Kitchandro

One of those games where the manager gets cut some slack because we finished the game on the front foot, when the truth is he lost us the match by not starting the sort of attacking players who got us our goal. It is a difficult job here, but Cooper is not helping. He needs to realise we need more wins than other teams to survive because of the points deduction. The starting line-up was so negative, that midfield 3 is dreadful. Ref didn’t help by continually getting in the way, stopping the match, falling for their antics, inconsistent with his cards - and on the replay the Tielemens tackle on Vardy when there was a big protest from our players, looked a blatant penalty. The squad is weak but Cooper’s selections are making it worse. Poor manager.

Unless Edouard turns out to be the second coming of Vardy it’s been a poor window. Strange thread this, very negative until the window shuts and then people are happy because we signed another Palace reject on loan. We simply haven’t got enough goals in the squad and creativity comes down to Buonanotte, Fatawu and El Khannouss, who are realistically the only players who offer potential. Defensively we are very poor; too slow and mistakes all over the place. Yes we’ve signed players, but the majority of them don’t even improve our first 11. Are we better than last season? Not likely to be honest. I know it’s a difficult situation with the points deduction and spending restrictions. But once again the planning seems to be lacking. I can’t see the thought process in several of our signings besides just filling the squad with bodies.

It’s easy to just blame social media. I’ve no doubt it’s a factor, mainly because of all the negative news stories on there, like Parafox says, 25 years ago you were barely aware of this stuff. Now you have all this perspective of the world (i.e. it’s not a good place), and that’s too much for kids to handle. But frankly, I just think these figures are an accurate reflection on what life is, especially for young people. I’ve always thought school was a horrible, depressing place focused on conditioning you rather than helping you to become the best version of yourself. Everything about it is about fitting in with social expectations and, in the long term, funnelling you into areas of society where you will be most useful to it, rather than teaching you how to make the best of your life for yourself. Growing up is essentially realising that life is loads of pressure and expectations on you with no likelihood of fulfilment or enjoyment, the prospect of chasing down your next paycheque just to keep yourself alive felt very acutely even in your early teens. Connection is difficult because people (teens and adults) are just faking their way through life to be able to get through it. I had anxiety for my entire adolescence and was not fully aware of it until I was an adult. In my opinion, this is a typical experience. Even as adults, I think most of us are empty or depressed on a regular basis, but that feeling is normalised until we have just accepted it as part of living. We then project this onto our own children and the cycle continues. That’s why young people are key to making society better, they can see why they don’t like it without the prejudice of being conditioned to accept it. Society absolutely does not care about children or young people, I just think things are getting more accurately reported now (much like they are now with neurodivergence and sexual preference etc). This is one positive at least, the kids are understanding how they feel more and that’s a start.

At the same time there are probably hundreds of relatively unknown managers with potential out there who would have come. The type who back themselves to overcome a challenge and exceed expectations to put their name out there in a big European league. What do Brighton do? They scout. Our scouting may as well be non-existent, that’s why we end up with people like Cooper, Puel, Reid and Ayew. Maresca, as much as I didn’t really take to him, was at least a rare occasion where we didn’t just take the easy option - albeit it was still a bit basic to go ‘we’ll just get the guy who works with Pep and we’ll play like Man City’. Cooper isn’t an ambitious manager and it shows. He’s not at fault for us being relegation favourites, but he’s not an asset either. We could do better if we took scouting and preparation seriously.

Did he offer any goal threat or creativity? If the answer is no, he did badly. He’s a forward. I’d suggest he offered nothing in aid of us getting an equaliser. And that’s my issue with the signing, winning a free kick is not enough. We need goals and assists, otherwise why are we paying him?

Pretty much what I expect from us this season. The players are poor, the manager is poor, we’re not good enough. Chasing the game at 2-1, you look at the 11 on the pitch and you know there is very little chance of us scoring. Ayew and Reid are embarrassing signings and I don’t care what people say to the contrary.

So he gets fouled. Is he the only player on planet earth we can find who runs around and gets fouled? Sure there’s no young players with those qualities? The argument isn’t whether he’s liked at Palace, or even if he’s better than we think. It’s whether he offers something significant that we don’t already have in the squad. Otherwise, he’s a pointless waste of money, even if he’s an ok player.

NP was also bringing in young, quality players as a priority. With Vardy, Vestergaard, Ricardo, Ndidi, Reid, etc. we’re not short on experience. We’re short on quality. So again, we ask, what is the point of this signing?

Don’t want to get carried away because the half time score could have been embarrassing and this defence will ship a lot of goals. However, for the first time in years we saw grit and determination in a game we looked outclassed in, and that turned the tables. It’s amazing how much better we looked purely because of getting a bit of confidence from the goal. Very encouraged by Buonanotte, Vardy looked like he still belongs. Not confident we’ll stay up or anything, but a bit more hope than before the match.

Soumare on for someone playing well, no defending that decision.

Should have stayed on.

Considering the defence are playing like they’re not even on the pitch we may as well take one of them off and bring on a midfielder or Mavididi.

In 30/40 years time they won’t have bothered going for 25. There is absolutely nothing attractive about our club to teenagers or grown adults, the older fans will die and our fanbase will shrink. Parents won’t take their kids eventually as well, because it’s too expensive and they never had an affinity with the club when they were a teenager (i.e. now). Football represented something to me when I was young, now it represents something completely different. I still want the team to do well, but I’ll never pay for a ticket again.

It happened with Eric Dier, so yeh. He might be amazing for all I know but Spurs are not much better than mediocre really.

He was the only one who wanted the job that the board had heard of and had managed in the Premier League before. When research and planning is as poor as it is at this club, you’re giving yourself a very small and uninspiring pool to choose from. I’m not saying ‘Cooper out’, we are down anyway with this squad and a points deduction so regardless of his lack of quality it’s not fair to start pointing the finger at him and being publicly cruel. However, if someone never wanted to appoint him in the first place isn’t it just consistent to say they still don’t want him in charge for the Spurs game?

Things that remind you of LCFC related things but aren’t. This ran at Leicester races today:

Gary and the boys totally delusional. They may have been told to be positive but they sound absolutely ridiculous. If England lose they will have to change their tune.

Difference being Greece got the most out of what they had. They had average technical players and, crucially, no pace, so they couldn’t really play effective open football. England and France should be battering some teams 3 or 4 nil, but they have chosen to be negative. That’s what makes them so hateful for neutrals. It would be a travesty in one of them won.

Whether you think the decisions are technically correct or not it just isn’t right to see matches decided by marginal things so open to interpretation. And by the way, the thickness of the offside line is a variable. If the word ‘deliberate’, is written in the rules (and I’m led to believe it still is), then there is no way to interpret that. It’s a word with a definition, it’s either deliberate or it isn’t.

English ref having another shocking game here. Any time a German goes down he’s giving them a free kick.

With that line-up Spalletti has no one but himself to blame if they lose.

Greece at least beat the best ever Portugal side (twice), one of the best ever French sides and one of the best ever Czech sides, also drew with Spain. England wouldn’t have made it out of their group in 2004.

Now that is revisionism, we were really defensive for most of that match.

Nothing against Scotland myself, but they’re a terrible side who deserve to be out. Hungary would be very lucky if they make it through themselves. Scotland might feel a bit robbed with the penalty decision but I’m not having that a keeper can knock a player out and it not be a foul. Anywhere else it’s dangerous play and a red card (never hear anyone defending broken leg challenges as a sending off even if it’s a total freak incident).

Professional opinion is exactly why clubs end up with crap badges. It’s not supposed to be a soulless company with a ‘clean’ logo, it’s supposed to be inspiring, beautiful, artistic. That hospitality logo is none of those things.