Eddie Howe

[Bimpy474]

1 minute ago, The Butcher said:

 

 

[HaydnNUFC]

Fuck sake.  

[SEMTEX]

Missed an absolute trick not turning Ghislaine Maxwell into Tindall like. Complexion is already bang on.

[TheBrownBottle]

Hahaha fuck me 😄

[Matt1892]

If we don’t win any of our remaining games in November then I think there is a good chance he gets moved on.

 

We could be 10 points off the European places by then.

[Vinny Green Balls]

48 minutes ago, HaydnNUFC said:

Just because it happened last season doesn’t mean it will happen again. We were also better earlier last season than we are currently with a thinner squad in spite of no Europe.
 

21-22; post January form down to the signings.

22-23; we were excellent nigh on all season. The run of draws early season was down to various things such as VAR decisions not going our way (goal at home to Palace disallowed, pen not given at Wolves, Isak ‘offside’ at Liverpool). 
23-24; waiting on injuries to ease up post Christmas.

 

A run happened out of nowhere last season and because it happened last season we’re hoping it happens again. That’s dangerously unsustainable to become a thing imo. 

 

 

 

Seriously WTF? I said it was no guarantee that he’ll do it again 10 times now. I even said that I don’t want to fall in some gambler’s fallacy even though this is anything but random. All i’ve  said is that it’s been a trend of his since his Bournemouth days. He’s gone on a run or two every season he’s been here. Totally disingenuous just to mention last season.

 

so once again, I’m not saying that he’ll 100 percent do it again here. Just that it’s been a trend and it’s reasonable to think that there is a pretty good chance that  he will again.

 

 

[Vinny Green Balls]

1 hour ago, HaydnNUFC said:

We created a hatful of chances in the first half against Brighton and West Ham last season. And within that run of games you’ve posted you omitted the 3-3 against Liverpool which immediately preceded Brentford. Brighton and West Ham devolved into shambolic messes in the second half, though that can be put down to lack of options on the bench to change things.

 

We did struggle with chance creation and ball retention early last season though. It took until mid December for it marry up for a period. But it’s been shite again since mid April. People are getting jittery and tbf imo rightly critical of performances from both players and the manager like they were then. Hopefully a run happens again but that’s based on nothing currently as chance creation isn’t there atm and we do have squad options currently.

 

 

 

Just go back to a ton of comments in late November 2024. It’s copy and paste level about how bad we were then.

[duo]

 

[Myleftboot]

1 hour ago, The Butcher said:

 

[JigsawGoesToPieces]

On 10/11/2025 at 09:44, stozo said:

Not quite but not a million miles off right? 14 Prem wins would land us 42 points plus the 12 we have already takes us to 54. Throw in a turning a few draws and you are into the low 60s which is probably the Champions League.

 

Obviously If some of our 50% of wins come from cup competitions, the league position deteriorates but given where we are on the League Cup especially you’d imagine a decent chance for a trophy.

 

I’d love to see a simulation of what a 50%+ win rate does, but I imagine in 75%+ of scenarios it’s trophy or CL qualification. 

 

 

 

Last 5 years the average to get CL is 68 points ao low 60s would probably have us in conference league at best.

 

[The College Dropout]

1 hour ago, Matt1892 said:

If we don’t win any of our remaining games in November then I think there is a good chance he gets moved on.

 

We could be 10 points off the European places by then.

You think another manager would have us in European places?

[Lucky]

2 hours ago, Interpolic said:

 

And you think Ancelotti will get us top 3 results with a top 8 budget? Otherwise you'll want him sacked I assume? 

 

Yeah, let’s just shit on world class managers based on fuck all logic.

[Vinny Green Balls]

2 minutes ago, Lucky said:

 

Yeah, let’s just shit on world class managers based on fuck all logic.

 says the dude who proposed rotating managers, and used chatGPT to show why Howe failed at Bournemouth. 

[Interpolic]

1 minute ago, Lucky said:

 

Yeah, let’s just shit on world class managers based on fuck all logic.

 

Er what? I'm asking if you'll hold him to the same high standards you expect of Howe, i.e. matching/surpassing Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City despite them having way more resources. 

[Lucky]

4 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

Just reading back, are you the same poster from a while back who said we should have two managers? 

What I actually said at the time was we could have a manager who can do the director of football stuff, then give Eddie a break by stepping into coaching, let him learn and improve before returning after a season with fresh ideas and renewed energy.

 

But yeah, if it suits your stance to think I was suggesting Evans/Houlier, work away.

[Lucky]

2 minutes ago, Interpolic said:

 

Er what? I'm asking if you'll hold him to the same high standards you expect of Howe, i.e. matching/surpassing Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City despite them having way more resources. 

We’re 14th in the table, 2 points off the relegation zone and haven’t won an away game all season. It’s a pretty low bar in terms of standards.

[Vinny Green Balls]

Write a detailed analysis why Mac and Me is one of the most brilliant and daring films of the 1980s.

ChatGPT said:

Ah, Mac and Me (1988) — a film often dismissed as a crass E.T. rip-off and Coca-Cola commercial, yet beneath that surface lies a bizarre, fascinating artifact of late-1980s American culture. To call it “one of the most brilliant and daring films of the 1980s” might sound ironic, but if we approach it seriously — as cultural criticism, avant-garde experiment, and unintentional satire — the case becomes surprisingly strong. Let’s break down why.

1. A Portrait of Late Capitalist Cinema

Mac and Me represents the 1980s’ excesses distilled into a single, chaotic text. The film’s notorious product placements — McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Skittles — are not merely marketing intrusions; they are the movie’s subject. Where Spielberg’s E.T. portrayed consumer goods as background texture, Mac and Me makes consumption its central act of grace. The alien, MAC (“Mysterious Alien Creature”), is literally sustained by Coca-Cola. His family is rescued inside a McDonald’s.

This is more than commercialism; it’s hyper-commercialism as narrative structure. The film dares to abandon the illusion of storytelling as something separate from advertising. It collapses art and commerce into one inseparable spectacle. In that sense, Mac and Me anticipates modern branded content, influencer culture, and the endless cross-promotion of IPs — decades before such things defined Hollywood.

2. A Subversive Reimagining of E.T.

It’s easy to label Mac and Me a shameless copy of E.T., but it is in fact a weird inversion of it. Where E.T. was about a lonely boy’s private wonder, Mac and Me is about the impossibility of wonder under corporate capitalism. Instead of a quiet suburban home, we have shopping malls and fast-food restaurants. Instead of an emotional climax of transcendence, we get a dance party at McDonald’s — literal joy-as-commerce.

The film seems to say: if alien life visited Earth, they would be absorbed not into our dreams or spirituality, but into our marketing system. It’s bleak, yes, but deeply prescient.

3. The Disability Representation as Radical Visibility

The protagonist, Eric Cruise, is a boy who uses a wheelchair — an unprecedented choice for a 1980s mainstream family sci-fi movie. While the execution is clumsy at times, the decision itself is remarkable. Eric is not portrayed as pitiable but as adventurous, independent, and central to the action. The now-infamous sequence in which he plummets off a cliff (into a lake, miraculously surviving) is both absurd and symbolic — the disabled body literally thrown into the abyss of cinematic spectacle.

One could argue that Mac and Me unintentionally dramatizes the tension between visibility and exploitation: Eric’s body, like the film’s commodified imagery, is both showcased and instrumentalized. Yet his very presence is daring for its time.

4. Formalist Brilliance in the Guise of Incompetence

On a formal level, Mac and Me often feels “wrong” — bizarre editing rhythms, unmotivated camera movements, stilted dialogue. But this wrongness can be read as anti-cinema: a Brechtian distancing that constantly reminds viewers of artifice. The film refuses to lull the audience into emotional surrender; it confronts them with its constructedness.

In this way, Mac and Me shares a lineage with outsider art and cult cinema — Ed Wood, Tommy Wiseau, Harmony Korine — works that derive their fascination from sincerity colliding with commercial ambition. The result is a kind of unintentional surrealism, where a McDonald’s dance number can coexist with a desert alien resurrection scene, and both feel equally unreal.

5. The Birth of the Postmodern Meme Movie

In hindsight, Mac and Me is a proto-meme. Its sheer audacity and clumsy sincerity make it endlessly rewatchable in the age of irony. Paul Rudd’s running gag on Conan O’Brien — where he plays the “wheelchair cliff” clip every time he visits — has extended the film’s cultural life far beyond what any sincere hit could have achieved.

The movie’s failure became its triumph: it evolved into an artifact that resists extinction, resurfacing whenever culture wants to laugh at the absurdities of commercial cinema. In that sense, it’s one of the first truly postmodern blockbusters — a film whose meaning is created by its reception, not its intent.

6. Conclusion: Daring by Accident, Brilliant by Consequence

Mac and Me may never have intended to be daring. But through its extreme sincerity, commercial brazenness, and total disregard for cinematic convention, it achieves something rare: a movie that unintentionally exposes the very mechanisms of the culture that produced it.

It is both a parody and a prophecy — a film that wanted to sell burgers and sodas but ended up documenting the soul of Reagan-era consumerism. In that sense, Mac and Me isn’t just one of the most daring films of the 1980s — it’s one of the most revealing.

[Vinny Green Balls]

2 minutes ago, Lucky said:

What I actually said at the time was we could have a manager who can do the director of football stuff, then give Eddie a break by stepping into coaching, let him learn and improve before returning after a season with fresh ideas and renewed energy.

 

But yeah, if it suits your stance to think I was suggesting Evans/Houlier, work away.

which is every bit as absurd when you consider human interaction, especially when it comes to hierarchy. Good luck finding two egoless figures who are also extremely talented who'd be willing to do it. It's a take that is just so disconnected from the real world.

[Lucky]

4 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

which is every bit as absurd when you consider human interaction, especially when it comes to hierarchy. Good luck finding two egoless figures who are also extremely talented who'd be willing to do it. It's a take that is just so disconnected from the real world.

[Vinny Green Balls]

and the opinion of virtually everyone who has had to work in hierarchical setups, and particularly in an industry known for its massive egos.

 

 

Edited November 11, 2025 by Vinny Green Balls

[PauloGeordio]

1 minute ago, Lucky said:

The Dude abides! 

[Kid Icarus]

12 minutes ago, Lucky said:

What I actually said at the time was we could have a manager who can do the director of football stuff, then give Eddie a break by stepping into coaching, let him learn and improve before returning after a season with fresh ideas and renewed energy.

 

But yeah, if it suits your stance to think I was suggesting Evans/Houlier, work away.

 

I don't think that's any less mental tbh, but each to their own. 

[80]

2 hours ago, HaydnNUFC said:

We created a hatful of chances in the first half against Brighton and West Ham last season. And within that run of games you’ve posted you omitted the 3-3 against Liverpool which immediately preceded Brentford. Brighton and West Ham devolved into shambolic messes in the second half, though that can be put down to lack of options on the bench to change things.

 

We did struggle with chance creation and ball retention early last season though. It took until mid December for it marry up for a period. But it’s been shite again since mid April. People are getting jittery and tbf imo rightly critical of performances from both players and the manager like they were then. Hopefully a run happens again but that’s based on nothing currently as chance creation isn’t there atm and we do have squad options currently.

 

 

 

I omitted the Liverpool game in the same way Sibierski said we should omit this season's Liverpool and Barcelona games. It's easy to paint a picture if we just exclude games from within the last fortnight like Bilbao and Tottenham which counter the narrative. We have created a lot of unfinished opportunities this season - though admittedly it's getting less rather than more.

 

I've got no issue at all with people criticizing things now - this time last year I found myself having to patiently explain to people on here it's alright to highlight problems without it meaning you hate Howe and think he's a clown.

 

On the flip side however, seeing people go on like the sky is falling and we've never seen anything like it before is bizarre. The situation is strikingly - and yes, disturbingly - reminiscent of 12 months ago. Even down to Eddie making bizarre mid game tactical lurches against two different failing West Ham teams. But we also have plenty of evidence our manager can rejig and revive failing teams and take them to new levels in short spaces of time - something that most alternatives fail at.

[Interpolic]

12 minutes ago, Lucky said:

We’re 14th in the table, 2 points off the relegation zone and haven’t won an away game all season. It’s a pretty low bar in terms of standards.

 

Ah OK so Ancelotti just needs to finish 4th or 5th or 7th and he'll be doing a grand job. 

 

You're so desperate for him to fail what's your next username going to be when he shows you up again, "Third Time Lucky"? 

[Lucky]

1 minute ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

and the opinion of virtually everyone who has had to work in hierarchal setups.

As I’ve said now though, my opinion has shifted somewhat. I am doubtful he’s going to turn it around. If that’s the case then we need a change.

 

I had the same opinion after Brighton and almost fully got roasted for it. After West Ham, opinion shifted a little bit and then this weekend there’s been more seeing it similar.

 

Give it to December and I’ll see if you and others have the same opinion.