TheBrownBottle

He shares some responsibility. They’re his signings.

Compare him to other PL-level ‘10s’. He is nowhere near the level required for that role.

One of the great dangers of football is allowing a side to age itself out - we’ve got far too many who should’ve been moved on when they still had value. Then we whine about PSR despite refusing to do what pretty much every other club in the top flight does and sell players at the right time.

They were all out front when the momentum was with us - but character is about how you react to losing as much is at is about winning. There’s some of them who are club legends, but they’ve shrunk within themselves as the season saunters on. I actually like Joelinton raging at the bench on Saturday, gannin proper radge is right response

Absolutely - the best clubs and managers are utterly ruthless. Ferguson was the same with the likes of Roy Keane. I get the impression that if that was us, Roy Keane would be in the dressing room still, doling out sandwiches (no prawn ones) and being part of the ‘leadership group’ after his fifteenth one year contract extension.

It’s not about the last three seasons. This is the fourth time in my life I’ve seen us rapidly change from a good side at the top of the table to a mediocre top flight side. Perhaps next season all will be fixed and good with the world again. But (in my opinion - and I don’t understand why this needs to be clarified; of course it is my opinion) what we’re seeing is not acceptable given the tools at the manager’s disposal and the amount of money sunk into this squad. We’re underperforming against squads with far smaller squads - and the ‘we’ve played loads of cup games’ stuff would be a bit easier to swallow if the manager had 1) rotated against some of the weaker teams we’d played and 2) we’d looked good before the fixture pile-up. We’re into March and I couldn’t count the good league performances on one hand so far. Again, that doesn’t mean that Howe should be sacked, but I’m not going to ignore the evidence in front of my eyes. Some of the ‘everything is fine, everyone who disagrees is a bedwetter’ stuff feels like gaslighting at this point. We’ve been utterly shite away from home this season, and now the home form is heading that way. The players bought last summer were bought by the manager, he picks the side, he delivers the tactics. He’s well rewarded and has been packed as far as the rules allow him to be backed - this is absolutely his squad I’m watching now (only Murphy, Schar and Willock remain from pre-Howe days). He’s earned the credit and trust to be given the opportunity to put it right this summer - but if we’re still watching what we’ve been watching at the end of this calendar year, I’ll be joining those who think he needs to go. It’s worth remembering who is setting the expectations here - this isn’t a bunch of supporters dopily shouting the odds and over-expecting. The club owners and executives have repeated stated in public what the expectations are - whether they’re realistic or not is another matter. All of which is absolutely fair 👍

Agreed - and again, the question has to be asked - why does the club have such a small scouting team, nearly five years after the takeover? Why is Howe’s young nephew running the show in that department? Who appointed him - and why? Would Andy Howe be in a similar role at another major club?

We definitely couldn’t.

From memory the original bid was about £25m in early July, which would be below his value at the time, but not by a crazy amount. At that money it would be pretty apparent he was a Wilson replacement.

We are - but I’m not sure about ‘you’ve never had it so good’ statements. We absolutely have.

My first ST was in 90/91, I’ve been around a wee while. This isn’t particularly good at the moment. edit: the average league finish from 90/91 to 24/25 is 13th. We’re currently 13th.

I’ve never called for Howe’s head and still think he should be given the summer and start of next season - my view is that quite a bit of the criticism is warranted, and that it the poor form and performances can’t be allowed to continue indefinitely. I think he deserves the chance to put it right, and hopefully he will (both be given the time and put it right). If this had been a manager appointed last June I’d likely have a very different view.

Agreed, though I’d add that on salaries; I think it has to be taken as a combination of salaries and wages. As an example - Elanga is reportedly ‘only’ on £100k pw, and Woltemade is only on a little more. They’re the sort of salaries which are just slightly above Bournemouth’s top earners. The difference of course is that the transfer fees are massive - and in terms of FFP, salaries and fees go into the same pot. So until last year Villa had a higher wage bill than us, but they’d spent a fraction of what we spent on transfers. So we could pay more salaries - if we paid less for players.

Got you thought you’d gone crackers for a minute there!

Dalglish had a much, much better CV. The point is that there wasn’t a constant noise during the Hall / Shepherd era of ‘don’t criticise anything, don’t you remember McKeag?’. The Ashley era was fucking dreadful - being better than that isn’t the bar. Howe has done a superb job up to this season - but he has also been very well backed. He’s not been operating at Ashley’s NUFC.

The two most important positions in football are the CF and GK - if we go into next season with an untested kid as first choice then literally everyone at the club would deserve to be fired.

I mean, it’s a pretty hefty caveat tbf. Which renders quite a lot of ‘have you forgot the Ashley era’ stuff redundant. I can’t remember constantly hearing in 97/98 - when there was plenty of unhappiness with Dalglish because we were turgid to watch and terrible in the league - ‘well, we’ve beaten Barca in the CL and we’re in the FA Cup Final - has everyone suddenly forgotten where we were under Ardiles? Stop complaining about it’. I still don’t think it’s time to call an end to Howe’s time, but there’s a huge line in the sand re the Ashley era - which never, ever should be considered a benchmark (and I don’t remember anyone in the Ashley era being particularly happy with it).

You’re right, it was Liverpool was the other league home game this season, not Bournemouth - my memory is addled, but the stat lives on! (NB we didn’t concede three in our home cup games in 12/13 - so Pards is ahead on that front )

The Isak situation was absolutely crazy - and I still think Howe wanted to get shot much earlier (remember that prematch PC for the Celtic friendly when he was talking about wanting players who wanted to play for us? Howe doesn’t strike me as the sort of manager who wants arseholes tantruming in his camp).

Yep - it was completely needless to antagonise and call out Howe in such a public way. He could’ve had a more strident talk behind closed doors, and then made a more softly-softly approach to it all publicly. Something like ‘the club needed to get tried and tested players in to survive and grow quickly, but because of PSR we’re now entering a different stage of the club’s growth, and the transfer approach will change with it. I’ll be working with Eddie to ensure we get the best possible talent in, and rest assured we’ll still be spending every penny that the club is able to on improving the squad and supporting Eddie’. Summik like that anyway.

It’s FFP and the likely desire for players to leave for pastures new that will drive it, nowt else.

And it’s our home form keeping us afloat this season - our away form has been utter shite

Which is fair enough 👍

Oh it gets worse - the teams who put three past us in 12/13? Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool (and the Mackems - cheers, @Alan Pardew). The teams who’ve put three past us this season? Leeds, Bournemouth, Brentford, Everton …

No, I agree with you on pretty much everything you’ve written here - the Sky Six can stack their entire 25-man squad with expensive players, where we are liable to only be able to stock around half that number. Completely agree - though all things being equal, most players will still choose an established club first. If I was a pro footballer someone suddenly chucked loads of money at Empoli, I’d still be more interested in AC Milan if they bid for me too. I also wear that tinfoil hat - I also think Man City signed him for precisely that reason - but I don’t think they let Trafford in on that. Which tbh shows that the lad is a bit of a daft cunt - there’s no chance that a Man City takes a punt on a second division goalie being their number 1.