Shadow Puppets

Currently negotiating a new contract.

Even in his goodbye message, he was still phoning it in! (It’s written by ChatGPT)

He's been largely woeful for 18 months. £70m is an outrageously good price for someone who doesn't want to be here and has barely put effort in this season.

The bottom one, 100%

This is 100% the shirt, and 100% the official photoshoot, but the grading of the photo is off. The blue is a bit darker than that in person.

Tripps definitely starting tomorrow.

He’s jumping and then the Celtic players contact moves his arm.

Yeah, I’m not going to do that. I don’t, sorry. Haven’t seen the fan version.

It's very close to being right, but I'm looking at a photo of the actual kit on one of our players from the photoshoot right now, and the black stripe in the middle is definitely about an inch thinner, and is definitely centralised on my photo, pulling in all the stripes towards the middle more. The NUFC badge and the Addidas badge sit centralised in the middle of the biggest white stripes. At least on the size shirt that this specific player is wearing.

1. I'm not sure who the other poster is, but I'm telling you explicitly what the players have been told, directly from ownership. First hand information. Whether the owners are telling the players the truth, I don't know, but the players were all told post Brighton directly. 2. I'm no expert on the benefits of being in each competition, but isn't there a drawback in terms of squad-cost ratio from being in the Europa or Conference Leagues if we're trying to rebuild? 3. Ditto.

1. PIF have 100% internally communicated that Howe is the man to lead the rebuild. This has been communicated to the players, directly from the ownership, too, so barring a massive change of heart, these last couple of games won’t change that. 2. It’s been clear for weeks that we won’t be qualifying for champions league, which is all the ownership really care about. 3. Probably the same way they’ve interpreted the form in general this season… not good enough, can’t be repeated, but plenty of mitigation that needs to be addressed in the summer.

This info came from the playing side.

He was there… did some photos apparently, but no video. (which I guess makes sense… it’s harder to remove people from videos than photos)

That’s speculation on my part considering they shot all the VIDEOS for all 3 kits in the last week, and it’s very difficult to add a sponsor to video content in post production.

My impression from the players side is the vast majority are 100% committed to the team and manager, barring the obvious one who’s on his way out for sure. In terms of where things are going wrong, reading between the lines I feel like it’s a psychological issue more than a tactical. When I was chatting to them last week it was suggested as much. And I know the lack of training time has been an issue like. As of the Barca away game I was told they had 15 days of training all season (full days with full squad). Whether a few weeks are enough to put that right is up for debate, of course. The training ground is 1000% happening… they’re just finalising the plans, but the land is bought and the commitment made.

He's 100% staying.

He has four major strengths in my opinion: - Finishing (obviously). - Finding space / being on the end of chances. - Availability (very very rarely injured). - He fits into that calibre of player who maybe isn't expecting to play every week, so he's an almost perfect member of the squad.

He’s one of our most important players, clearly. Sometimes struggles to get involved against tougher opposition, but there’s no denying his finishing and his ability to get himself into goal scoring positions.

It’s not confirmed. Just the rumour doing the rounds amongst the players.

We’ve played some of the best football I’ve ever seen us play under him, so if we can get back to those levels, absolutely. But obviously having more than one string to your bow would be nice.

No, I completely agree. And I think the player personel change this summer will spark that.

I understand where you’re coming from with a massive BUT… …we created next to nothing in that 4-2-3-1 (which actually looked more like a 4-4-2 to me). All the talk on here at half time was how toothless we were. You know fine well how livid people would have been if it ended 0-0. He made the changes necessary to see us create another few clear cut chances. We scored one of them. So it was the right decision. Now I can understand why you might then say he should’ve moved back to it after we scored, but that’s all hindsight. We didn’t look like conceding until that one moment of quality from Anderson.

Well I’d completely agree with everything you’ve said, so if this summer doesn’t go well I’d agree that maybe it’s time for a change, but right now we need to go out and get the players he needs and go again.

I absolutely am concerned by the form since October. But I’d like to think I’m a very level headed person and always lean to taking a breath and actually working with people who we know are good at their jobs in an effort to put things right. The first real chance to do that is in the summer. Obviously, if we’re languishing in the bottom half come December, I’ll hold my hands up and say that I was wrong, but I’m completely convinced we already have the right manager for this club… we just need to rebuild this summer.

You’ve completely lost me, sorry. So just to clarify, you’d have preferred to have not scored? I’m not sure what game you were watching, but we looked MUCH better from an attacking point of view after the formation change. I agree that it was promising seeing the new system, but you know as well as I that this place would have been (even more) horrific if we’d not have created the two Bruno chances, scored the Barnes goal, hit the bar from the free kick etc. All of which came after the change.