St. Maximin

Yeah he’s completely devoid of class. Someone could be completely out of his depth as a manager and a nice bloke and he’d have my sympathy with all the criticism, but he just seems a good example of someone who knows how to come across all warm and likeable when really they’re snakes who are only it for themselves. Saying that I don’t get the best impression of this Jones bloke so far. Maybe I’m being cynical but surely he must have realised he’s undermining Bruce and could end up taking over. I’m not surprised if Bruce is threatened by him, but clearly he should have been long gone before getting to work with Jones.

Looked up the 06-07 table and didn't realise we were only 5 points clear of 18th. Not good, but by the same token he wasn't exactly brilliantly supported (all his early transfer targets like Kuyt, Gravesen, Sol Campbell went to other clubs; we ended up with Duff who we didn't even need and gambled on a crocked Olivier Benard return/Rossi loan on deadline day) plus he had all those injuries during the season. His caretaker spell and the Uefa run the following season does put him up above most of the offerings by the majority of the managerial dross that followed him. Seems like a brilliant guy and will be sadly missed. Yeah having to replace Shearer can’t have been easy also and when in Europe you always have the challenges of injuries. Deserves huge amount of credit for his caretaker spell alone (amazing to think we got into Europe from being relegation-threatened), but sounds like he was an excellent all-round servant also from what I hear. Some great tributes to the man going round.

That spell after Souness left was phenomenal and while the following season was disappointing, I still had some great memories of Europe and other times that season, especially as it’s when I started going to away games. Always seemed like a very good bloke and it’s clear he was highly respected across football communities. Very sad news.

I was calling for a Dubravka recall but I’m not overly bothered who is in goal. Darlow for the first half this season played better than Dubravka has over that period and it’s not like Dubravka has never made howlers for us before.

It's Steve Bruce's way. Both will be the false no.10. Aye, at least the gloves are off now. Not sure why he can’t change it to 4-2-3-1 and play ASM, Miggy and Fraser in their best positions. Maybe I’m expecting too much though.

So what is our formation? Are ASM and Joelinton CF, wingers or somewhere in between? Tbh it’s improved us lots and I thought Joelinton put in a good shift against Man Utd, but it seems like we don’t use strikers.

I miss the rapturousness and would love them to get rid of VAR permanently At present the cons badly outweigh the pros, but I think with a serious look at the protocols, which includes getting rid of stupid marginal overturns because an elbow was offside or the like, far fewer goals would be reviewed and therefore fans can celebrate with more confidence. If a goal gets fairly chalked off for a clear foul or offside, so be it. At least it would be fair and proves setting up an offside trap is worth the risk etc. Disallowed goals aren’t a new thing but I appreciate it would be nice if we saw fewer of them.

Do the pundits never feel bad about how much nicer they are to Bruce than other managers (say, foreigners)? It’s so weird. I’m pretty sure Bruce is a busy enough man to not be best buds with all of these idiots. I doubt they’re all panicking over their friendship with a bloke many of them probably barely know, but still won’t criticise him.

Then it'll be the players aren't good enough. 'He just simply hasn't had the backing from the club needed'. 'We'll leave it there Gary. Coming up next on Monday Night Football, is Joelinton at a whopping £45M the biggest Premier League flop ever. Thoughts from Jamie and Gary coming up' "The manager can only do so much. Once the whistle blows it's the players who have got to go out and DO it!" Not to give the simpleton an inch here but that’s actually a valid point... We’ve so much dross in the side, we all always up against it. Standards are so low, meaning consistency is never there. Once in 20 or so games we put something together that resembles a performance. Always up against it relying on Krath, Lewis, and Shelvey, Joe to somehow get a 5/10, in the blind hope they put in a 8+ performance. Like Almiron running free, and Joe loafing nowhere near him. Clark far post header back across goal, Joe stood in the D of the box. You can’t legislate for such pure incompetence. Krath too square and being nutmegged by Rahford, then in his brain dead panick to atone gets done inside when only way he should be shown is 4 yards to by line. You’re right. On paper we should be just above the relegation zone under most managers given the dross in our squad and injuries. Bruce is just lucky it’s not been far worse given how we have played most matches. No team playing Lewis and Krafth should be surprised they are in a relegation battle. It’s more the performances and not the points that have been unacceptable imo. How well do people think our squad should really be doing?

It was given offside initially so fair enough it’s not given, otherwise the linesman would be overturned when correct. Shame though as I could have done with a Bamford goal for my failing fantasy football team ?

We competed for the top 10 before Brute arrived and since then he's been given £100m to improve the team. I'm not having it that 4th bottom is our rightful position. The sum of our parts on the pitch is better than 17th. They've proven that. As I said Rafa was a different level. Most okay Premier League managers wouldn't have us competing there normally. Bruce may be terrible still, but he shouldn't judged on how he does compared to Rafa (unless he starts making silly comparisons but that's a different story). He had £100m but £40m was spent on a player the club were desperate to sign for some bizarre reason and was nowhere near that level. Rafa had Rondon and Perez - may have cost next to nothing but we definitely had more goals in that team on paper. We can talk about how we're doing compared to under Rafa and how much money Bruce has had, but is our squad really better than those of Fulham, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Burnley, Southampton, Aston Villa etc? I'd only say Burnley out of those and Fulham, Palace and Brighton are a similar level through having more depth than us. Take away ASM and Wilson for large parts of the season as stated and we have very poor alternatives as well as the poor players in our starting line-up. Rafa didn't have these 2 players at his disposal either. Bruce has had Wilson for the majority and ASM for some of the season. Rafa was also adamant he didn't want Joelinton whereas Bruce seemed more than happy to have him. Sure, but Rafa was pretty much an exception. That squad he had should have been in a relegation battle all season, so finishing 10th was ridiculously good. Of course Bruce would get nowhere Rafa's achievements (over longer term anyway), but then neither would most other managers with this squad.

:yikes: :yikes: Yeah. I mean in terms of position. 17th with ASM missing a while and if we go down it will be because Wilson was absent and no one else up front is very good. Even with them in the squad I don't think we are much better on paper, if at all, than the teams around us. As I said it's more the way we've got points that has annoyed me, but most Premier League managers wouldn't have us doing much better with this squad imo in terms of points. The better ones would be less reliant on some ASM magic / Wilson penalties / keeper heroics though.

You're right, but they are definitely better than Joelinton. I appreciate Bruce did have money spent on ASM and Wilson though, who are genuinely good, but take them at least one of them out the side as we will have done for half the season and the difference is pretty striking. I'd rather not spend too much time defending Bruce because he's terrible, but under most Premier League managers given the injuries we've had, I wouldn't expect us to do much better. More the way we have got the points that has pissed me off.

Therein lies another problem. We shouldn't have to factor in that our best players might miss significant chunks of the season. Admittedly ASM was done in with Covid but both last season and this, he's suffered non-impact injuries. It's not an impact injury that's put Wilson out either. The way butter boy talks, it's like injuries have to be accepted, taken on the chin (one of many) and there's no way of reducing the risk - which isn't the case at all. I do agree with you, but along with Almiron they are so far ahead of the rest going forward that we just don't have adequate replacements. I know some of the other lower teams are heavily reliant on one or two players, but they clearly have a bit more depth for when they're missing. Miss our star players and you're talking the likes of Ritchie, Joelinton, Gayle, Carroll and Murphy coming in.

We competed for the top 10 before Brute arrived and since then he's been given £100m to improve the team. I'm not having it that 4th bottom is our rightful position. The sum of our parts on the pitch is better than 17th. They've proven that. As I said Rafa was a different level. Most okay Premier League managers wouldn't have us competing there normally. Bruce may be terrible still, but he shouldn't judged on how he does compared to Rafa (unless he starts making silly comparisons but that's a different story). He had £100m but £40m was spent on a player the club were desperate to sign for some bizarre reason and was nowhere near that level. Rafa had Rondon and Perez - may have cost next to nothing but we definitely had more goals in that team on paper. We can talk about how we're doing compared to under Rafa and how much money Bruce has had, but is our squad really better than those of Fulham, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Burnley, Southampton, Aston Villa etc? I'd only say Burnley out of those and Fulham, Palace and Brighton are a similar level through having more depth than us. Take away ASM and Wilson for large parts of the season as stated and we have very poor alternatives as well as the poor players in our starting line-up.

I think six points from our last four games is a good return and we were never going to get anything at Stamford Bridge. More annoyed that Fulham won at Everton. That was a dreadful result for us. With ASM and Wilson both missing two months of the season, a relegation battle is really where we should be. Almost every squad in the league is on a par or better than ours in my opinion, so we wouldn't be much better off with a half-decent manager. Obviously would with Rafa but his CV is a different level to most. I hear people saying we should be competing for the top 10, but they are clearly better than ours with a better injury record. We have players like Shelvey and Lewis in our starting 11 after all. Anyway, despite all that Bruce is horrendous.

Not really getting our formation. We have no good strikers available, so we are playing two up front while playing them both as wide-forwards? Why not just play 4-2-3-1 and keep Miggy in the AM role? Makes sense to me. If he gets injured I wouldn’t even mind Joelinton coming in there too much...

But Bruce is doing a great job apparently. Still some fans of other clubs in the comments saying "where do they expect to be?" Why is it too much to ask for NUFC to be better than 17th? Why would anyone think NUFC should be happy with 17th? Baffles me! Tbh I don’t think it’s far from where we should be on paper. Probably 15/16th imo. The way we’ve gone about things is a different matter of course.

Probably because he's goaded our fans after we've won a game. Fair, but it’s not surprising really given he’s family. He’s so irrelevant.

Whether it’s ‘death threats’ or not, why are our fans even talking to his son on Twitter? He’s not our manager. He’s a nobody to me and I couldn’t care less what he thinks.

Honestly I don’t get why people are so intent on not believing him. Yes he’s an idiot and we don’t like him, but he probably has a better idea of whether it’s true than us, so not really our place to make a judgment that he’s lying and ultimately it doesn’t take away from the fact he’s been a disaster if he is sometimes correct about something. Fwiw this has been blown out of proportion. The comments were more in general about death threats and not specifically him. Yes he implied he had been the recipient but in fairness he never stated how excessive they were to him. But given how many awful people hide behind social media profiles to say disgusting things, is it really that surprising if some people (even if just a small minority) have indirectly made such threats?

All I can speculate is that it’s because he’s eccentric, a skilful winger and French. I should probs change my name to something better also tbh.

Considering he’s had a lot of criticism for his end-product, 13 goals in not much more than a year, with a poor manager and team, normally out of his favourite position and at times not picked... isn’t bad at all. And his work rate is still the best thing about him.

That’s just in league. Wikipedia only includes those on the side. In total he has a more respectable 11 in 78, presumably as he starts a lot more in cups. That quite about Saivet was brilliant though.

There’s been shortage of issues in some way related to VAR, but often it’s scapegoated when the real issue is confusion over rules, or alternatively people aren’t looking at the bigger picture. For example a lot of people were complaining about Ings being very judged marginally offside on Sunday, but that was the original decision and he only scored because the ref typically plays on nowadays regardless of how close it is. When he’s correctly judged offside it would be a bit odd to overrule the linesman regardless of how close it was!