St. Maximin

The thing is (and I'm going against the grain a bit here), his record doesn't necessarily suggest that. We know he's a disgrace but it's not like every season his final league position suggests he was a miserable failure - even if everything else does - but ultimately it's the league table that gets noticed most by people who don't follow his teams closely. He would have absolutely taken us down if he'd stayed, but the sacking spared him from that and the 13th and 12th place finishes were reasonable on paper. Pretty sure he finished above Potter, who everyone has been praising for ages.

Very disrespectful stuff from the Guardian on such an important football manager: https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/05/steve-bruce-west-brom He’ll get his pay off nicely in time for the upcoming T20 World Cup. Saying that, he’s probably going either way.

Good work Fede. That was my main issue with Bruce - he just couldn’t be arsed. I don’t dislike him due to his tactics (or lack of) and to an extent I think some of his interviews are forgivable as it isn’t nice receiving abuse, whether or not you’ve brought it on yourself. However, the lack of effort can never be excused.

Different part of London mate plus the Fulham fans are often quite posh. Sorry to be a pedant but I lived half my life in the south. So on that note I fitted in really well with the fans.

First Toon match since pre-covid got me. I lived in Newcastle then, now I live in London. Work got corporate tickets literally right behind the dugout and lunch before. Absolute class experience, even if I had to pretend to be a Fulham fan (who seem a decent bunch and Craven Cottage is great btw). Red card clearly helped, but for we were still excellent and it was about as dominant a performance as I’ve seen.

I agree with those points, though I do think defence and attackers can't be compared, at least from my experience. Often strikers just seem to get that extra bit of confidence playing internationally in a way I don't tend to see for defenders. Maguire himself has been well protected by Southgate's defensive system also and now his confidence just seems shot to bits rather than just being a bit off form. I find it pretty hard to justify keeping picking players like that internationally as ultimately they will have a game like last night. Feel sorry for the bloke though - needs to move to a mid-table/foreign club where he'll be first-choice and hopefully less exposed to toxic fans.

It’s coming home.

Think I’m in complete agreement with what you said about Southgate . Think some of his biggest critics fail to acknowledge the state of the England team before he came in (that 2016 Iceland defeat still lives long in the memory…) and the complete disengagement from the fans. He deserves a lot of praise for his, but he also has his limitations and nowadays they’re what are having the main impact.

Yeah without doubt, though that has a lot to do with having great players and leads back to the arguments he’s not getting enough from them!

I completely agree. I do think his tactics were poor that game though and that’s only continued since. I also like the bloke a lot and thank him for a lot of positives I feel he’s had a direct influence in. I just also think he was very lucky with the draws and was exposed when he came across stronger teams/managers he was lucky not to play more of earlier on.

I don’t think anyone is saying they were ‘easy’ fixtures but (especially given home advantage) they were part of ‘easy’ draws because it’s all relative - you’ll never get to the final/semis without some challenging fixtures. Every win we had, however, we were definite favourites.

My memory doesn’t stretch past 1998, but we definitely had a better squad in 2006 with a reasonable run to the quarters. We then lost to Portugal, who were definitely better than the Sweden and Ukraine teams Southgate had to beat. Then in 2010 we also had a fairly strong squad, but were dreadful and went out 2nd round. However, that was to an excellent young Germany side that would end up champions four years later. Sven and Capello rightly got stuck after losing these matches, even though more favourable draws wouldn’t have seen them play those teams. Regardless, their poor performances seem to make Southgate’s achievements look better seeing as his record is due to comparisons. I said before I wasn’t too annoyed about 2018 as that team was in transition and Croatia had a brilliant midfield, but 2020 we were virtually at home and had our easiest knockout match away. Being second best with one of the strongest squads there hire isn’t too impressive.

As far as the draws are concerned though, he was lucky surely? I know stats don’t lie and I also don’t want to compare his managerial ability to Steve Bruce, but surely we think his comfortable mid table finishes (in my view on paper high for our squad) didn’t paint a full picture? Southgate’s victories in big tournaments are beating okay Colombia (on penalties, albeit a great moment for English football) and Sweden sides in 2018 and Germany, Ukraine and Denmark (on paper the hardest two of which were at Wembley) in ‘2020’. Hardly extraordinary achievements and failure to win any of those would have been seen as a major disappointment.

There’s an element of truth in this from the media as a whole and also I don’t like Jordan, but in this case I’m not sure he’s said an awful lot wrong, apart from maybe being a bit harsh about the Newcastle football. Rafa I’m sure often is a nightmare to work with. Somewhat ironically, therefore, having Ashley as his owner helped him as the fans would side with him. Elsewhere, maybe not so much and he should accept that and take responsibility for his mistakes.

Hmmm I’ve seen them described as ‘glorified friendlies’, which I kind of get, but how are they less relevant than friendlies? Besides, the argument that us caring about these defeats is similar to us caring about a preseason defeat is simply not true. Even if you leave aside the fact these are still competitive to some extent, there’s a World Cup coming up and now’s a time to get the team prepared. It’s a short tournament with minimal opportunities to lose games, so I can’t see the comparison between these matches and club preseason.

It really isn’t at all.

I don’t like this idea Southgate fluked his way through major tournaments, but you can’t mention his record without acknowledging the opposition. We clearly did get favourable runs in both 2018 and 2020 and every win we had you’d expect on paper, especially as we were virtually the home team in the Euros. Losing to Croatia in 2018 I’m not too disappointed by as they had an insanely good midfield, but that 2020 final at Wembley was really disappointing and Southgate should rightly get criticism for that. Also for balance I really like what he’s done for the team off the pitch if nothing else - it’s pretty clear he’s had a lot of positive influences on the squad and the fans and their value can’t be underestimated for big tournaments. I just think tactically he’s really poor and as such he’s got a ceiling and won’t take us further. However, I would happily be proven wrong and hope we’ve lowered expectations so much, that it might help the team somehow go on and win the World Cup…

Disgraceful if true - nobody should be getting a selfie with Steve Bruce.

It wouldn’t surprise me but there’s no actual reports of him going away surely?

Not assuming you would mate . He isn't popular here though. Speaking to Everton fans I play cricket with though, they seemed happy enough with how the team had performed since he came in and that he'd need longer to be judged. Perhaps not a new manager bounce, but the performances improved and they picked up form towards the end that kept them safe.

Maybe so, but I doubt he also planned Brighton to get complacent after gaining promotion and Grealish to score a late equaliser. We won the league fair and square, so he has to get credit for that, but it wasn't a smooth ride.

Not saying these things don't have an impact, but the reality is clearly far less black and white then one manager gaining full support and the other not. The general trend with football fans remains the same across the club - they will turn on you when you've annoyed them.

It wasn't cleat you weren't referring to Everton, but if you read his post again it's very reasonable. It is absolutely fair to acknowledge the downsides to his approach (we failed to get a shot on target at home to relegated Fulham for example) even if you're going to praise his overall work. We criticise our best players regularly, so fair enough for managers too.

This has been mentioned before but it's a very unfair comparison. Lampard took over a shambles of a team midway through the season, whereas Rafa took over a team at the start of the season that finished midtable the year before. I know people here want to see Lampard fail because he isn't Rafa/left-wing, but it's fair to say he did a better job than Rafa given the context. Time will tell whether he'll do a decent job overall.

How is that cherry picked nonsense? I don’t get all the bias towards Rafa here - at times it’s like he’s beyond criticism. The fact he did really well here doesn’t mean criticism wasn’t warranted when he was here, let alone elsewhere, but either way it’s pretty clear from speaking to Everton fans that watched his team a lot more than us that he was a disaster. Just because things worked out over time here doesn’t mean they would have at Everton. He’d clearly been making mistakes and likely his decisions off the field were contributing to poor form that just got worse and worse until the point sacking seemed the only logical answer if they were to stay up. It’s not like his style was just taking a while to implement.