r0cafella

This clubs don't want to sell to us narrative is clearly bullshit mind. Given most of our signings are from other British clubs. Clubs don't want to sell good players for cheap regardless of who's buying them. You can ask Arsenal how much of a favour west ham did doe rice or Chelsea the big favours they've received from Brighton. Premier league clubs by large and rich amongst the richest in the world they don't have pressure to sell on the cheap.

We can take solace in the fact these lot are useless.

Of course no guarantees exist but persistent with a underperforming manager (I'm not saying Eddie is my point is more general) and hiring a new manager to replace said underperforming manager are two sides of the same coin. After all, no point doing the same thing over and over and achieving the same results all whilst maintaining your way is right.

I haven't seen anyone come out and say they want him gone, I see a lot of concern about the direction which is understandable or should be. And I dislike thes comparisons to the FS era whereby the decision makers had absolutely no clue about football. We aren't going to go and appointment a PFM if Eddie is sacked.

All fair points for my money, I'd need to see signs of things function prior to make any sort of commitment personally. The tactical approach yesterday was a mistake imo. We've been poor away from home for a long time now, if that continues hes in the bin for me, ultimately we have to progress and unfortunately his remit is to probably overachieve if he's unable to do that anymore we probably need to move on. Basic things like set pieces are Pardew area rancid and that isn't excusable.

Fair enough. I think sometimes manager just reach a natural point where it's better to move on and we are heading in that direction. lets see how it plays out.

You think we are making Europe next season?

If you look at our shape in different phases of play we are generally doing interesting things, you'll notice a central midfielder will be really high and look to occupy a half space however the gaps between the lines become huge and our play is generally funnelled wide due to this. We lack numbers to build effectively basically. Our press is largely disjointed too and certainly doesn't look well coached. In most instances you will notice some players press whilst some players hold which also makes us easy to play through. Yesterday tactically tragedy of having Burn or Schar close down Palmer was truly one for the ages.

Yeah cool, he didn't look anything like that for us. Hes also 33 in December us getting what we did for him is cracking business. The collective flip flopping about Chris wood is mind blowing.

Yes, every club uses a DOF because it's the model which is proven to actual work. The manager running the club from top to bottom is a relic for the history books at this stage. Us buying these proven young stars and internationals has shown itself to be not sustainable, you remember the end of June right? The mad scramble to fill the hole? Alright then. And the model I'm suggesting isn't just to buy young players from the continent it obviously has to be holistic and apart of a wider plan including pathways for our bairns. We also have to have an open minded approach to letting players go, if I was the decision maker the likes of Burn, Pope trips Wilson Miggy Murphy would all have been sold, why? Because I need fees for them I can't hold on to them until they are worthless because replacements will cost me. As I've complained about before, we let Villa get Kamara for free and then go and buy Tonali for 60m and Tonali will be on the same wages, sheer lunacy and poor forward planning, the exact same can be said for our flirting with Elanga. TLDR. FFP means we can't afford to be a bag holder.

Are people backing Mitchell or are they backing the model? Important distinction. Ultimately we've recruited ourselves into a corner, we are a team who can only play one way and when we aren't on it we look average and this is after spending the 400m. With FFP we simply can't afford the safety blanket of PL experience the premium is way too high. As fans we are probably best served in recalibrating our expectations because buying central midfielders for 60m and offering even more for centre halves seems like pure hubris.

Definitely a factor, If tino pushes up we are massively exposed to a counter as Schar and Burn are two or the slowest players in the league. Easy pickings for any competent team. I'm not certain Eddie can turn it around but I have massive sympathy for him because when he was constructing our side we were flying. Unfortunately injuries and suspension clipped out wingers and obviously we stood still this summer. As a club we don't have a winning mentality so any drop off is likely to be a big setback.

Neither of those players help balance out the squad. ASM is a right footed left winger for which we have plenty of options and Wood is a striker which we have 3 of and wasn't very good for us. I think we have a lot of areas we can look at and say we got them wrong but those two aren't it imo.

He needs passing options, he'd be much better in a possession based side with us I've got no idea what he's meant to be doing. Obviously massively out of form and probably burnt out too given he has stopped playing and has go fly half way around the world every other month.

Asm was sold to help offset psr, also was on the injury prone side. Selling Chris wood was 100% the correct decision as he was on the large rather poor for us and both his style and overall level isn't sufficient for where we want to be.

Which players are you referring to exactly?

For sure this is apart of a handful of issues. The worrying thing for me is I don't see how we change it. We've built a squad to play in one very specific way and if that doesn't work we are just a disjointed team who are quite easy to play against. We must be the only squad in the premier league who don't have a capable 6 or a capable 10. We are so unbalanced and fixing it requires a lot of pain.

Aye it was always going to slow out progress that's for sure but we've also managed it extremely poorly.

Obviously these are cherry picked to highlight a narrative but such regressions do lean towards us being found out

Obviously Eddie hasn't solely to blame to suggest so would be churlish at best. But as Ron has highlighted the above factors certainly are his responsibility he's built this time which he seemingly can't get the best out of at great expense to boot. To take a step Into the hypothetical, If I ever see us lined up without Isak and Gordon I can be almost certain we won't be winning.

It's looking like we have to hit the reset button. I don't Envy Paul Mitchell and his position becaus he's got a lot of work to do and he's going to be rather unpopular me thinks. As a fan base we've come to expect big players being signed for big money but ffp makes doing that extremely difficult. We have to be a lot more flexible in terms of comings and goings because when you take a step back and look at our square we have a lot of players who aren't worth much who's contracts will be expiring. We can't go marquee to replace them all.

I think you've identified the issues well. Unfortunately we haven't built our squad in a manner which suits a 4231. We might be able to get away with Tonali and Bruno as Pivots but we have absolutely nobody capable of playing as the 10 and the right flank is still going to be honking. We've built our squad to solely play this 433 which is probably another factor in the panic stations we are seeing on her. We can't change it up well if we want to because our recruitment has been focused on our current system.

Big Willie begging for Palmer's shirt

Ah well, exactly as expected going into this.

Something has to change mind things just at working at present. It's feeling rather Bournemouthy if I'm being honest.