St. Maximin

I’m always a sceptic of these things but I don’t get your point mate. Sportswashing according to Wikipedia is ‘practice of an individual, group, corporation, or nation-state using a major or prestigious international sport to improve its reputation, through hosting a sporting event, the purchase or sponsorship of sporting teams, or by participation in the sport itself.’ In this case you have people unhappy he’s making a cheap shot at our owners in a very insensitive manner. I don’t condone the abuse he’s got but it’s a very classless thing to say and that’s not from any allegiance to the Saudi state I have. If it’s stuff like that or a small minority of whoppers in tea towels that Amnesty International, journalists and that SNP melt are so concerned about then I think they’re wasting their time. Their human rights issues aren’t going to be concealed so even if they become a more favourable country to visit or do business with, I’m not sure what the issues really are until there are great swathes of our population who believe the human rights abuses are all lies or something like that.

This Simon Gwynn bloke is obviously a moron but rightly or wrongly I’m a sympathetic guy and don’t want to justify abuse on Twitter in response to something people obviously regret. A lot of morons post on Twitter for attention, but if they really knew what the consequences of their actions would be they’d take them back. I know it’s a pretty extreme comparison but it all seems acceptable until you have a Caroline Flack situation. Wouldn’t be surprised if people had condemned the abuse to her after her tragic suicide but not in other situations where you don’t hear of any terrible consequences. As for the vile footballer, I’m still a bit disturbed and that’s just from listening to a short audio clip. Footballers having rape and domestic abuse arrests is (sadly) nothing new, but we understandably feel so distant from it all just by reading or hearing about it rather than potentially hearing it happen. Absolutely horrible stuff and can only praise the poor victim for speaking up and hope she gets the support needed.

Still don’t think it should be as simple as VAR needing to stay or go. The concept and technology are obviously good and other sports have equivalents, so I’m not sure why the most popular one should be different. It just seems to be ran by complete idiots and doesn’t look like they’re doing a good job of evaluating scenarios properly to avoid recurring issues and clear inconsistencies. Also the ref going to the monitor to always overturn is weird - they take several minutes to review it, then the ref takes a quick look and decides in seconds when it clearly can’t be that ‘clear and obvious’, plus it’s so weird they’re so happy to overrule themselves. Not sure why they don’t want to be confident in their initial decisions. I like to think the farce we’ve seen this season should be a positive if it can encourage a more thorough assessment of VAR.

I still don’t get why we have to cynically bring ‘sportswashing’ into everything? if they want to improve their reputation that’s fine surely? They’re hardly going to hide their human rights abuses through becoming more relevant to us. It’s always a commercial move anyway rather than trying to please westerners.

Find it hard to accept a player with 65 in 81 in the Championship and 44 in 69 for his country couldn’t be a PL striker when used right. Had a bad last season but Fulham fans I know blame Parker a lot for that. In any half-decent side he’ll get goals because his movement is excellent and he helps create as well.

I know he’s a big lad but I get the impression he’s a poacher mainly. Leeds fans tell me he didn’t offer much in general play, but at least knew where the goal was.

Crazy post for questioning bringing in a manager who didn’t keep us up, for the sole purpose of keeping us up Yes, with a much better team that still needed some time to gel. The belief here is our squad is crap so not sure why he’d change this so quickly. However, he did indeed almost keep us up in a short time. Why are people so confident he’d be better than Howe though? He’s had an absolute stinker at Everton so it just seems odd people are assuming he’d turn it around based on previous form, when that’s the sole reason Howe is questioned over.

I’m not going to support the lunatic claim. However… - He didn’t keep us up when he joined. He had less time of course, but a far better squad. - Bruce also kept us up comfortably and nobody would argue keeping him would have been a lunatic move. - He’s going to be sacked from having an absolute stinker at his latest club. As I’ve said before I get the logic for the Championship but getting a man in who failed to keep us up for the purpose of keeping us up just seems silly and desperate.

He takes a while to implement his style, whether it works or not. He might even do a great job long-term if he returns, but I still think this would be too soon to keep us up and that’s the priority now. And I wouldn’t be too confident if Everton is anything to go by.

It’s not worked out for him. No surprises if he gets sacked. It clearly doesn’t sound like just a case of bad luck and there’s only so much blaming the ‘scouse mackems’ you can keep doing. I understand the long-term thinking in getting him back but why do people think he’s ideal to keeping us up? His last two appointments were shocking and he didn’t keep us up last time, albeit in less time but with a much better squad.

Not sure how you can guarantee that given we’ve only been relegated under one of those managers and it wasn’t Howe.

Good post. I personally don’t think Howe is the man for us currently, but I’m happy to give him time to implement his style and be better judged. I did notice the pretty dramatic shift in narrative too. I would say it’s a crap squad whoever managed us since promotion though and was always relegation battle material, despite the changing narratives. Under Rafa it was always his hands were tied, Championship squad etc. Then Bruce comes along and people expect so much better because he had £100m despite Rafa having better attacking options (granted Bruce’s handling of Joelinton was terrible). Really the fact we finished 12th was extraordinary last year and I dislike Bruce like everyone else. His time here and Rafa at Everton (and at times us) just shows how all this “having a plan” doesn’t always have the impact people expect. Often you just need a good run of form like we had last year and the momentum keeps the team going.

Continuing the ex-Bournemouth/Burnley connection and Howe’s policy of signing players with mainstream British names. Good to see.

Chris Wood has virtually the same goals to game record as Gabriel Jesus. Imagine he’s played more minutes… but don’t really need to spend much time comparing the creativity of Burnley to Man City.

That was one team though. There’s no guarantee he’ll get it right everywhere and he and Everton clearly don’t look the right fit. He was great for us and engaged with us brilliantly, but we can’t talk about his time here as if he’s a miracle worker or never made questionable decisions. Getting the best squad in the Championship promoted was expected and we managed to end the seasons well in the Premiership despite being in relegation battles. We were fighting with Cardiff for safety in 2019 and nobody raves about Warnock. We finished higher last year than then under Bruce and we definitely didn’t have better squads than teams below (Wolves, Brighton, maybe others), also thanks to a great end to the season - things can often pan out this way. The 10th place in 2018 was very impressive, but even then he wouldn’t be the first or last to take a newly-promoted team into the top 10. Wilder took a clearly worse squad higher. Unfortunately it fell apart the next year, but it’s not surprising given their squad. Ultimately managers have their ups and downs and will rightfully come in for criticism even with previous success (e.g. Mourinho). I haven’t assessed his tactics much, but Everton fans watch their team so seem to be in a good place to comment.

What’s the criteria for defining world class? He hasn’t really done anything of note in years. You can see the clear impact he had here but he wouldn’t be the first or last manager to get a team promoted and then mid-table in the Prem. Seems to be a reason he isn’t getting attention from the best teams now. Saying that managers and clubs can often just be the wrong for each other and that’s clearly happened here and I imagine China too. Clearly not all his fault, but pretty understandable if Everton fanbase is annoyed.

I get why that’s a penalty but it’s the inconsistency over whether VAR properly reviews these or not that pisses me off. That was a clear pen first half but they didn’t properly assess it. It is City though so makes sense.

I’m not convinced he is that level tbh. No doubt very good, but he had so much space and intelligent movement around him at Dortmund that he could thrive. It’s the same for England, where he just doesn’t look threatening to the full-back or that he’s going to be highly influential when I’ve seen him. Southgate definitely proven right to play Saka and Sterling ahead of him at the Euros.

I’m not confident we’ll stay up - will either need a sublime run of results or a low points tally needed to stay up (neither impossible of course). However, there are so many positives from Howe and I think he’ll have a plan for us. Same with the owners. Relegation would be crap but we can accept it with an awful lot more positivity than in previous years. So refreshing to see a manager so personable and say the right things too. Like with Rafa that makes it so much easier to get behind the man, even if you don’t support every decision they make.

He isn’t good enough but on the flip side I forgot Ronaldo was playing for a while until the camera zoomed in on him having one of his customary whinges, so fair play. Same with Schar.

The reactions are just extraordinary really. It was terrible defending from a terrible player who shouldn’t play for us again, but he’s always seemed like a good pro and I’m sure he’s devastated when these things happen. We had this ‘be kind’ idea trending on social media a couple of years back after a celebrity tragically took her life. Not sure how a footballer doing something stupid in the heat of the moment is worthy of similar abuse though.

I want us to continue the quest to become the new Bournemouth, ideally going after players with the most mainstream British names. I want us to be like when half their team was called Cook, Wilson or Smith - already made a start there too. Says a lot when they signed a guy born and raised in Norway and his name is Josh King.

Surely this happens every year though. These teams will lose players too and players decline with age etc. Still think on paper we certainly weren’t better than teams like Brighton and Palace.

I don’t deny that at all, but we also finished 13th and 12th with shite squads.

Our squad showing he much we overrated them under Bruce. Under Rafa and Howe it’s a ‘Championship squad’. Under Bruce some were saying it was midtable material (and it was in the end). We overachieved so it’s no surprise Bruce had his support.