he'll go on decent winning runs, then launch into a horrific run. I think that's partly because his 'gee the lads up' style tends to mean that his teams are confidence teams - when it is there, they'll do alright, when it's not, it's horrible viewing. There are worse managers out there, for sure, but he's very much one of the type where, if their team plays some nice stuff, it's mostly because they've stumbled across it themselves rather than through any way the manager has sent them out to play. Has he brought Steve Agnew with him? His arrival with us (he didn't join when Bruce did) coincided with a slight uplift in attacking menace. If he has come, that's a good sign, a positive.

Tuanzebe did very well for us - when Bruce left and he started playing at centre back rather than right back, where Bruce always played him (where he struggled). I'd have liked him to come back to us for another season but we've bought two centre halves already.

It's a mixed bag though, to put it mildly. Trezeguet is the one that concerns me. Hause, Mings, El Ghazi were all with us last season. Wesley looks decent. Jota figure is misleading, as it was actually Gary Gardner plus 2m which is a great deal. As i have said before, we were down to a squad of 15 players and had lost a lot of our best ones back to loans ending. Heaton is a very good signing. Oh and forgot, no idea what Nakamba is like.

It’s not too uncommon now. Most promoted clubs go for it and spend the TV money to try and compete. They also have very few assets who will go for huge money to affect their ‘net spend’. We have the third richest owners in English football too, which helps. The Sawiris family are eye wateringly minted and Wes Edens isn't short of a few quid either Most importantly, they're not just throwing money in and hoping for the best, they've appointed a coach with a good paying style and the brief to get the whole club playing that way, appointed a head of recruitment (Pitarch) who has put together a Europe wide scouting system and put in place a CEO who has done the job at Chelsea and Liverpool. Apparently they had two plans - players they wanted, basically - put together last season, one for if we stayed down, one for if we went up. That's the sort of sensible spending we didn't have with Lerner, who threw money in and let MON run things Exactly what Fulham fans were saying last Summer. Came up thinking their spending and “playing style” would rip up the Premier League too. Instead the Premier League ripped them up Which I predicted Of course, the notable point there is that i made no mention of our spending power and playing style 'ripping up the league'. Oh, I really can't do this circular conversation any more. http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/c6DIpCp1922KQ/giphy.gif

It’s not too uncommon now. Most promoted clubs go for it and spend the TV money to try and compete. They also have very few assets who will go for huge money to affect their ‘net spend’. We have the third richest owners in English football too, which helps. The Sawiris family are eye wateringly minted and Wes Edens isn't short of a few quid either Most importantly, they're not just throwing money in and hoping for the best, they've appointed a coach with a good paying style and the brief to get the whole club playing that way, appointed a head of recruitment (Pitarch) who has put together a Europe wide scouting system and put in place a CEO who has done the job at Chelsea and Liverpool. Apparently they had two plans - players they wanted, basically - put together last season, one for if we stayed down, one for if we went up. That's the sort of sensible spending we didn't have with Lerner, who threw money in and let MON run things

They couldn't get a work permit for him.

Once we had lost our loan players and ditched the over the hill (Jedinak, Whelan, Adomah et al) and the leeches (Richards, McCormack) we had a squad of 16 players left. How we were supposed to compete without buying players is beyond me. The similarity to Fulham ends with spending money - we've identified our targets (manager and director of recruitment) and gone out and bought most of them by early July, players for positions where we needed people. What I don't understand is Gallowgate End simultaneously thinks your own club are nuts for not spending (on account of your awful owner) yet at the same time finds it perplexing that someone else is. What on earth are we meant to do? Don't buy in players = struggle. Buy in players = struggle? Fulham went out and bought a load of players where they already had depth, ignored the areas where they were weak and did most of their spending in the last days of the window.

Trabzonspor take kit unveiling to a whole new level. Excellently done.

I see Bruce just saying on SSN that he's in charge of transfers. Not what you want to hear.

I saw that as well, and thought the same, it looked fucking horrible.

Apparently we've signed Douglas Luiz from Man City.

I almost hope they finish top four now just so you stop with this weirdness. It's also worth pointing out that of all those players Fulham bought, five of them came on the last day of the transfer window. We're doing lots of buying, but we're doing it at the start of July, there's a difference. In the post season we released: Jedinak Hutton Elphick Adomah Whelan De Laet Bunn Richards McCormack Gardner (although we swapped him plus £2m for Jota from our unwashed neighbours) We also lost, due to loans ending: Abraham Tuanzebe El Ghazi (who we then signed permanently) Mings (who we then signed permanently). I don't know what we can do other than sign players when losing so many (most of whom were shit anyway). And there are still plenty more destined to go: Hogan (who we spent 12m on!), Tshibola, Barnason, maybe Lansbury, Moreira, Kalinic, Bree.

Oh and he wasted a huge amount of money and sold all our centre halves bar one by the time this last season started. On the flip side, he bought John McGinn for 2.3m which is the best spent couple of million I've seen in a long long time.