The Prophet

Yep, we paid a premium for him to hit the ground running and buy Nick time. No doubt he's been a poor buy in that regard. Seems a bit dense and doesn't really help himself either.

I think it's still early days to be making that call. Plenty of previous signings would have looked a waste after a year (Tonali, Barnes, Hall, Gordon). Granted, while I tend to preach patience with players, I've already had enough of Wissa.

It'll end in tears.

Why is this horrible fat slug at the top of the forum again?

Casemiro's on fire.

Potentially, but they sustained it for 3-4 seasons.

Is "embarrassed" the most overused word in football?

Fits a narrative though innit.

Lads...

These are in good nick at the moment.

The appointment of Klopp says otherwise.

What if you'd spent around £100 million (net), with a previous decent record working in collaboration, after your boss and his boss walked out of the company, leaving you to cover parts of their gig, while also doing your own?

One thing you can't criticise them for is maxing out the transfer spend.

It is?

I was responding to a comment about our signings.

...but most recently we had a manager standing in as acting Sporting Director, with two glorified scouts as his assistants. It's not the norm and won't be the case this summer. "Recentky is the most important" is devoid of all context. When the structures have been there, signings have been largely good.

We've got far more signing right than wrong, while he's been manager mind.

Bruce is a complete irrelevance to the conversation, unless you're on the wind-up. Best to just ignore such patter.

Not the first time Magpie Media has told a white lie for engagement.

You're trying too hard again man, remove the Brucey line and you might have had some takers.

I'm still in the yes camp, but it's a much harder call than it ever has been before and I don't blame anyone for leaning the other way. With far better execution in the transfer market and a relatively settled pre-season (World Cup aside), I still believe he can turn it around.

Fair. To be honest, I don't think you'll find many managers, at least good ones, that don't have a broad set of principles and a style of play they stick too. I won't go into it again, but Howe has evolved this side a couple of times over. I do believe he's tried again this sesson, but the execution has been poor. I do agree his selections have seemingly become more desperate and the rigidty of his substitutions are frustrating. I'm far more concerned by how poor we've looked in both boxes (partially a personal issue), as well as how brittle we've becomeas opposed to stylistic issues. Whether it's Howe at the helm or not, you fix those issues with new signings and time on the training ground.

What does evolution look like in this instance? That isn't bad faith by the way, genuinely interested.

"Polarised thinking doesn't help" Makes a false equivalence. Calls other contributing factors "excuses". Questions why be hasn't ripped up his entire managerial philosophy like it's a regular occurrence in football. Discusses the clubs issues in reductive terms. Howay man.

I'm going to sound like a dick here, but do folk honestly believe the tactics are as simple as the formation that Sky stick up before the game? It's often spoken about like they do.