Wandy

1 minute ago, Ben said:

Nee way, not Mandy 

Hope not. I imagine the last two weeks have been a massive eye opener for her as to just how high profile and subject to scrutiny her role at the club is going to be. I hope she can handle it.

What's this stuff about Staveley seen crying at the end of the game? Did that actually happen?

Have they really spent half a billion in recent years on that squad? Mindboggling if true.

4 hours ago, George Bailey said:

Everton supporting friend from work is livid. Was never comfortable with Rafa going there but says that has now had enough and blames Rafa for performance today, Rondon's signing and subsequent poor displays. Wants him oot!

 

Tried reasoning, give him time, his methods take a while to imbed etc but not having it.

 

Wonder if these views are typical of Toffee fans in general?

They definitely aren't happy, lol.

11 minutes ago, Stifler said:

Nah, I honestly think sooner or later we’ll see a closed Premier League.

If we go down, could they rewrite the test to exclude us? Wouldnt be a surprise. 

3 minutes ago, bowlingcrofty said:

I wonder if PIF would look to sell the club if we went down.

I've been thinking something similar and it would be peak NUFC for it to happen too. 7 months of relentlessly negative backlash from fans and owners of other clubs and it wouldn't be the greatest surprise in the world if they did a U-turn and got out before ploughing in serious investment.

47 minutes ago, SUPERTOON said:

I think we will find out who it is this week and will be in the stands on Saturday 

It needs to happen. They simply cannot afford to dither about with this like they did with Bruce.

We are going to need a manager with a huge personality and supreme confidence to get us out of this. If its the likes of Lampard then we are going down.

They are living in a bubble of total denial now. Telling themselves that momentum is building, up to a point where this will all somehow be reversed, based on a few critical articles on the internet. This is going to eat away at them for years and years now. Absolutely delightful stuff.

I'd have no problem with it being something like "The Aramco Stadium at St James Park". As long as that full name gets said by commentators etc at games etc then there's no issue for me. I guess the two most important issues with a renaming are the St James being in the title, and the whole name needs to sound prestigious. That's one of the main reasons why people were aghast at the SD Arena.

If we were mid table and comfortable I'd say this was a dream appointment as the guy seems to tick a lot of boxes. But the next two months could be brutal for us and we are going to need steel, resolve and a "fuck you" attitude to all of these cunts who are going to put an extra shift in to try and relegate us, before we even think about playing stylish football. That's my only concern.

Just now, Manxst said:

It’s been stated that he gave the interviewers/consortium ideas on how he would approach our upcoming games. That alone suggests that he’s done his homework on the squad and players pros/cons. If good coaching has been drilled out of them, it can damn we’ll be drilled back as well. Let’s take whoever comes in, and treat it as a positive no matter who it is and what their ideas are. 

He has got to hit the ground running though. We won't have the time to adapt his philosophy with this squad. I hope the owners are making it clear to him just how mediocre this bunch are, and the job that he's going to have in front of him.

2 minutes ago, Tsunami said:

I remember that Man U v Roma game. Man U weren’t great, Roma were an absolute shambles. The thought of a bloke who dressed as Zorro for a press conference doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that he can get organise our group of players into a difficult side to score against.

It’ll be very interesting to see how he approaches things; gotta say I’m nervous.

4 wins in 24 against the top Italian teams too....

Just now, Manxst said:

Compared to Bruce, the guy will be a Simeone/Mourinho/Capello hybrid. Bruce didn’t know how to get a team to do ANYthing other than “go play”. If a manager brings ANY tactics, I certainly won’t be complaining. 

Me neither.. I just worry that he has no idea how much good coaching has been drilled out of this squad of players. Fulham were a great team to watch last season, very attack-minded and look where it got them. On the flipside I guess we do have the January big spend coming that they didnt.

1 minute ago, The Prophet said:

Aye, Roma took the odd hiding off the better sides.

 

The thing is we're not asking him to compete at a high level, he just needs to take to progress us. If gets us breaking into the top ten, its a solid start.

If we are paying him £6m a year I'd say he's not being brought in to make up the numbers in the league. A lot of the comments suggest the guy doesn't know how to get a team to defend. That's worrying.

5 hours ago, 54 said:

 

Reading this quote in the comments makes me nervous about this guy.....

I'm an AS Roma fan and I tell you this interview sounded to me like an attempt to sell Paulo Fonseca to Tottenham fans as something he is not. It is true that human resources of the team were not that good but it is also true that if at the end of a first half at Old Trafford you are winning and if you know what players you have to line up you can play any way but conceding your opponents to score on counterattack. Fonseca is surely known as a well dressed gentleman with a nice hair style and all the rest... But he is not a manager for great scenes. Ukraine can be his dimension or maybe some portuguese outsider team or whatever, but surely not Serie A or Premiership. When you make 6 substitutes in a game it means you are not focused on the final result. And I could go on with exemples for hours... Wish Tottenham the best but I don't believe Fonseca to be a good choice.

The last thing we need is style over substance in our current plight. Didn't realise his Roma team got hammered 6-2 off Man Utd a few seasons ago too.

1 minute ago, Jinky Jim said:

I know how you feel but if a new manager with perhaps 28 games, a transfer window and 7-8 decent players already on the books, cannot get 36 more points then perhaps we’ve appointed the wrong manager?

If we can get to the January window and we aren't any more than 3 points adrift from 17th I wlll feel better, but I'm really not sure that we will. All of the teams we play up to that point will smell blood and up their game by an extra 10% against us.

What's everyone's thoughts on this now then? Right now I have to say I'm at a solid seven, maybe even an eight. It's really worrying, to say the least, and I'm not sure if the damage has already been done, with the fixtures we have got up to the New Year.

Please God, not Martinez.

I mean, I will gladly take this guy as he must surely be a significant upgrade on Bruce, and he does appear to have an actual footballing philosophy. But is 5th & 7th in Serie A anything to get excited about?

get the fuck iNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN 

36 minutes ago, relámpago blanco said:

I would like to say though can people just calm the fuck down.  Bruce will go, it's clear he is going.  I would have loved him to be gone for Spurs as we may have won.  I sincerely hope he is gone tomorrow but can we just calm down.  We have been waiting for this takeover for 18 months, it's happened and it's still the same bullshit in here making us look like idiots.

 

• It happened very fast post CAT and they didn't anticipate it would happen so fast so they didn't have a manager in place.  At times during the last 18 months we may have had Poch or Rafa depending on the timing.
• They have said what they want to do long term and PIF don't fuck about
• We are in the relegation zone and look absolutely shocking so it's probably harder for them to get their first choice.  It's a big risk for any top manager
• We are now the richest club in the world and our leadership team has a proven record
• WE HAVE HOPE

Remember the feeling when Wilson scored that goal?  We'll have a shit load of that feeling instead of feeling numb. 

We are on edge because every game that he remains is three winnable points lost, with a nightmare set of fixtures coming up. If he is here on Saturday we are getting 100% turned over again. Right now we are going to be properly cut adrift from 17th in a week or two if he isnt peddled before the weekend.

6 minutes ago, pinkeye said:

 

Yes.  It is up to you whether you believe it or not.  I trust the guy, he has never given me any bum info before.   I am just sharing and - believe me - I thought long and hard about doing so.  I only did because someone else had already broken the news.

 

For what it is worth...  I fully believe the story.  Looking forward to the official confirmation. 

I hope you are correct my friend. If he is there in training tomorrow then we will know for sure.

8 minutes ago, Dokko said:

Well, takeover is never going to happen.

Well, it hasn't been update in CH

Well, they haven't got a new manager yet.

Well, they haven't bought any players.

Well, they just survived in the prem.

Well, they finished outside the top 6

Well, its just the League Cup.

Well, its only 4th, CL should be for champions

Well, its just 1 league title in 100 years.

Well, if we were in our position our ground would be expanded to 90,000

Well, they've paid over the odds for him breaking the world record fee

Well the treble is nice, but they didn't win the league cup or the charity shield.

 

Welcome to the next 15-20 years as a Sunderland fan.

This is so true.  

It doesn't matter what happens, we won't be given any credit whatsoever. Trophies won will be accounted for because it was "always going to happen because of the money spent". Bitter, bitter cunts.

I'm enjoying how their new reality is to check the fortunes of NUFC well before even contemplating what is happening at their own club. The NUFC thread on there will never depart from the top five threads on that board from now on.

21 minutes ago, Tsunami said:

Grumpy is doing his damnest to pour cold water on all of this. They’ve conveniently ignored or forgotten that KSA coughed up $1B to settle with beIN to get this done. 
 

They’re not going think job done, let’s be happy being an also run and further down the line let’s hope we really put some noses out of joint. 

 

 

 

I love how he is held up as some kind of wise old sage over there when in reality he is as dense, bitter & twisted as the rest of them.

Literally a day or two before the takeover went through, he was soothing them all with his words of wisdom as to how it would be impossible to prove the separation between Saudi state & PIF. I would love to have seen the look on the prick's face when the bomb dropped.