Erikse

I can see him going with whatever the club/Howe had planned in the first window, having arrived like 5 minutes ago. It's probably what many fans would say that he should do, had they been aksed about it the day that he arrived. Makes more sense to me instead of changing everything up on the first few days, without even having had time to map out where we are at, unlike Howe who at the time had been here for nearly 3 years. Ofcourse there had to be some agreement there between the parties, but he might have been careful simply because it was such early days for him.

Going back to when Howe said that if his key players wants to go to a Champions League side, they need to play like Champions League players. It's possible for someone to frame it as him blaming the players for the form we were in, but in reality he was just being very straightforward, something he often isn't. Our form has been much better after that statement, and although there are several reasons for that, maybe some players needed a wakeup call. Not an exact comparison at all, but more on the topic of how we can frame statements in different ways.

Fair. As you probably agree with, he might be a bit defensive since he feels like he has gotten too much stick from such a difficult situation. I think he also felt like he was being used as a some kind of a scapegoat, and he probably feels uncomfortable about already being unpopular amongst fans for something that may not have been his fault, atleast not to a large degree (I know, this is a bit speculative). I agree that he would be a bad politician, I think he's just answering honestly as if it was a private conversation, and not really thinking too much about it. I don't mind it personally, but that's subjective.

The thing is he was asked about how he has settled in the first 5 months. He replies with his own honest experience of the first 5 months. "mistakes were made, but we're gonna learn from them and come back stronger" would be a bit of an odd answer to that question, as the question was about him specifically.

Haven't heard any of it yet. But.. I find it interesting that when he actually admits he found it difficult, which is the opposite of blaming everybody else, you complain that aswell for not sounding competent. Whichever route he takes you seem to look to interpret it in a bad way.

Depends on what actually happened that summer, but in many possible scenarios I would probably be thinking the same if I was him.

Can't wait to see Mitchell get the blame for that, because obviously he's the one who wants DCL. For real though, I don't really think we will go for him, but lets see. You'd think that Osula will get more time on the field next season, assuming that he has some real potensial.

Christ, didn't know that. So they still remember the takeover, atleast some of them.

I think the media has already forgotten about our takeover. They've moved on from linking us with every overpaid 30+ primadonna out there.

In terms of wanting or not wanting him, many fans also didn't want Gordon when he was struggling in a team at the lower end of the table. I have no doubt he would be a great player for us despite recent form, it's just the obvious question of how much money.

Yeah, if we really want him, we might have to pay a little bit extra still. He will go to a different club later if not, so we also gotta think about what he's actually worth for us. If it's either paying lets say £50-60m or not getting him at all, it doesn't really matter for us that Palace is getting a good deal for their situation. As long as it's still a good deal for us aswell. Ofcourse, we're still going to negotiate based on their situation with him regardless, and not give in too easily.

Agreed. As mentioned above I also think it has to happen early from Palaces perspective, if they even want to sell. Unless they start replacing him before the sale, but that doesn't seem ideal in terms of negotiations.

We can't rely on him going on a strike though, like the Gordon deal. The Gordon deal wasn't really happening until he started forcing it (we were like £20m off their valuation and time was running out). This is a different situation though, really hard to tell what Palace will do about any bid after what they did in the summer. Could go both ways really.

We should atleast act fast with the bids, the longer it goes through the window, the less likely they are to crack. They probably need the deal to be done early ish, so they can reinvest and replace him.

Apparently they spent a couple of minutes on it aswell.