cityfanlee23

I'm not saying I lack confidence in us, but when I added Solanke to my Fantasy prem team and realised he was playing against us as a spurs striker, I made him captain and used my triple captain card.

Yep, I think we have had quite a unique situation, years of just wading our way through mess after mess, then we had 10 years of glory, we had it all, we had everything most football fans ever dream of, and it's been blown, completely wasted by an incompetent board, propped up by a weak owner who refuses to take any action. That's been the hardest pill to swallow, we haven't gone from heroes to zeros because of bad luck, or because of the natural ups and downs of football, we've gone to zeroes because of sheer incompetence at the top.

I wish the airport was further away now

Just got back from an airport run, have we been as bad as the shots suggest?

And I’m fully on board with that, but this is the cycle. We stay up, we continue with Rudkin and pray the manager can pull off another world class performance every week. Over time we continue to make poor financial decisions and it catches up with us and we are back to square 1, relegated with a massive financial cloud over us. I hope we stay up, we can’t really afford not to.

This. I think it has to be so bad that there’s no argument for Rudkin etc staying on. Sadly they will just point at the amount we’ve spent and Top will accept that.

For a few years now I’ve been having the same conversation with my Wednesday mate where we’ve both agreed that relegation could be catastrophic, but staying up due to a manager pulling off a masterclass is often just as bad, because it allows the owner/board to justify their previous actions. Wednesday have been doing it for years, now Danny Röhl looks to be papering over the cracks caused by the owner. We are in the exact same position. If cooper proves us wrong and pulls off a masterclass, the board will have an argument to justify staying on, and Top is too weak to sack any of them. We are effectively in a Lose-Lose situation. Even if we stay up we are just another season closer to the board taking us down.

Come on Tom, dig us out of this hole and finally put your name on the map.

You’d hope so, but given how our window is going he might end up as a key player for us as a sub.

His entire time here takes him out of that category. Entirely mismanaged and had one of the best goal to minute ratios at the club when he actually got game time, the amount of times we put on Slimani (the only man who could finish a cross) on the pitch and took off Albrighton (the only man who could put in a cross) was scandalous. Spent most of his time in Portugal as a goal poacher and was banging goals in for fun, signed for us and was told to drop deep all game.

Adding my name to "The Rest is Politics", great show. Alistair and Rory are fantastic in that setting and really show a great depth of knowledge and insight that we rarely get to see as average joe voters.

Knowing how Chansiri runs Wednesday he could be gone by next week because he didn’t win by 5

Yeah he was worth the gamble, personally I settled on “if we don’t go up” because although he’s done a phenomenal job, it’s a big step up, but given the pre season we’ve had I’d have taken Röhl all day long. The pressing today was fantastic, Rangnick/Klopp Heavy Metal Football. proper football imo.

Yep, he was one I wanted us to take a gamble on if we didn’t go for Corberan (in the period before it was obvious we were going after Potter and Cooper) Followed Röhl closely since taking over as best mate is Wednesday, the job he’s done there so far has been phenomenal, kept up a league 1 squad and his Points per game since arriving would have put them about 9th I think across the whole season. Then to start the season with this demolition. 30 shots on goal, if they had their shooting boots on it could have been even more embarrassing for Plymouth. Hope to see him in our dugout at some point!

What a manager Danny Röhl is becoming.

9 shots, 5 on target, lose 3-1.

I need to take a deeper dive into this and look at the actual statistics of each match, but a brief look at Coopers 2x pre-seasons at Forest in the Premier League both threw up multiple mixed/poor results. In 18 pre season games in charge of Forest: W5 D4 L9. They failed to score in 8 of those matches. Obviously both of those pre-seasons were stronger than our 4 game stint this season. 22/23: 23/24:

No, you didn't read that.

No, sorry just to clarify i'm not suggesting for a moment that you were, but the original comment I replied to seemed to be taking a subtle dig by randomly referencing all the fans that wanted Enzo gone as if it's somehow our fault that the club appointed Cooper. But I'm not for a second saying you were sniping. Also I would give you some credit on the social media point, it's often hard to really gauge what the fans want apart from social media, most fans on social media wanted Rodgers gone 10 games into the season we went down, but in the ground they were mostly supportive of him from what I'd seen, so it is difficult to gauge. Yes I agree Cooper hasn't been pragmatic so far, but we couldn't have known that until he took charge, prior to taking charge he had a pretty evidenced record of being pragmatic, which is what most teams trying to fight survival need, that's not to say having a strong Plan A system can't work, but I think most of the fans who wanted Enzo to leave thought that his particular plan would not work without significant investment, and without that investment he would continue to force us to play that way and ultimately it would cost us, but I agree that's just a prediction.

To some extent I would agree, we do seem to be changing systems rapidly, under Cooper forest would change formation but the general principles of player were not miles apart, they seem to have just changed the positioning on the pitch to try to nullify opponents strengths, so far in pre-season we haven't really had any consistent style, and the changing of player positions has not really worked. This is the time to experiment, but usually you'd expect us to have some sort of system in place as a foundation that you tweak, it has felt like Cooper doesn't yet know what he he wants to do, and although criticism may be harsh because we are 4 friendly matches into his tenure, it's undeniably concerning. I'm far less confident in Steve Cooper now than I was before we kicked a ball.

It's a guess based on the evidence we had of a full season, you're right we will never know, all we can do is make educated predictions. It's fine to say to say you prefer Enzo's way, right now I agree most probably would given how poor we have been, but again, that's hindsight. Enzo had major flaws as a manager that most thought would be exploited, and Chelsea have been a bomb scare in pre season. The sniping is coming from people who are saying things like "Yeah for all you people who wanted enzo out what do you have to say now huh??!!?!" or words to that effect, that's just pointless sniping and it's disingenuous, I saw maybe 5 people maximum who wanted Cooper as their #1 choice, and the reasons given were legitimate reasons and well-argued. Many fans didn't WANT him but accepted him and got behind him because of his record with young players and his pragmatism, which most fans wanted. It's easy to forget but 10 games before the end of the season the fanbase was majority Enzo out mid-season, or at least Enzo out after the season conclusion, they were for reasons that had nothing to do with Cooper. Again, this idea that a premier league manager who had kept a team up, and was on track to keep them up again despite the club being in a transfer mess, didn't have a plan is just ridiculous, every single manager in this division has a "plan", some are just easier to understand, Enzo's system is really clear because he refuses to change it even when it's not working, you can't miss his plan, that doesn't mean that someone like Ten Haag doesn't have one because it's less obvious. Pragmatism in approach to your opponent is in itself a plan. Again, it's not about saying we can't compare what we have now to what we had before, it's about the subtle digs that Enzo fans are now taking to anyone who wanted him to leave on the basis of hindsight, it's pointless. Barely any of us wanted Cooper as our first choice, but that doesn't delegitimise wanting Enzo to move on. Criticise Cooper all you want he deserves to be criticised for his pre-season performance in charge of us, because whether we are short on player quality, he's obviously made our existing players play worse so far. But don't use that to snipe at fans.

Credit to his dad but for his foresight but I don’t think anyone could be prepared for that

No, it’s using known information about his style of play and stubbornness to make a prediction over how we will do given our financial restrictions. Using the past performance of Enzo to attack cooper is just using hindsight to attack a guy who has inherited a mess because you believe he doesn’t have a Plan A, something that was impossible to know before he took charge here. Of course it’s an undeniable fact that Enzo pre season looked better, again, what’s the point in this observation? Everyone can see we look poor, but you’re comparing the past to the present using hindsight. It’s a silly argument (my original reply was to a post that implied some of the fans are to blame for the current mess because we wanted Enzo to leave even though there were very legitimate reasons) You’re well within your right to compare the two side by side, but this pointless sniping between fans using hindsight to dig at others is irrelevant. Barely anyone wanted Cooper as #1. Pragmatism was his plan in the league, pragmatism is changing your team to counter the opposition and it’s a very legitimate plan. Just as sticking to one system is a plan.

Again this is such a pointless gotcha, cooper had a plan at Forest, how would anyone know he would come here and seemingly not have one? Enzo leaving and cooper joining are completely seperate events, many people wanted Enzo to go, I really don’t know of many who had cooper as their number 1 choice. We haven’t kicked a ball yet in the league, we play like we have in pre season and he will be gone in 5 games, but I also believe we would get battered under Enzo and think he won’t last the season at Chelsea. But I don’t see the point in comparing the two when we had absolutely no idea who was going to replace Enzo.