Parsley

Nah, this guy's just a c***. Ashley apologist. Burn him. I'm not sure whether it says more about Rafa than it does the people that ends up working for. Anyway, the tweet below sums it up more succinctly:

An interesting take on things:

Good on him.

This is what annoys me the most. Despite a bit of a blip over December, we're still in decent shape - Ashley's intervention just seems so unnecessary when we're in a relatively decent place.

No more worried than I was after the QPR game. Nothing new in any of those stories; suspect the nationals are just catching up on last night's events more than anything... ...he hopes.

3-1!

Brighton have been rank bad. Barely strung 2 passes together.

Great finish!

Mind that had nothing to do with character that was just a nightmare from the Huddersfield player Exactly, it was an absolute gift

Jammy cunts.

He's a fucking idiot if that's the case, as if we needed any further confirmation. Football doesn't work like that.

Not sure this is a great time to be claiming petty victories tbh.

So it's either challenge at the top or be in a relegation battle? Is it beyond us to finish comfortably mid table like? Absolutely not. Setting mediocrity as the season's target is quite another concept, though. A mid-table finish for a promoted team is hardly mediocre.

. Don't get this 'shitting the bed/bed wetting' craic in any way, shape or form. He's clearly been let down by that fat clusterfuck's involvement. He's incapable of leaving well alone that f***ing shithouse. 'Possibly' rather than clearly though right? No mate. Clearly. He said yesterday that he expected two through the door. Your constant blind optimism is f***ing bewildering given the history of this regime. He said he was hopeful of two signings. Very different thing and all sorts of things could have happened He didn't even say that. 'Confident of doing something' was what he said, word-for-word.

If they are the strongest competition then it's pretty relevant Using Brighton and Hove Albion to defend the fact we've once again failed to sign players we needed. It's pathetic. They're up regardless, anyway. We'll have to wrap Shelvey and Gayle in cotton wool to join them and we shouldn't be putting ourselves in that position. And I know people will say 'oh but how many Championship clubs.....' bollocks. We got out of this league with ease last time because we basically (with a couple of exceptions) had a Premier League Xl for the second half of the season. Why are they up regardless despite being only 2 points ahead of us?

I don't think Ashley likes Pardew. Kinnear was brought in more or less to keep an eye on him after Llambias left, was he not?

...but then Luke Edwards says this:

Guardiola probably wants s proper defence anarl. Let down badly. It's hardly the Man City boards fault that he spunked £50m on John Stones and £16m on a goalkeeper with no hands like. Similarly a say Reading fan would look at us and consider us hysterical dweebs for claiming Rafa 'hasn't been backed'. So am I to take it from that that you think Rafa has been adequately backed, then? For the purposes of the Championship, I think so, yes. We had this frenzy when we flogged Sissoko at the end of the last window from the same posters tbf. Flogged him and didn't replace him, nor has he been replaced since. None of this would matter to me if Rafa hadn't come out and said what he wanted. We'll find out when we next see Rafa, but either way you'd be a fool to think there's nothing to be concerned about imo. Was Diame not Sissoko's replacement?

Pretty much sums it up for me. Really hoped we would have brought in a quality central midfielder given how poor we looked in Shelveys absence. Even this afternoon Rafa seemed confident of adding to the squad. Who did you have in mind like? It's not really my decision but I wouldn't have minded us bringing in someone like James McCarthy. Agree, but Kenwright stated that he wasn't for sale and in any case he's a completely different player to Shelvey. I'm really disappointed that we didn't get Townsend in but I think a lot of our centre mid targets - Loftus-Cheek, McCarthy, Cairney, Cleverley and the like - were simply beyond us; either not for sale or subject to offers from PL clubs.

Pretty much sums it up for me. Really hoped we would have brought in a quality central midfielder given how poor we looked in Shelveys absence. Even this afternoon Rafa seemed confident of adding to the squad. Who did you have in mind like?

We're in the Championship. Have you seen how s*** we are without those two man? We've coped fine without Gayle to be fair. Pumped QPR 6-0, beat a good Preston away in the league and emphatically at home in the League Cup, Rotherham 4-0 just the other week...

What's farcical about it? He was supposed to be our back-up if we couldn't land Townsend. Now it looks like we won't be getting either, and a rival has been allowed to strengthen at our expense. So you'd rather we signed players for the sake of signing anyone, which is the exact reason we're in this division... No. I'd rather we signed players that Rafa wants. Barrow was reportedly a legitimate target.

What's farcical about it? He was supposed to be our back-up if we couldn't land Townsend. Now it looks like we won't be getting either, and a rival has been allowed to strengthen at our expense.

Barrow has just signed for Leeds. Farcical.

Suspect that Palace may have pulled the plug.