McCormick

I’d have Tuchel ahead of Conte and (sorry) Rodgers ahead of Rafa. Ranieri is a weird one; he’s won the league but I’d much rather have Viera or Frank. Would put Hassenhuttl considerably higher too.

Controversial opinion, but he offers more than Longstaff. Still needs replacing, like.

He’s not great iirc. Was frozen out by a 40 year old Pepe Reina, got called back into the squad and scored a comical own goal, from what I remember.

There’s no chance? Sorry but that’s bordering on delusional.

Don’t see how anyone can be less than a 5 at this point. We have 5 points after a third of the season’s games played. We don’t know the effect Howe or new signings will have but it will have to be significant; we have to win the equivalent of 1 in every 3 matches from now until the end of the season to stay up.

That would be a very good appointment.

A 1?

At least with Bruce we had a motivated ASM.

I doubt any team in the league would swap squads with us if offered. We look so gutless, regardless of tactics.

That’s optimistic.

I’ll just bump this now in anticipation.

Meh. Personally think he’s a poor man’s Favre but at least he has the slight advantage of knowing- to a certain degree- how a few of the other teams play in this league, which will hopefully help us to pick up more points in the short- term.

Howe is fine but there are understandable question marks over his time with Bournemouth, especially his last season. The unfortunate thing is, he is an obvious downgrade from Emery which is difficult to get over at this point.

I guess I can go back to disliking Emery’s stupid Bond-villain, rat face. Shan as fuck, but it’s how I’ll cope.

Yikes. Don’t know the ins-and-outs of this but it’s not a good look for us, I must say. Hopefully, it gets resolved but I doubt it; a top class manager, who is happy where he is, won’t want to risk a good thing to get into bed with a bunch of knuckleheads (if they did indeed leak this prematurely).

Ugh. edit: new page ugh.

He has the look of a strict P.E. teacher. I imagine he picks his teams based on their attitudes/ graft in training. I suppose that’s okay in and of itself, but shouldn’t be at the expense of on field talent.

Rafa loved Dummet iirc. Called him the most underrated footballer he’s ever worked with.

The problem with playing against Brighton is that they’re so tactically fluid; ostensibly a high pressing, possession-based, long-passing team with emphasis on wide-play. It’s quite a lot to navigate . Potter has done such a fantastic job there, it’s nice to see him finally getting the plaudits his team’s play deserves. Sadly, bad/ unimaginative coaches try to beat high-pressing teams with the long ball and then essentially having a foot race. While this can work, it tends to leave too many players forward making teams vulnerable to the high-press counter attack. If Jones has anything about him he should (IMO) go hard on counterattacking with emphasis on diagonal runs and field switches, keeping our midfielders very wide. Playing our current “system” will get us hammered, especially with the lack of technical ability across our backline (and no target man to ease the pressure off the press).

I think I hate Spurs again. That’s nice.

I imagine that’s Fonseca out of the picture now.

Yup.

might have been 13 points, but yeah, on reflection that’s a bit high.

Did a PL predictor thing a week back which had us at 15 points after 21 games, 10 points adrift. Don’t think I was being particularly harsh either.

As I said 2 weeks ago, we’re fairly fucked. I expect us to still be 19th with the gap 8 points or more by the time we get any signings in by Jan.