DC Magpie

Is it fair to point out that golden boy Anthony Gordon has exactly three non-PK league goals this entire season for fuck sake? He must be murder on the practice pitch though. Wooooo!!!! I’m just a dumb yokel but isn’t the point of this game to score goals in actual matches? I think blaming Nick or Wissa is missing the point. Fact is, it doesn’t much matter who’s up top does it? It’s because our system sucks and is utterly predictable and easily defended. And Howe has no answers. And the team knows it, I suspect.

Exchanging shirts with the dude who just bent your mama over the kitchen sink too don’t forget. Letting him wearing it off the pitch backwards like a trophy. It’s an important part of the tradition. Whether you played or not. Au contraire. I’ve seen enough of Wissa. We can’t get rid of him fast enough. finances be damned.

Tonali, Wissa, Gordon, Trippier, Ramsdale, A Murphy, Krafth, Willock, Murphy, Ruddy. That's a lot to replace but it provides a good opportunity to improve and get younger. I just fear we're going to recruit an Olympic track team and not proper technical footballers. I think Livro's fragility prevents us from getting a decent fee for him, so he stays and pouts for another year (and yes, I know he's English). Wissa may be hard to move given the financial hit, but I think he's a moron on top of being a shit player, and we just need to get him out of here - maybe on loan if that's even possible (I have no idea).

I'm for the Woltemade side of this, but Wissa to me can't be gone soon enough. Aside from having contributed nothing, he's shown nothing other than being a bit of an idiot, liking Sunderland posts and swapping shirts with Mateta after he just pasted us (with Wissa's shirt still pristinely clean after playing for 14 seconds. I would love to see us try something where Osula and Nick are up top together outside of this 4-3-3 we can't seem to move on from.

I've always wondered if the 4-3-3 hair-on-fire high press tactics scared more technically gifted players away. I'm a novice, but it doesn't seem like it would be an appealing style of play to an 'elite' player. But more than anything I think it's Eddie's stubbornness and/or inability to try something new that disqualifies him. In my view, his only hope is to keep doing what he knows (4-3-3) and hope things turn around. Otherwise: - If he slogs through with the same tactics and we keep losing, he's screwed. We lost 12 league games all last year. We're at 15 and counting now. - If he changes tactics and it works, he'll be screwed for waiting so long to change. - If he changes tactics and it doesn't work, he's equally screwed. Mind you, he's lost the team already and he's out of ideas, so I think we'll see much of the same from here on out.

This. But if Eddie stays so does the 4-3-3, so we cannot have Nick and Eddie under the same roof. Depending on what you believe, the Transfermarkt site still has Nick's transfer value set pretty high (very near what we spent). That can only mean Bayern, and it may be bullshit. I'm Eddie Out, but either way, I can't take another year of those two together. It's maddening. https://www.transfermarkt.us/nick-woltemade/marktwertverlauf/spieler/455661

Fair points all. But why sign him in the first place then? And I think any of armchair experts could agree the way to use him is not in midfield. Why not try a 4-4-2 with him and Osula up top? He seems better when he's got people around him to play off of.

I'll hand it to both of us - you and I are nothing if not predictable. Cheers. There is a fine line between sabotage and ineptitude. Nobody thinks Eddie is trying to lose (though he's doing a damn fine job of it you'd have to admit). But he knows one way of approaching things and it doesn't work any more. Eddie doesn't have an answer, and the players have figured that part out. He's lost the team. (Alternate theory: Howe has a master plan to switch things up, but feels he can't because if it works he'll look even dumber for waiting so long and tanking the season. Ha.) Thing is, we're too sentimental. The big boys don't wait around. If the team isn't performing, the coach goes. Liverpool's about to sack Slot and he won the league last year and looks to be headed back to the UCL. Man U and Chelsea changed mid-season and even City gutted their entire staff under Pep last summer. Admittedly, the grass isn't always greener when you change coaches (hello Chelsea you inglorious twats), but you can't wait around while things get worse and worse and worse. PS - when is the last time you saw Nick on the pitch as a striker? Maybe he's dogging it in practice, but he's not been given a proper chance on the pitch for months. And if it was a mistake to sign Wolt (I disagree), where does that blame lie exactly?

I'll say it again: Nick starts up top: 9 starts, 20 league points. Anyone else up top: 24 starts, 22 league points. Nick is quite literally the reason we're not facing relegation this year. I honestly cannot fathom how stubborn you have to be as a manager to ignore that. And I'm gonna post this video once more ask you Eddiephiles who else on our roster can do half of this (from up top, not 80 yards from goal). Everything in the box, where he belongs. Side note: Look at him after Bruno draws the PK - Nick grabbed the ball and went straight to the spot. Does anyone think he's got that confidence today?

Oh, I completely agree, I was just pointing out (poorly) the irony of our current manager situation.

Do tell...

i literally caught myself laughing at their second goal. Only because i knew it was coming. Apparently Eddie only brings on a second striker when we’re down a goal with three minutes left. Because why the hell would we ever want to score twice?

I'd say this is a lineup of a coach who's scrambling for his job by scraping out a point rather than trying to right the ship. Same shit over and over and over. I predict the fans start to get ugly when this goes tits up today.

And yet he's still second in goals and third in assists for us this year.

Christ. I'm not sure I even want to watch. I do not fucking understand what Howe is doing. And yes, Gordon has checked out for the World Cup. I fully expect a series of "knocks" the rest of the season to keep him rested for Tuchel.

Understood and you're totally right. But I guess I'd rather get there and then have to figure it out.

I've seen in many places that Conference League is not worth it at all because the European financial rules say you can pay 70% of revenue (or whatever) toward salaries when the EPL (if you're not in Europe) allows 85%. I'm sure I've botched that somehow, but I think this is a good year to have some room for a few extra salaries, focus on EPL and making UCL the following year. That goes double if we have a new coach.

For anyone who's ever coached before, or who's ever been coached, you know it is extremely difficult for a coach to regain the confidence of a team once he's lost it. I had a lot of faith in Eddie and in his ability to turn the ship and get us back on a hot streak in these last seven games. I bought the excuses that he had been hamstrung by the incessant schedule, prohibiting him from developing players, installing new tactics, etc. But then he gets a three week break with no games at all and what does he do? He comes out in the same formation, same tactics, same lineup. Same everything. But it wasn't until the team came out in that first half jogging and looking completely lethargic that I know Eddie had lost the team. They're not buying his schtick any more. It's over for him with this team whether anyone in Riyadh knows it or not (I suspect Eddie knows it though). This was a time to come out on fire, but we looked bored and uninterested (not unlike Riyadh come to think of it). I honestly couldn't believe it. I have no idea who the next coach should be, but I'd rather figure that out sooner than later so we can target players accordingly to fit that new system. i don't want the Bournemouth guy though. I think he's just more of the same. I think Mourinho would help attract us some players we might not otherwise get without Europe to offer next year but I don't know about him long term.

Well, perhaps if you discount the 500 people who died building stadiums for the corrupt WC in Qatar, or the incessant buzzing of the vuvuzelas in South Africa. But not to be outdone by Boston's train fares, the leaders of New York and New Jersey just said "hold my beer and watch this" https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/article/train-tickets-to-2026-world-cup-matches-at-metlife-stadium-could-reportedly-cost-over-100-165959259.html?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Please reserve your venom only for the good people governing the City of Boston. Wait til you see the taxes on your hotel rooms. But yeah, it is disgusting. Just be thankful you don't have to play in San Francisco. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6924787/Interactive-map-reveals-staggering-number-human-waste-San-Franciscos-streets.html

His mishandling of the Woltemade situation is, to me, this season's biggest indictment against Howe. Well, maybe that and his mind boggling "oh we've given up the lead again...time to call in the subs" Groundhog Day approach to seeing out games. I'm not sure the grass would be greener with a new manager, but our performances are soul crushing right now.

If Eddie doesn't get the ship turned around these next six games, I think this is the more likely scenario Ii.e., he resigns).

I don't know enough about it to say, to be honest. i would say a team that plays a true 9 and has wings closer and running off him. I do know that watching a 6'7" striker try to play a high press and/or play midfield is like watching a giraffe try to fuck a bowling ball, however. He was almost magical when he got here, and I just cannot believe that his form and confidence have devolved to such an extent. I pin that on Eddie. But it's clear those two can't coexist, so whether it's back to Bundesliga or another EPL team, for his own sanity I hope they are not both here next year. It's painful to watch frankly.

Not sure about that, but it seems clear he's not built for an Eddie Howe system. Also clear that Eddie only has one trick in his bag, so it's best for Nick and the team to move him if Howe is back next year.

To be fair, I thought that was an incredibly harsh penalty to give at that point in the match. The amount of shirt pulling and bear hugging you see on every play in the box is insane. Botman's seemed relatively tame comparatively. But that's the way this season is going for us.