mondonewc

What would he be a scapegoat for? We are doing amazing, few if any thought after two years that we'd have got this far so quickly, and very few I believe genuinely think we're going to become the new Man City within the next couple of years, it's clearly not realistic, we are on a long journey and there'll be many highs and lows to come. Personally, I think it's fine to discuss who we should aim to improve on to make those next steps, 100% we should be supporting the players we have, not berating them if they make one mistake and such nonsense like that, but having a discussion of how we can improve seems reasonable to me. People will have different opinions on what's the best approach to get us to where we want to be, if like myself you want to mainly focus on improving the first 11, which of course also improves the squad overall, then it's very difficult to make an argument that Pope shouldn't be high up on that list.

Top top performance today, what a player!

I have zero interest in searching for a scapegoat to blame for us not winning today. However, I genuinely have no idea where people are coming from to be so defensive regards Pope, yes he's been a good keeper in his time here, yes he seems like an all-round good egg, but if we're aiming to become a legitimate force and actually compete to win things he's not part of that future, I don't even see how that's debatable? A question to those who think Pope is great and feel questioning his position is wrong, who are you suggesting we upgrade prior to addressing him? Possibly Miggy and Burn, nobody else surely? His distribution from his feet is poor, every time he has the ball at his feet and he's being pressured he looks so uncomfortable, this today with punching for no reason when he can catch is a common occurrence, it happened Wednesday and again tonight, and tonight we got punished for it. I have zero interest in attacking Nick Pope, I appreciate all he's done for the club to get us to this stage, but if we have the money we believe we have and we continue to strive to be better he will have to be replaced, that doesn't make us bad fans or lacking loyalty to have this mindset, it's just logical!

We can 100% go there and turn them over in two weeks. Bookies have us and Dortmund as joint 2nd fav to qualify now at evens, we can definitely still get through this group, and I wouldn't be too disappointed with 3rd either, European football in the New Year and in a competition we actually have a realistic chance of going very deep in and competing to win it. Chins up, we go again!

@IsaakAs said, be careful with Uber, speaking from experience outside of major cities it's definitely not guaranteed you'll get one. And top man @LFEE, amazing gesture, nice one!

I wouldn't be against signing him, think he's better than many give him credit for. He's had spells of being a very good player so if Howe and Co. thought he was the way to go I'd be fully on board, as I say though, do think it's much more likely just lazy journalism.

Phillips is 28 in December, given our strategy so far seems unlikely we'd be wanting to buy him, loan maybe. As said already, feels like easy link to make.

Probably about 3 years, cheating fucks!

We'll do these today, 3-0

Late notice but if anyone based in London wants a free Club Wembley seat for England vs Australia game tonight DM me, have one I'm not using going spare.

Think it's just a bug on the site mate, try logging out and log back in.

Howe was asked about it in the presser this morning; On expanding St James' Park: "I would love for it to be done and I'm sure if it can, the club will do it. Again, it's not a simple process, but we'd love to get more supporters into the stadium watching us play."

There's only our bid left to host it so fair to say it looks pretty locked in, will be confirmed on Tuesday.

I'll be honest I didn't see it in him and wondered why Howe loved him so much, how wrong I was!

Maybe I'm getting carried away after last night lol but is he actually the most important player in our team? He's unreal and makes such a difference to the whole team's performance. Some boy!

Imagine the scenes in Dortmund if this happened, dreamland!

Haha, class on Champ Man

For sure its bollocks, why didn't they just show the lines like they always do instead of what happened. Watching the game around 30 seconds after the restart I said to mate I was watching it with that VAR has told the ref that was meant to be a goal and the ref didn't know what to do, am sure that happened lol, what a fucking shambles

I agree, they aren't all that, couple of injuries and they're in trouble, have no depth. Fancy us to finish above them for sure.

Odds to qualify Man U 4/5, us 19/20, surprised it's so close, would love it so much if we get it done.

The Wembley situation is different I think, the main error there I would say was they didn't pre-empt the fact that it could happen so it was all a bit haphazard and last minute without any clarity in advance and communication wasn't great. Think the membership situation is different and they should be able to make some basic improvements that will definitely make it fairer for all, although I'm definitely not saying everyone will be happy, that's probably impossible to achieve fully.

This could be addressed also with some thought I would expect, for example the categories they previously used for ticket prices could be the same for ballots. Would take more than 10 minutes thought haha but I'm sure its achievable, or at least better than the current setup if absolute fairness that suits everyone isn't achievable.

A major flaw in most people's input on this is it's very self-serving, naturally, and I'm sure I'm also guilty of this myself. I assume as mentioned the main objective of those in charge is to grow the fan base, that's understandable, its a business after all. However, there are numerous issues which have no relevance to achieving that objective, and instead are either ill thought out or sheer incompetence. Just a few of what could be many examples: - The website is truly an awful experience to use. I would describe myself as being reasonably tech savvy and clearly you don't need to be any kind of advanced level to use the functions of the site but it's absurdly poor. Ton of bugs, loads of random errors, and then you add in the slowroll element of actually try to purchase phantom tickets (I'm not referring to tickets that someone else is buying but tickets that just were never available) which is emotionally draining and frustrating for fans trying to get a ticket they're desperate for is really poor - I maybe mistaken but the ballot system seems to lack any resemblance of fairness which would be extremely easy to achieve. For example, let's say person A and person B both apply for PSG tickets with the same parameters in a ballot, A is successful and B fails, then Dortmund ballot comes around and rinse repeat the same thing could happen again so A is 2/2 whilst B is 0/2. I see no reasonable argument that anyone could provide to why they couldn't setup what's an extremely basic system so that B would have priority over A in such a scenario, and similar with league games to provide a better, fairer system for all. - The away fans experience in regards to fake tickets and having to go to the box office for a replacement is a disgrace. I truly struggle to believe what they're doing in that regard is legal, I'm sure it must be if they're doing it but it's ludicrous and really poor treatment. - The membership is 100% very poor value. The junior membership especially, at least just send out a fucking pin badge or certificate or some shit that cost basically nothing so there's at least some worth rather than just paying to have access to general sale tickets which is effectively what it currently provides. None of the above really affect myself that much personally, I'm not that desperate to go to any home games, I only know how poor the website and ticket experience is from personal experience as I was trying to get tickets to take my nephew to the PSG game. All of the above feel like they lack much care or thought to the fan experience which should clearly be a priority, and I say that from a running a business point of view and not as a fan. It's clear though that there's various aspects of the ticketing operation that is flawed and really shouldn't be that difficult to get right.

It's almost coming up to two years now since the takeover though tbf, that's not an insignificant amount of time to address a pretty key area of the running of the club. There's clearly a fundamental issue in terms of meeting demand, and that's fine and understandable, that's not an easy fix for sure. However, many of the issues fans are experiencing are pretty basic errors on the club's behalf that should have been resolved in this timeframe, many of the solutions the club has come up with during this time have made things worse not better.

I remember someone sharing the way Tottenham handled it which seemed infinitely better than our current approach.