The Prophet

Thiaw injured?

Possibly, it was off the back of a long, failed pursuit of Dougie Freedman. It whiffs of a favour to a mate.

I don't think there was that much thinking behind the Mitchell appointment.

Fair.

The individuals responsible for our talent ID? They're pretty much all still there.

By all accounts, one of our better players yesterday?

Putting the daft Andy Howe stuff aside, would you not say until this summer, our talent ID has been very good? Even then not every signing last summer was a total dud, with the two strikers being targeted out of total desperation.

It'd be boring if we all agreed with each other. A lack of Sporting Director deprived us of both an experienced negotiator and a fresh perspective. I'd be lying if I sad knew loads about Wilson, but he's been around the block and he'll form part of any transfer team moving forward. That ability to move quicker on deals and perhaps look at targets that we hadn't previously considered can't be overlooked.

I agree on the consistency part and while some of that is on Howe, there are substantial mitigating circumstances that are out of his control. In terms of settled, I think I mean no crisis and that's one of the mitigating circumstances I'd include above. Up until last summer, our incoming business was largely excellent, but Howe and others were thrust into a position they should never have been put in. A lot of targets were fine, but it was a complete mess in terms of execution.

Up until Barcelona, we'd looked much better away from home. The most recent fire has been our home form, where games have been far too stretched and riddled with defensive errors. Howe is clearly trying to shift things around with limited training ground time, some of it has come off, some of it hasn't. For me, with what he's proven to date, he deserves a "settled" summer to see if he can push us on. If we're still struggling next year, then fair enough, look at improvements.

What if his past achievements are ultimately evidence of an ability to problem solve, improve and overachieve though?

Does his agent hate Sunderland?

Of the the outfield players today, I'd say Botman, Hall, Ramsey, Woltemade and Barnes are all more technical than athletic.

They're in deep shit for sure.

Our structure is very much club led. Until last summer, our talent ID was pretty much impeccable and even then our first choice targets all look pretty good. Last summer was a failure in execution more than anything and there's a pretty obvious rationale for that.

Pope has made loads of errors leading to goals this season. This isn't a defence of Ramsdale by the way, it's pick your favourite shade of shit until June.

Pope might not have a future here either. There's really no good option. Goalkeeper has to be number one priority in the summer, it's cost us so many points this season.

Arsenal, City and Liverpool all give their managers final say. It's quite common in the English setup, simply because there's no point in purchasing a player that the manager isn't going to play.

At the same time though, when Bruno and Tonali have played together, for decent spells of this season and last, it's not been an enormous issue. Nothing wrong with having that option I guess. Last season those two lads along with Joelinton were rightfully considered one of the most formidable midfields in the league. Of course Isak, played his role and was a big part of put success, but the idea he carried us just isn't true, we were a very good side.

Howe has spoken numerous times about a collaborative approach to transfer activity. Does be want a lot of control or final say? Most managers have the latter.

To be fair, regardless of whether Elanga was a good choice or not, the market for wingers was a bit mad across Europe. Gittens went for circa £55 million, while Monaco wanted big money for Akliouche.

Don't particularly feel that we need a specialist defensive midfield, but the midfield can become a bit flat when Tonali and Bruno play together. Not particularly sure how you fix that, but we managed it for a large chunk of last season.

It's a fair interpretation, but it doesn't read like that to me, more that the crowd naturally become nervous as a result of the team's actions.

It's a fair observation.

I'm happy for Howe to lead us into next season. He's not perfect and he seems like a massive control freak, but there's enough mitigation there to excuse a below par season. He's overcome pretty much every challenge we've faced to date, giving us some of our best times as NUFC fans. He deserves time to fix things.