Abacus

I wondered, though, whether he could be trusted to be the person to do that as well, with the right support and advice. If you have to think outside the box, then perhaps he is the maverick to do it. Somebody needs to be able to make the tough decisions, and he's probably the one who understands this team the best. You don't get to be the best with decisions by committee all pulling in different directions. Pep, I think, just to add to the other examples, is probably in complete control of who they buy and sell, whilst delegating the admin. Apologies if that sounds like word salad - I just don't know who else has the vision now.

He is irreplaceable. God damn, he's a lightning strike when I thought I'd learnt never to get attached to a footballer again. He's our captain and then some.

I have been wondering, what is so wrong with an "outdated" football model which would allow the likes of a Ferguson, a Wenger, or even a Klopp to run the club, instead of running everything by a committee. If we have to think outside the box then, just maybe, we have found ours. We didn't play well in spells, but found a way. It's what all the best ones do.

Darren Eales on his phone sat next to Yasir. Give him a big hug like Amanda would, you melon

All over these, need a goal soon

Also happy to give him time - not sure what his main role is re recruitment. If it's unearthing players to improve the overall squad, then great and he should be given a free hand in that. If it's negotiating deals with teams that don't want to negotiate, that's a daft position for him to be in. The main demarcation then is about what happens re the first team squad, and where the gaps are. The transfer window hasn't been great on that, but I'm finally on board with not signing players for the sake of it, or overpaying in a panic. We'll lose a lot of the fringe squad next summer anyway. I'm kind of hoping that this transfer window concentrates minds to give us a chance to punch upwards, and also that if we recruit in January it's either opportunistic or where there is value abroad. With Botman hopefully back by then, our short term CB crisis should be less at least.

I'm not really convinced by him yet. This is from the i when he was appointed; Eales recounted to the Jed Hughes podcast earlier this year that he built Atlanta United’s fanbase “pub crawl by pub crawl” – drinking with supporter groups and applying the personal touch to the issue of fan engagement. Indeed, he was so regularly pictured out drinking with supporters that when the club ended up looking for a picture of Eales for an MLS presentation, they ended up having to Photoshop the pint glass out of his hand. This may well be unfair and a hit job from them, but I didn't like that at the time and think he was doing a different job at Atlanta, which was to build fan engagement, yet he's already got that here. And that he also built them into a "commercial juggernaut", which we're yet to see here, maybe because he's working in an altogether different environment compared to the MLS. Then there were the comments about letting Eddie concentrate on what he's good at, which I don't imagine would have gone down well for someone previously involved in everything. Cloth eared at best, if this was really sprung on Howe. All complete and utter speculation and time will tell, I suppose.

I have very much enjoyed all the late night angry fan fiction being posted in the last couple of days. I myself am thinking of dreaming up various scenarios where everything is terrible later on, it's just going to be difficult to come up with something new.

Re the last however many hundred pages, has this place turned into Talksport now?

Good to see - this has turned into an NO Christmas special.

There were various rumours that any big deals needed to be signed off by PIF. In that respect, if that was ever true, I wonder if it leads us to being less agile and slow paced in decision making, such as in this transfer window. Amanda seemed to have a hotline to PIF to keep their attention and was a good bridge between all other camps within the club as well, so maybe losing her is a bit more of a blow than we thought. Just putting an alternate theory out is all.

Just re the no Europe thing, that surely only kicks in a couple of months into the season when other teams need to juggle their squad through tiredness or injuries, whereas you get a chance to train and plan between games, imo.

Yeah, I was only thinking he's not had any competitive minutes for nearly a year. So, I guess the other way to look at that is that there's only one way to get them and so to start him.

I'd guess maybe Tonali starts on the bench - he'll be chomping at the bit to get a good half hour / 40 minutes and will get a huge ovation when he comes on if so. Happy either way, just excited to see him on the pitch mainly.

It was the perfect response and as ever shows why Howe is the perfect ambassador for the club, on top of everything else he brings. I spent a few minutes drifting into a parallel universe wondering how some of our previous recent managers would have dealt with the same question. I think only Hughton came out of that particular thought experiment about as well in my mind

Or a second choice goalkeeper

Let's just buy both, and then sell the worst one to Palace for £70,000,001 in January.

It's not even a project at this stage, more of a hobby.

Or, Bruno doesn't start. Or, Bruno does and handed it over for a game. And Trippier too in that case, as he's new vice captain. Or it's just a mistake

Really want to see him play even once to see him in action. Just me, then.

I've gone through the phases of being excited about this rumour, to being bored by it, and now I'm coming around to being amused. Just waiting to see how the sky falls in, both whether we sign him or whether we don't.

Then again, hard to draw too much out of two early season games, one away, where we've walked away with 4 points.

I thought this, at times. But then, the whole team looked a bit listless and so hard to single him out - probably I was looking a bit too much into it after all the Liverpool speculation / Euros stuff.

Peter Walton thinks it was a red for Joelinton. But he also thinks it's a good thing he wasn't sent off, since it was a subjective decision where VAR were right not to intervene. So, well done refs. Also thinks the goal should have stood as he couldn't see clear evidence that the ball hit his arm and VAR should only intervene in this case if it was a factual decision. But, however, that if VAR did think it's a handball, then it has to intervene and rule out the goal. Well done refs again. Hope that's cleared everything up. That's former PL ref Peter Walton folks. Confusing subjectivity with facts and finding ways to agree with referees even when he thinks they're wrong because he often was himself, since 2003.