Holmesy

I was one of Burn's biggest critics last season but like you say, there were only one or two games where there were blatant errors. The rest of it was positional and pace based and that wasn't really his fault. He was massively exposed for a run of about 7-8 games and it cost us goals. But despite me hurling vitriol at BDB out of pure frustration, the blame laid at the feet of the manager for persisting with him. But then moved into his correct position, Burn was probably our standout player towards the end of the season. Unfortunately for some of these players, we're in a transition from one thing to another. We have some world-beaters who are playing alongside hangovers from our previous iteration and probably making them appear worse than they actually are.

There was some plum on Talksport yesterday saying it was a sideways move and that Palace's squad is probably as good as ours. He then went on to say they should be aiming for top 10 this year.

I think we can all agree Almiron will never have another purple patch for us like the one he had that season. The analysts did their homework, figured out what we were doing, and Miggy has been back to his old self since. Unless he finds a new edge to his game, his course is run. So we’re relying on Murphy. I’m not saying top 4 isn’t possible, but it is improbable.

Worse than Nicky Butt?!

Me! I struggle to remember my own name most days

Willems Janmaat Andros Townsend

Sheffield Untied?

It also didn't take long for the league to figure Miggy out after his purple patch whereas I think the fact that Murphy can shoot AND cross makes him marginally more valuable to us.

It seems you have all the time in the world for them....

I wasn't the one having a go. I put a post on here that you didn't read properly, misconstrued my words and had a poke at. What do you expect me to do? And I openly admit i'm not as big a fan of Eddie as everyone else on here. I think he's a fantastic manager but I don't think he's the man to take us to the higher echelons of the game. I don't make any secret of it, but that's what this board is about though, right? Having different opinions, discussing things about the games/clubs from different perspectives? Or at least it used to be, not so much now. If someone deserves criticism, as I believe Eddie did at times last season, where do you suggest I post it? Yeah, emotions run high from time to time but fuck me, it's a football forum. We can't all be Mahatma Ghandi pal.

Ashworth wasn't here at the back half of last season and we knew he wouldn't be here for the transfer window. We probably knew that we weren't going to hire a new DoF until a good few weeks after the season. That gave us what 5-6 months to put a transfer plan in place, identify players Eddie wants and actually make some headway in negotiations, which presumably Nixon could've been heavily involved in. If what we have heard is true, we have pretty much waited until Mitchell is in place to start our transfer planning, which doesn't leave a lot of time. What would have happened if Mitchell had fallen through? What if Eddie doesn't like any of the players he suggest, and we have to go back to the drawing board? The bit in bold is the bit I was referring to as wank planning. Nowhere in my previous post did I refer to appointing Mitchell as wank planning. Clear?

Yes mate, that's exactly what I said. We're wank at planning because we hired a highly regarded DoF. Word for word! Can we put some sort of mandatory fucking IQ test in place to join this board FFS?!

The most frustrating thing in all of this is the noise coming out of the club that there has been a reset staff-wise, hence the delay in signings. If that's true, it's absolutely wank planning!

How annoying!

Yeah, sooner rather than later is the key. There are some impressive managers out of work with good PL track records, so it wouldn't be the end of the world but it would be a real shame

I couldn't agree more. The Burn debacle last season had me tearing my hair out and genuinely doubting EH and JT, especially after Livra had deputised their so competently. Given how calamitous it was at times, I would have fielded a non-ready Hall over a clearly-not-working Dan Burn. Anyway, hopefully we won't have to endure it ever again. But yeah, again, when you look at the Barnes signing, the Hall signing and I guess you have to look at Tonali as well, it doesn't shine a great light on the recruitment effort. I think all will turn out to be excellent signings but we were gearing up for a CL campaign and that window doesn't scream "joined up thinking"

This is the point i was trying to articulate but didn't do quite as well. I take the point about Gordon still working at nailing down that position though - maybe a bit of healthy competition is what he needed/needs. Isak wasn't the main striker at the point we signed Barnes though was he? Not established anyway if my memory serves me correctly. He only nailed that down in the second half of the season after we had signed Barnes. To be honest, i'm not sure why I even get involved in these convos because I have the memory of a fish and don't retain details about anything, especially dates But I maintain we should definitely have signed a right winger regardless of the timelines.

We had Gordon. And Willock, Anderson, Isak (obviously we don't want him to play there) and Joelinton can all cover left. We had just signed a new CM, which frees one of Joelinton/Willock up to do that if needed. On the right we've got two players who are bottom half PL quality if that, and no one else for cover. It was a strange position to prioritise.

The signing of Barnes over a quality right winger was the only signing that on the face of it looked a bit shortsighted. II'm sure he'll turn out to be a worthwhile signing, but it was clear our right side wasn't strong enough at the time, and that remains our biggest issue even now. So, why double up on the left when we had so many others who can play there? We're like a Ferrari with a space-saver wheel on the front driver's side (Unless Dan Burn plays LB, in which case we've got a space-saver wheel on the front right and a monster truck one on the back left).

But if the sports science says he needs to reduce the intensity of his training (which is almost certainly the case in seasons where we have European fixtures), and that’s very much part of his make-up, you can see where there might be issues. Going from having the autonomy to make those decisions yourself to being told it has to happen, is a very different dynamic.

😂 This fucking place man!

How?! 😀 That’s completely the opposite of what I’ve been saying. Can we just establish if everyone knows what playing devil’s advocate means? This fucking place is like talking to a brick wall most of the time: Plays devil’s advocate “You can’t say anything bad about Eddie” ”I’m not saying anything bad about Eddie, I’m playing devil’s advocate” Repeat forever!

I agree with most of your points, but you’re looking at it from a macro level - finished 7th. If you break it down to the micro level there are things we could’ve done better to make that macro level even better. 7th is only good if your target was 7th. If the target was 5-6th for example, 7th is seen as a failure regardless of mitigating factors, especially if the thought is that some of those mitigating factors were deemed avoidable. They’ll no doubt have carried out a detailed postmortem on the business and footballing side of things to understand what we can do better in all departments going forward. I guess we’ll find out what they are.

I’m not so sure. I think we underachieved overall - that run where we conceded 3-4 goals per game with the undroppable Dan Burn at LB was a car crash at times. We should definitely have accrued more points than we did, not loads more but enough so that our European chances were left in the hands of others IMO. There was also some poor squad management that contributed to our injury list as well. The reason for my question about the fitness and conditioning coach is if it was Eddie’s coach, and most people put last season’s faltering momentum down to our huge injury list, could that be counting against him? Maybe Staveley was more understanding about what happened last season but PIF weren’t 🤷🏻‍♂️ Again, all of this is just playing devil’s advocate because we don’t know.

Playing devil’s advocate, we can’t be 100% sure the owners want to keep Eddie. if they are ruthlessly ambitious and impatient they may view last season as a failure, and the jury is out. If he fought to keep certain players who underperformed, maybe doubts are staring to creep in. Does Eddie have his own conditioning coach with his inner group?