Dr Jinx

Refuse to get carried away by this. I haven’t seen anything from PIF to suggest that they won’t behave responsibly. Their model is to have a sustainable club with healthy income. They might loosen the belts slightly in terms of transfer spend but I highly doubt you’ll see any massive shift in strategy. I’m fine with this.

Reliable source?

That might keep him for another season or so. There’s no doubt he loves the club.. I think it’ll be Madrid, Bayern or Barca he goes to if he ever leaves. He’d be wasting his time at PSG and he knows it.

The only other team you can compare in terms of high intensity is Liverpool and if you look over the years.. they have a season where they push like mad and a “cooler” season where they seem to ease up a bit. They have far less injuries than us but still probably more injuries than the average club. Someone mentioned before that the alleged asthma inhalers that most of their squad use can’t be used in a way for sports gains in the long term.. you have to ease off or the body won’t see any benefit. Now I reckon Howe is asking the players who am guessing don’t all have asthma to produce the same kind of output as Liverpool but season after season with a smaller squad.. I’m not in any way surprised we have so many injury issues. I just don’t think he knows how to perfect that recipe, he doesn’t have a plan B. So next season he’ll do the same thing. Assuming the fatigue is an accumulative thing, if we sign a couple of first team players they’ll probably be able to cope with the intensity… for 1 season.. into season two and the wheels will fall off which has happened to most of our squad this year.

Privately there’s no way he’ll be thinking that.. he’ll be massively pissed off. But publicly he did the correct thing there. A manager should always deflect and shield criticism from players. We will probably need to play Dummett again before season is over so he needs everyone on side.

Not going to have a pop at him.. he prepared the team well and we created loads of chances. Now if he had any notions about certain players being ones he can trust, that should hopefully put that to bed.

Model pro blah blah He’s always looked like a man who smells of piss.

Fucking idiot.

I really doubt it.. everything very traceable. If it became a legal thing Man Utd would be in massive trouble and there’s no way their compliance department would sign off on something so risky.

No pre match press conference?

Jesus man, on a coffee break and I’m tearing up like he was one of my own. Absolutely class that, great from the club and AG & Bruno.

Yeah we could get 150m for him but any player even on that level would cost the same. They don’t grow on trees and that 63 million is proving to be a snip in todays market. His age will see his value keep too so no rush to do anything there. But the idea of any income being tripled in terms of FFP is intriguing.. say we brought in 250m for both Bruno and Isak.. does that mean we could potentially spent 600m on the squad over 2/3 windows?

I think he’ll stay for 1 more season to see if this year was just a blip.

The correct thing to have done would have been to terminate his contract. I’m sure there would have been some sort of insurance the club could have claimed. What they have done essentially loaning him out with different wording and taking a “let’s see how it goes” approach was a massive own goal. No doubting there’s a player in there but it sends a terrible message that basically if you’re a wealthy young player you can do pretty much what you want and there won’t be any major consequences. If it was a Newcastle player and situation replicated here, I’d have exactly the same opinion, regardless of our FFP position. Some things are more important.

He was sacked as sporting director last year. Why?

potentially up to 5-8k extra seats through better use of the space. It’s still a huge fit out job and costly so hopefully not something they opt for.

Of course there’s been some innocuous injuries like that.. same as Jacob Murphy.. but the hamstring, thigh and acl injuries I’d bet my house on being a result of them being run into the ground over 2 seasons. “When muscles become fatigued, they may not be able to support the joints as effectively, increasing the risk of injury. Additionally, fatigue can alter biomechanics and movement patterns, placing greater stress on certain areas of the body, which can predispose athletes to injuries like hamstring strains or ACL tears.”

I haven’t seen it, only heard tidbits. Knocking SJP down and rebuilding on site I’d say is nailed down as an option.. plus points being they already own the land so less expense but probably more in terms of the scale of it. New site/new stadium. Existing site, existing stadium - increase capacity. Existing site, existing stadium.. gut it and spatially redesign what’s there. Think Ikea

Training and tactical style that runs players into the ground leaving them susceptible to picking up serious injuries. We have to physically work harder than any other team in the league to pick up wins. A complete shambles at the back defensively, now magnified because we have only the duds left to play there for possibly the remainder of the season. This isn’t just bad luck.. a manager in control of so much has to keep a grasp of this shit, adapt and ease off when needed. It’s blatantly obvious he hasn’t done that once this season with any member of the squad. And by the way, the reason the defence is so exposed at the moment is because every other player in midfield and up front is basically fucked and can’t chip in effectively defensively. They’re just left wide open for 90 mins so of course they look shit. It’s nothing to do with formation.

My info is sort of the opposite of Ando.. no concrete plans yet but they are having initial discussions with some developers and other parties about acquiring land. A small extension is one of the options listed, but there are 4 identified.

You’re probably looking at Feb/March 2025 before he’d realistically be back and available to play.. and two transfer windows even if our spending is limited, you’d have to say he’s probably kicked his last ball for the club ? Yes had some limitations as a player but he has improved massively when called upon in last two seasons. The only blemish on his record was defending Mike Ashley in that interview, aside from that he’s been a model pro here at the club and some leadership in the dressing room and on the pitch when we really needed it.

I’ve made no secret of it that I don’t think he’s the right person to take us to the next level. I still like him though, it’s not even comparable to the tossers we’ve had in that role over the years. But the way we’ve fallen off defensively has been and continues to be shocking there’s been no improvement there for months. So yes, he’s accountable for those soft goals we gave away. West Ham bottled that game yesterday and Philips coming on was the catalyst. 2 moments of absolute brilliance saved us.. (Isak's pass and Barnes’ strike) - how much of that is down to Howe’s coaching or were those players already well capable of doing that before they came here? I didn’t see any masterful tactical change that turned the game. Did you?

He’s been bailed out by the players yesterday, in fairness to them, they looked like feeling sorry for themselves and heads had dropped.. so there’s obviously some amount of team spirit there to regain that composure. But we were shocking for 50 minutes of the game.. as bad as I’ve seen us since he arrived. Piss poor at the back, even when Lascelles was still on the pitch. And as much as the subs had a positive effect. (Hall was great), if West Ham hadn’t brought off their striker to replace him with Philips.. I’m not sure we’d have had a sniff. They gave us encouragement to attack them. You can’t not celebrate winners like that yesterday but many cracks/papering over is still the case.

Wow!

He kicks his leg. Deffo pen