Kaizero

Why is he dressed like a budget Willy Wonka?

It's an idiotic argument to begin with as "market value" is quite clearly abstract. If I had a company and I thought it would give me value for my money to spend £100 mill on advertising at St. James' Park, that's the market value. What else is market value than what someone is willing to pay for something? Genuine question btw

Different standard of league, but watching him and Martinez for Atlanta United was immense. Only time he's been used in his natural position was under Rafa, and as you say, that's when we saw glimpses of what he actually can do.

Whilst I agree, we honestly don't know how much work is being put into it behind the scenes. They could have had a first choice that they wasted weeks trying to get over the line because something fell through, they could've lost a second choice and so on and therefore made an outside source take the job to find a CEO. We just don't know. I also think people underestimate how threadbare the club was employment wise when they took over, they had to keep Lee Charnley on for weeks - which says everything.

This deserves more appreciation

Ronny Deila now has more MLS honours with NYCFC than Patrick Vieria.

John Arne Riise is hired as manager for Avaldsnes, a team in the Norwegian Women's Premier League. Did not see that one coming.

What's that? Three points off safety with 23 matches to go? But we were 100% going down, wasn't it? Eh?

Apropos of nothing, but how is John Carew viewed in hindsight by Villa fans?

Not sure what to call it, but I'd want to be doing what Bodø/Glimt are doing where the system is what works - not really the players (though them being good helps as well ). Essentially, if the LW drops out/gets sold, the reserve/replacement LW will know exactly what the LW role is meant to do and as such there won't really be an issue plugging the hole as everyone pulls in the same direction. Last season their front tree seemed irreplaceable, they sold them all and this season their new front tree seem irreplaceable - but they're not, which has been proven when injury has struck. They just play like an absolute unite with everyone pulling in the same direction and leaving everything on the pitch, even against shit opponents. If you break down their squad on an individual level, there's some obvious talent in there - but also a lot of mediocre, leaning towards not very good, players. Their top scorer, Erik Botheim, failed at Rosenborg and then went on to fail to score in an entire season at Stabæk before ending up at Bodø/Glimt and just scoring for fun. At first each time they missed some players I was certain they would be shit as the missing players seemed to have an incredible understanding for their positioning and sending pinpoint passes/crosses to each other. But, as it turns out, it's not an understanding of each other more so than an understanding of where the player in that position is meant to be at any point in time in the different phases of play, and therefore they can just send the passes to where they'd always send the passes, as the player (first teamer or replacement) will know where to position themselves to receive the pass. So that, but with better players

At least there's some things we can agree on What an absolutely immense plonker

A few people I know met him when he was in Bodø (not NUFC supporters), said he was very courteous and nice but quite clearly a narcissist.

I can think of a reason why he'd join (the answer is money).

-18 degrees in Bodø

Was more thinking the style of training, where just writing stuff on whiteboards seem to be the prevalent means Obviously very different gravity to a situation where Sir Alex Ferguson shouts at you to go out there and fucking win compared to an OGS or Bacon Bruce.

There's no point, it's a question.

Why is Wayne Rooney being linked?

OGS has based his entire managerial style on Sir Alex Ferguson. Obviously won't have been able to replicate that, but with the "leaks" regarding how he ran training and such with words on a whiteboard being the extent of it, does this mean that Sir Alex was a PFM? (in management style that is, not measured by success) Also thinking how our very own Steve Bruce ran his training. There's two Sir Alex pupils apparently emulating Sir Alex by writing "go win" on a board.

We'll buy our way out of trouble in January. We have endless money. The Saudis will not want their sportswashing happening in the Championship, so we'll spend what we need to survive. "Oooh, player X won't come if we're cut adrift". Like fuck he won't join. Wave enough money at a player and almost anyone will join. The only possible positive from the Ashley regime is how much we can fucking spend and still not fuck with FFP. "Oh, but putting too many new players into a team will make them not work well together." They're all fucking professional footballers and we'll buy a fuckload of the ones at the more talented end of the scale. If we as a team have an understandable style of play there'll be no issues, and we'll have that with Howe. Once they know the system they'll know where to kick the ball even if they've not played together with everyone for ten years before they get on a pitch.

According to fivethirtyeight we're 63% likely to get relegated after today, so 6.3.

Were people really expexting Howe to go to the press and say "Well Shelvey and Joey are pure shit, absolute wankers the both of them. Can't hit a barn wall from five inches away if their lives depended on it." ? Of course he'll praise the players currently at the club, they need confidence.

The most frustrating thing for me is how we for once have a great attacking group of players and we waste it all playing defense - which always backfires, as we don't have very good defensive players and bang average keepers.

He'd be dumb to do so at this stage of his career and it's not like we'll sack Solbakken within the next decade.

I agree, never been a fan of Solbakken. If we absolutely had to go Norwegian for manager I'd have preferred the likes of Rekdal over him even. If only because of what you say, wanting to attack rather than be defensive and knock it long. Thankfully our players are young and the next WC will have more spots from Europe. Maybe we'll even make the next Euros, even Solbakken can't mess that one up - knock on wood.