The Europeometer™ (2024/25)

[Yorkie]

26 minutes ago, ChrisMcQuillan said:

But we ultimately spent the bulk of our transfer budget on:

• Tonali
• Barnes
• Livramento
• Hall (loan fee/future fee/potentially)

Bar Livramento, who's been excellent when on the pitch, that's one hell of a failure of a window. Assuming we don't do much this window, this season's transfer business will be looked back on as very poor, at least in the short term.

 

We spent all (not 'the bulk') of our budget on reinforcing centre-midfield and full-back with CL quality, and replacing Saint-Maximin. Because that's what we could afford to do. How is it 'one hell of a failure'? What should we have done differently? Choose differently because we should've expected a ten-month gambling ban, and an apparently rare long-term foot injury suffered by a player with an exemplary injury record?

 

The transfer window wrought some excellent signings, by your own argument, we've just been stupidly unlucky. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Next time we buy someone definitely don't have him banned for year or injured. 

[Geordie Ahmed]

The summer doesn't look great but this is with the massive benefit of hindsight 

 

The club couldn't have predicted/expected the ban/injury

 

People calling it a failure/disaster, I wonder if they were saying this at the time or are they being clever after the fact 

[The College Dropout]

12 hours ago, NoU said:

Before this season I was honestly satisfied with a top 10 finish and a good cup/cl run. If we qualify for Europe again we will again we overachieved imo. 8th would be perfectly acceptable to me.
 

And that is not even factoring in the injury situation, but honestly we could have foreseen problems could escalate with how thin our squad was for a cl campaign and our high intensive playing style. 

Darren Eales seems to think qualifying for Europe this season is a reasonable target. No way is it over achieving. 

[The Prophet]

45 minutes ago, ChrisMcQuillan said:

I think a 10th placed finish is pretty realistic at this moment in time - particularly if we don't sign anyone meaningful.

 

Would be a bit of a kick in the teeth. As others have said, whether you consider it a failure is probably down to your personal take.

 

FFP has us hamstrung, and injuries have been horrific.

 

But we ultimately spent the bulk of our transfer budget on:

• Tonali
• Barnes
• Livramento
• Hall (loan fee/future fee/potentially)

Bar Livramento, who's been excellent when on the pitch, that's one hell of a failure of a window. Assuming we don't do much this window, this season's transfer business will be looked back on as very poor, at least in the short term.

 

It doesn't feel like what we wanted to do this year has come off, therefore, IMO, the season will have been a failure.

 

The real question is who will we end up losing through regression of that scale? You might got another season out of most of them, but would be a miracle not to lose a star or two from that outcome.

 

[ChrisMcQuillan]

39 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

 

We spent all (not 'the bulk') of our budget on reinforcing centre-midfield and full-back with CL quality, and replacing Saint-Maximin. Because that's what we could afford to do. How is it 'one hell of a failure'? What should we have done differently? Choose differently because we should've expected a ten-month gambling ban, and an apparently rare long-term foot injury suffered by a player with an exemplary injury record?

 

The transfer window wrought some excellent signings, by your own argument, we've just been stupidly unlucky. 

I’m not arguing that they weren’t sensible transfers given what we knew. And whats transpired is unlucky, no doubt. 
 

Every transfer is a gamble in football. We gambled and lost. 
 

We are happy to call transfers successful, these haven’t been for this season, therefore they’re a failure, surely?

 

I’m not necessarily ascribing blame to anyone in this, but I would argue it’s been a failure of a window for this season. 
 

A couple of good seasons out of those players and they might turn out to be successful long-term. 

[ChrisMcQuillan]

36 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

 

Well, yeah.  

 

It’s total hindsight. 

[TheBrownBottle]

1 hour ago, Geordie Ahmed said:

That's it for me, the injury situation hasn't been normal and therefore I don't think it's reasonable to get angry about it or claim it's unacceptable 

 

I do wonder if some people just don't care for context or they just don't understand it

 

 

Context is about thinking through all of it.  Injuries are part of that - but you’re implying that injuries are simply all down to bad luck.  The context for some us would be - why is the same medical team here from Ashley’s time?  Why has the head physio appointed by Ashworth left when it became abundantly clear that there was a problem?  Why is the manager playing football with an intensity level unsuited to playing two games per week?

 

That sort of context is important, too. 

[Geordie Ahmed]

Just now, TheBrownBottle said:

Context is about thinking through all of it.  Injuries are part of that - but you’re implying that injuries are simply all down to bad luck.  The context for some us would be - why is the same medical team here from Ashley’s time?  Why has the head physio appointed by Ashworth left when it became abundantly clear that there was a problem?  Why is the manager playing football with an intensity level unsuited to playing two games per week?

 

That sort of context is important, too. 

 

That's not what I'm implying, I think with some of the injuries there are reasonable questions to ask and I hope the club look into that

 

The injuries of Burn, Barnes, Murphy, Targett, Anderson, Pope are just bad luck if you like, call it freak injuries etc, not sure anyone can pin blame on the coaching staff or even the medical staff on that one

 

Botman the injury itself is unlucky but the handling of it I would rightly question. Willock, well, who knows what's went on there but again can understand asking questions.

 

Wilson is just made of glass, not blaming anyone for that

 

Overall, I'd say the bulk of the injuries is down to bad luck and for that reason I'll more than cut Howe some slack. 

[The Prophet]

The soft tissue injuries only became a regular occurrence once the lack of rotation kicked in due to the "freak" injuries.

 

In his interview with Shearer, Isak has said players were being brought back before they were 100% to plug the gaps.

 

That said, Howe has said mistakes have been made medically. I wonder if he was referring to Botman's knee injury not being detected.

[TheBrownBottle]

Just now, Geordie Ahmed said:

 

That's not what I'm implying, I think with some of the injuries there are reasonable questions to ask and I hope the club look into that

 

The injuries of Burn, Barnes, Murphy, Targett, Anderson, Pope are just bad luck if you like, call it freak injuries etc, not sure anyone can pin blame on the coaching staff or even the medical staff on that one

 

Botman the injury itself is unlucky but the handling of it I would rightly question. Willock, well, who knows what's went on there but again can understand asking questions.

 

Wilson is just made of glass, not blaming anyone for that

 

Overall, I'd say the bulk of the injuries is down to bad luck and for that reason I'll more than cut Howe some slack. 

I’m happy to cut Howe slack too, as in I think his job shouldn’t be under threat at all this season.  But that doesn’t mean that entire seasons just get written off.  This season - irrespective of context - will have spent a lot of that ‘credit in the bank’ that he has.

 

I think valid criticisms can be laid at his door this season - I don’t think he handled the schedule of his first European campaign all that well.  I’ve never been convinced that a ‘game by game’ philosophy works at this level - all top European managers think about more than simply the next game.  But like other good NUFC managers before him, he deserves time.  Chancers like Pardew or Bruce didn’t.

[Geordie Ahmed]

4 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

The soft tissue injuries only became a regular occurrence once the lack of rotation kicked in due to the "freak" injuries.

 

In his interview with Shearer, Isak has said players were being brought back before they were 100% to plug the gaps.

 

That said, Howe has said mistakes have been made medically. I wonder if he was referring to Botman's knee injury not being detected.

 

Of all the ones that's the one that had me thinking wtf, beyond amateurish 

[Geordie Ahmed]

4 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

I’m happy to cut Howe slack too, as in I think his job shouldn’t be under threat at all this season.  But that doesn’t mean that entire seasons just get written off.  This season - irrespective of context - will have spent a lot of that ‘credit in the bank’ that he has.

 

I think valid criticisms can be laid at his door this season - I don’t think he handled the schedule of his first European campaign all that well.  I’ve never been convinced that a ‘game by game’ philosophy works at this level - all top European managers think about more than simply the next game.  But like other good NUFC managers before him, he deserves time.  Chancers like Pardew or Bruce didn’t.

 

That's fair, I wouldn't write the season off too

 

I'm confident we can have a strong finish but that confidence is based on the hope that we'll start to get some bodies back and apart from early Feb we are at 1 game per week which will be a lot more manageable 

[TheBrownBottle]

1 minute ago, Geordie Ahmed said:

 

That's fair, I wouldn't write the season off too

 

I'm confident we can have a strong finish but that confidence is based on the hope that we'll start to get some bodies back and apart from early Feb we are at 1 game per week which will be a lot more manageable 

Yeah, agreed - I think you can already see an improvement in performance levels vs the Mackems and Man City.  We’ll be winning more games than we lose between now and the end of the season I’d be willing to bet. 

[Jagten]

1 hour ago, Yorkie said:

 

We spent all (not 'the bulk') of our budget on reinforcing centre-midfield and full-back with CL quality, and replacing Saint-Maximin. Because that's what we could afford to do. How is it 'one hell of a failure'? What should we have done differently? Choose differently because we should've expected a ten-month gambling ban, and an apparently rare long-term foot injury suffered by a player with an exemplary injury record?

 

The transfer window wrought some excellent signings, by your own argument, we've just been stupidly unlucky. 

I think it's weird in the sense that whilst it's been impossible to make a call on individuals, recent tactical challenges indicate we might have identified the wrong player profiles. I don't think anyone is right, yet - either those saying the signings are excellent or the window was a failure. 

[Yorkie]

1 hour ago, ChrisMcQuillan said:

I’m not arguing that they weren’t sensible transfers given what we knew. And whats transpired is unlucky, no doubt. 
 

Every transfer is a gamble in football. We gambled and lost. 
 

We are happy to call transfers successful, these haven’t been for this season, therefore they’re a failure, surely?

 

I’m not necessarily ascribing blame to anyone in this, but I would argue it’s been a failure of a window for this season. 
 

A couple of good seasons out of those players and they might turn out to be successful long-term. 

 

'Failure' is just unnecessarily loaded and pejorative language for me (which is my main issue with the discourse during the last six weeks). Who or what has failed, and how? Are we even in a position to make any definitive conclusion either way? If Tonali tears it up next season then suddenly it's very different, as you say. 

 

For me, a failure would've been signing objective rubbish, or no one. For example, most of the transfer windows between 2012-15.

 

I'm not arguing that's it's been a roaring success but that's because it's a situation with more nuance than to just assign either extreme. Again my issue is principally with the (imo) overly negative language used. 

[The College Dropout]

The ultimate context is how the team performs.  

[TRon]

25 minutes ago, Geordie Ahmed said:

 

That's fair, I wouldn't write the season off too

 

I'm confident we can have a strong finish but that confidence is based on the hope that we'll start to get some bodies back and apart from early Feb we are at 1 game per week which will be a lot more manageable 

 

I'm confident we can have a strong finish as well, but by that time it might be too late. UEFA Conference league looks like the best bet right now but we'll need to be relying on players returning from injury not to have any setbacks.

[Geordie Ahmed]

29 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

I'm confident we can have a strong finish as well, but by that time it might be too late. UEFA Conference league looks like the best bet right now but we'll need to be relying on players returning from injury not to have any setbacks.

 

Depends on what you think it's too late for, I think top 5 is done, we are 11 points behind, realistically could be 14 once the Villa game is played. 16 games to claw that back isn't happening

 

I would not rule out 7th (6th is probably pushing it and will need a lot to go right with very little margin for error)

 

Ultimately, if we can end the season with some form of European football I'll take it

[Guest]

It'll make a difference to the existing group only playing once a week, but until we get 2-3 midfielders and forwards back from injury, we're still going to be stung by the majority having to play 90 minutes while the opposition can freshen things. It'll not always be to the extent of Saturday obviously where the calibre of subs are De Bruyne or even Bobb (we can only dream of an Academy prospect bring that good yet), but it's still going to hurt us. Even an Anderson or Murphy at this stage, nevermind Willock, Wilson or Barnes, would give us something.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

11 hours ago, The College Dropout said:

The ultimate context is how the team performs.  

 

I don’t think this makes any sense, but it’s snappy

[Guest]

Fell asleep early so just seen the Brighton score. Still in touch with Europe.

[BShearer]

good Wolves didnt win, we would have slipped to 11th.

 

time to get some wins next few weeks, but Villa away is really hard game with them having best home record so far. still we need to do some magic away from home as we already dropped 3 points in games where a win was very much expected (Luton for example)

 

 

[Coffee_Johnny]

On 23/01/2024 at 08:43, BShearer said:

good Wolves didnt win, we would have slipped to 11th.

 

time to get some wins next few weeks, but Villa away is really hard game with them having best home record so far. still we need to do some magic away from home as we already dropped 3 points in games where a win was very much expected (Luton for example)

 

 

We have had one, PL, magic away game (most magic in our history, from a scoreline perspective). Next one coming up! 

 

 

Edited January 27 by Coffee_Johnny

[Playmaker]

If we win villa tonight top 4 might still be on, even though it's a long shot.

 

we are still fighting for this top 4 spot

 

 

 

Howay the lads