I don’t disagree. To be honest, I’m okay with a new guy in the summer. What I’m not particularly okay with is Hodgson until then.
Nonsense. I am sure that we shall unearth another futsal/freestyler from South America or the Belgian league who will catapult us back to glory
I really hope Burnley stay up. Notwithstanding the ludicrous money they've pissed up the wall compared to the pittance Burnley have spent but also it would hamper our promotion hopes next year. Consequently that would turn more muted fans against Duxbury/Pozzo.
If we’re lucky. Somewhere in darkest night, @LaClusazSki is firing up the Michael Burry “I might have been early, but I wasn’t wrong” gif.
Burnley. No question. Squad that won’t be torn apart. Won’t be on dodgy ground financially. Will have a good coach who knows how to get teams promoted. Everton will be in huge - and I mean HUGE - financial bother. They will be in the unenviable position of having to rebuild an entire squad as it’ll get torn apart if they go down. And not to mention Lampard has questionable managerial talent so they either have him or another new guy. Moshiri will possibly want a way out. If Everton go down, I really can see them staying down for a while. Most clubs around the bottom at least remotely budget for relegation. No way Everton have those plans in place! Biggest concern I have is Everton coming for Diego Martinez in the summer (or before)….
Sadly our COG fans would rather chant a few verses of “Watford til I die” and pat themselves on the back for being loyal cultists as the latest relegation ‘rival’ thrashes us by a margin of 3 in our own backyard
I just recalled a moment that reminded me we as fans don’t even ask for much. Pedro gave the ball away in the second half on the edge of the Leeds box and chased it down and won it back with a brilliant tackle and The Rookery roared. Every time Sarr or Dennis lost it, their shoulders dropped and they gave a half arsed jog back in an attempt to look like they care. Completely insulting and just downright shyte.
Foster played another terrible pass out to Kiko just before their first which got a reaction from the Rookery. I was too far away but he looked at the crowd either laughing or as if to say shut up. Either way the ball ended up in the net less than a minute later which was pretty funny.
Yeah JP held onto it for too long at times today and was wasteful but at least he showed some balls and was visibly annoyed at the whole performance. The other two clearly don't care anymore.
One of our foreign based rent-a-fans from Vancouver, who supports a number of football teams, is shouting online that we could have only stayed up if we been able to spend £100m. I didn’t realise Canada was a different planet.
But this is it. This is exactly what was always going to happen with the Pozzo model. It’s just the obvious end game. I don’t think it’s Hodgson’s fault at all. Why should he care, frankly? It’s been made clear managers are wholly expendable.
Sarr's miss in the second half was utterly grotesque. His performance wasn't even 'half - hearted', he clearly did not want to be on the pitch. Put him on the bench, wrap him up in cotton wool and pray that somebody is fool enough to pay a decent fee for him. The forwards need to learn to play, well er, forward! Just a thought Hodgson how about coaching some forward team play, you know wingers taking a defender on, heading for the bye line and putting a cross in? Or runners encouraged to run beyond the man with the ball? Or shooting on target? Oh what's the point, I'm just mega fed up, it's been a can of worms all season. I did enjoy the win at Everton and until today I harboured hopes that we might edge past them. Not to be. Now with the spectre of huge debt hanging over us it looks like the only way is down. I agree with those who say the club has lost it's soul and its connection with the fans. It feels like an entity with no leadership or belief, a "Supporters Committee?" haha, good grief, says it all doesn't it? So if not a hollow committee, paying lip service to being open and engaging with fans, what do we need? New owners and fast!
We really should have a separate thread to commemorate the comments of our Twitter dolts. Yesterday one was saying Duxbury must stay because we needed him to fix the debt situation. And we had the 270k (checks notes) 100k population nonsense. Little jewels of idiocy to cheer you up in a daily basis
I think it's worth noting that we are one of three teams that basically follow a rubbish hiring policy bringing in various adhoc journeymen players hopi g it works out..... Newcastle have lived on the edge for ages, blaming various managers for struggling, and in recent years Everton have bought plenty of rubbish. Neither can compete with our level of aimless player gambles, but Everton are falling fast and Newcastle were lucky to be rescued by big money decisions and EH. GP clearly opted for safety first last summer.... Investing wisely but getting relegated would have brought him to his knees, so he chose short-termism, free transfers etc etc. I have no doubt he saw this season as a simple roll of the dice and bottled it, hence the squad we've got and the impending relegation. Something has to change next season. I don't like the way the club is run, it's arrogant and it's given us 3 years of tepid football, please make it stop and give us a young team that we can love again.... Even if it means 3 seasons of finishing 7th in the championship. ... And please please sort out this horrendous strategy of buying loads of foreign players promising a big future, who then decide within 3 months that we are just a stepping stone....
Been out all day, but us being our usual absolute sh**e didn’t bother me at all. All focus now on L**on not passing us on the way down..even if they do make it worse by battering our basket cases next season.
That’s ok then last year the Borough was 96,800 add in North Bushey, as that is the proposal for the parliamentary constituency boundary for 2024, we won5t have to wait long to hit the big time!
We could be king makers. Lose to Burnley and beat Everton, thats six points overturning Everton’s 4 points advantage and Burnley would still have a game in hand.
My thoughts exactly. Sarr basically saying "I'll play because I have to". Really wound me up, but a couple of hours later, I thought whether I actually blame him. A year in the championship and a year of mismanaged crap as a whole club. That's 2 years of his career.
What planet are some people on? Suggesting we keep someone on who has had a big role in the finances of the club. Some of our fans are a bit thick aren't they lol
By the way I have really enjoyed seeing the new multi storey car park behind the Rookery evolve this season. It was a good start in August with the lovely new concrete walkway to the steps by the bunker. Each home game it gets better, something to celebrate and build on next season. Whoever the architect is, they get my vote for player of the season.
That leads to an interesting point. Will the club do that weird thing of just pretending ‘player of the season’ isn’t a thing when we get relegated, just like in 2020?
Yes - if we had been able to continue tracking at 1.00 PPG, the outcome of this season would be looking a lot less predictable.....
The OP makes an interesting point. Xisco was of course out his depth but unless my memories failing me shyte performances with him didn’t equal total collapse and embarrassments like the 4-0 to Palace & Wolves or the 3-0’s against Norwich and Leeds. And he had to use Cathcart, Masina etc. My only conclusion is the players were still shyte but they ran for him at least and maybe cared more? I dunno. Would’ve been interesting to see what he could’ve done with a bit of quality like Kamara and a integrated Louza.
The scorelines weren't such obvious embarrassments, but the performances still very much were, and most importantly they were trending strongly downwards - it's the reason why he was removed when he was. Several of his games were against very, very bad teams who have ended up being relegation rivals, too, and in Newcastle and Leeds, they were two of the worst of them - again, something that strongly contributed to him leaving when he did. As ever, because the disclaimer is apparently required, this is not to glorify in any way anything any coach we have appointed subsequently has done, but there can be a tendency to remember Xisco's Prem reign with semi-rose-tinted glasses in hindsight, especially given it began with that miraculous Villa spectacle in the sun on the opening day of the season. But he was unequipped to coach in this division, something that became increasingly apparent week by week until no one; not even the Stability, could ignore it, and if you go back and look I think you'd struggle to find more than perhaps a single person on here who wasn't of the 'Xisco must go' persuasion by the end. That PPG is also skewed in his favour by that opening day win combining with the relatively small sample size it was earned across. It would almost certainly have started to be chipped away at week by week had he stayed in place any longer.
I’ll say it again - sacking Xisco wasn’t the problem. The subsequent appointments were. Coupled with not buying any CB’s in the summer and losing our Championship winning CM’s over a matter of pride.
Xisxo got 7 points from 7 games, Ranieri got 6 points from 7 games but faced Liverpool, Manchester Utd, Arsenal, Leicester and Chelsea in those 7 games. We all know how it ended with Ranieri and we all know how it would’ve ended up with Xisco.
Yeah our having two of the worst transfer windows in a decade back to back has been pretty key too. Kucka, Rose, Kalu, Tufat, king, Sissoko, kayembe, fletcher, samir. All signed and all not good enough. Meanwhile Hughes and Chalobah gone because they wouldn't sign long deals. Not saying either were world class but they'd both have been some use.
Fletcher, Rose and Tufat all already gone from the club; it would be fuccking hilarious if it wasn't so depressing in wider context.