tom1988

Hall's / England's loss = Newcastle's gain. He gets a proper rest now after a mammoth season. He's 21, he'll have other chances.

And this is after he went on strike all summer too... It's like we couldn't look at our own striking prick and think "hmmm we should probably avoid this kind of profile". Hindsight is 20/20 and all that but there were A LOT of red flags.

Out of curiosity I asked Claude the followng: "Without any particular geographic bias, over the last 5 years, which football managers have objectively been the most successful using the following 3 metrics: 1. Trophies won 2. Tangible improvement to team/club standing (league position, reputation etc) and 3. Best financial performance in terms of player development and trading. Please rank the managers in 3 brackets, 1. Elite, 2. Hot right now and 3. Up and coming." For those that are Howe out, who would you want from this list? Who do you think we could realistically get? And do you genuinely thing they could do a better job than Eddie is/ has? (spoiler alert: He's on this list) Below are the results along with the inane AI bs that accompanies the names: Best Football Managers 2021–2026 — Ranked Scored across three metrics: trophies, club improvement, and player development/financial performance. Global scope, all managers included. 🏆 ELITE Pep Guardiola — 4 PL titles, UCL, treble. The era's benchmark, simple as. Carlo Ancelotti — Two La Liga/UCL doubles at Real Madrid. Record 5 UCL titles as a manager. Now with Brazil. Lionel Scaloni — Copa América 2021, World Cup 2022, Copa América 2024. Only manager ever to win three consecutive major international tournaments. Massively underrated. Luis Enrique — Won PSG's first ever Champions League after losing Mbappé. One of the managerial performances of the decade. Jürgen Klopp ⏸ (retired) — Modest trophy haul in this window but left Liverpool as a world-class institution. Legacy speaks for itself. 🔥 HOT RIGHT NOW Arne Slot — Won the PL in year one at Liverpool with barely any signings. Seamless. Hansi Flick — Domestic treble in his first Barça season. Great redemption story. Xabi Alonso — Ended Bayern's Bundesliga monopoly with an unbeaten Leverkusen season. Now unemployed following short time at Real Madrid. Simone Inzaghi — Two UCL finals and a Serie A title with a squad outspent by everyone. Underappreciated. Unai Emery — Took Villa from relegation fodder to UCL QF. Best overperformer in world football right now. Antonio Conte — Won Serie A with a Napoli side that finished 10th the year before. Does it wherever he goes. 🌱 UP AND COMING Mikel Arteta — Rebuilt Arsenal entirely. One big trophy away from the top tier. (editors note - lol) Vincent Kompany — Relegated with Burnley, hired by Bayern, won the Bundesliga. Mad story. Julian Nagelsmann — Most tactically innovative young coach alive. 2026 WC is his moment. Luis de la Fuente — Won Euro 2024 and the Nations League quietly. Serious record. Eddie Howe — Newcastle's first trophy in 70 years. Built real players on a real budget. Fabian Hürzeler — Youngest PL manager ever. Way too early to judge but the ceiling looks massive. 🃏 The Wildcards — Names Outside the Mainstream Conversation Gian Piero Gasperini (AS Roma, prev. Atalanta) — The most criminally overlooked manager in European football. Spent nine years turning Atalanta from a near-relegation club into a Champions League regular, then crowned it by beating an unbeaten Leverkusen side 3-0 in the 2024 Europa League final — becoming the oldest manager to win a major European final on debut. The financial case is extraordinary too: his approach generated over €521 million in player sales for Atalanta since 2019–20, developing players like Teun Koopmeiners and Ademola Lookman into elite assets from almost nothing. Now at Roma. If he replicates even half of what he did in Bergamo, the wider world will finally take notice. Filipe Luís (currently without a club) — This one is remarkable. Luís took charge of Flamengo in September 2024 as his first senior management role and won 63 of his 100 games — including the Brasileirão, Brazil Cup and Copa Libertadores — all within two seasons. Flamengo then topped their group at the 2025 Club World Cup ahead of Chelsea, dismantling the Premier League side 3-1 in a performance that had Filipe Luís's fingerprints all over it. He was then sacked in bizarre circumstances over a reported contact with Strasbourg. He is currently one of the most in-demand free agents in world football and almost certain to land in Europe soon. Ralf Rangnick (Austria national team) — The "godfather of gegenpressing" whose coaching philosophy essentially spawned Klopp, Guardiola's pressing adaptations, and an entire generation of modern managers. He rarely gets credit as a manager in his own right, but Austria were one of the star turns at Euro 2024, playing club-style pressing football and topping their group ahead of France and the Netherlands. Managing a small nation to those heights is genuinely elite work. Almost zero mainstream recognition. Will Still (currently seeking a club) — Will Still went viral for his unconventional path from analyst to continental coach, taking Reims from Ligue 2 obscurity to consistent European qualification in France on a shoestring. He is British-Belgian, data-obsessed, and looks tailor-made for a Premier League project. He has no playing career, no conventional coaching pathway, and yet quietly outperformed every expectation at every club. One of the more fascinating managerial stories of the period. Marcelo Bielsa (Uruguay national team) — Still adored in Leeds, Bielsa's style of management has inspired several of today's leading club managers and he now has a talented Uruguay team at his disposal ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Guardiola, Klopp, Pochettino and Arteta have all cited him as a primary influence. He is football's great philosophical outlier — he has never won a major trophy but has arguably shaped the sport more than almost anyone on this list. Marco Silva (Fulham) — Hiding in plain sight in mid-table. Silva stopped the yo-yoing at Fulham, built a solid squad that withstood losing a 25-goal-a-season striker and his next-best player, and has quietly made them a consistent, well-organised Premier League side. There is a strong case that he is one of the most underrated managers in European football right now, simply because Fulham don't generate headlines.

It's spelled with an f instead of ph but big Joey Fritzl surely gets a mention on this list too?

He really isn't doing himself any favours...

Would love to see a USA, Iran, South Africa and Iraq group. No glamour ties for el don and plenty of awkwardness to boot.

Sorted tickets at PSG and USG through colleagues (home sections but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do). Will try and get Leverkusen tickets through a friend that works for Bayer and then just need to sort Marseille. I live in Nice so despite that being the closest, it's going to be trickiest as I don't have any contacts there. Then comes the home ticket lottery.... Being a fan that lives overseas is a hardship like

Isak's behaviour aside, we've had our pants pulled down here. We should have stood our ground and said to him from the start that if he wanted to leave then it will be to a club outside of the PL and this should have been the message to the scousers from the start. We've now caved in at a price below what we wanted and we've done so before the pubicly stated 'conditions of a sale' were met. There's no way that we can gloss over this with any degree of copium. Despite it being a British record fee whatever, we lost and to the fucking bin dippers too.

Dave Beasant (GK) Ciaran Clark Curtis Good Nicky Butt Sol Campbell Claudio Cacapa Albert Luque Stephane Guivarc'h Shola Ameobi Stephen Ireland Patrick Kluivert Jamal Lewis Zurab Khisinashvili Jack Colback Facundo Ferreyra Jeff Hendrick Romain Amalfitano Luuk de Jong Odysseas Vlachodimos (GK) / Xisco / Titus Bramble Gael Bigirimana Diego Gavilan Sylvain Marveaux Antonio Barreca Henri Saivet Lloyd Kelly Am I doing it right?

I think the feeling is it's likely to be the Europa league. Given the right wing tendencies of their supporters though it's no great loss.

We did this for Milan last time and no issues. We didn't wear colours or owt and kept quiet enough. Everyone around us knew we were toon fans though and they didn't care. In fact when we were leaving and going down the spiral tower thing we saw loads of other folk in toon shirts and there seemed no issue. Was going to try in Paris too but got warned against it and despite speaking French didn't want to risk it as PSG fans tend to be a bit more cuntish as a rule.

I live in Nice so Monaco (a) 100%. My brother lives in Madrid so one of those away too and then if I can be really greedy I work in Belgium a lot so Union Saint-Gilloise as well. Went to Milan and Paris last time and both were class like.

I am not a big fan of Spurs, but since Ange joined them and they lost Kane they have been a real 'banter' club to use the modern parlance but the fact that they have now won a trophy hopefully means they believe that they are making progress so continue being shite - because that is what they are, with Levy they won't ever change and they have been truly woeful this year, only safe from relegation because the 3 promoted teams were so bad. As for man u, growing up not too far from Manchester in the 90s and going to school with all those glory hunting man u fans made me hate them to my core. Seeing them implode makes me so happy. My days are brightened when I see them lose. When I imagine all those glory hunting cunts of my youth waking up this morning to their shitty man u supporting lives knowing they just lost to this spurs side, I can't help but smile. Fuck them, fuck Old Trafford with its waterfall, fuck the millions of people around the world that support them because of the long gone glory days. They've been circling the drain now for a while and hopefully missing out on European football, with a squad that is shite at best will mean that they finally fuck off into oblivion. God bless the Glazers and God bless that Ineos cunt - they all deserve each other.

It was always going to happen - wouldn't be surprised if it's driven partly by Adidas and partly to be more social media friendly as a brand rather than a badge/crest

Psychology is massive though. Yes over half of our remaining games are against the current top 7 but if you look at each match as a one off event, who in the top 7 looks at us at the moment and thinks a) I'm happy we're playing this lot or b) we'll have these - I doubt any of them do. Yes we're NUFC and yes we like to fuck things up but the way we're playing at the moment I think that we'll have an edge before the games even start. I can't wait for Arsenal away - our hardest game remaining? Probably. Another chance to rattle lego head and see Bruno shithouse all of them soft cunts? Absolutely.