Jobyfox

That first half at West Ham must be a record length by now …

We need a merger: “Cooper - In or Out”

Seeing that this thread has been opened I thought I’d do a Cooper In post. Well sort of… I’d start by stating that I thought Cooper was the wrong appointment. He’d actually have been a much more logical appointment when we went for Maresca, but following him was a strange decision. He’s not the innovative manager that you’d expect to progress us if we did manage to stay in the Premier League. Even if he achieved that feat you kind of feel it’s only a matter of time before his limitations would be an impediment to further progress. There is logic for making a change sooner rather than later. The thing is though we do have Cooper. The people that run the club just aren’t going to sack him before Christmas. That’s unless we’d made a catastrophic start to the season. We’re going to have to let this play out for a bit. The encouraging thing I see is that I do believe that the players are playing for this manager. The come back against Southampton is evidence of this, but really it’s chalk and cheese if you look at our last relegation. A much more talented squad downed tools under Brendan and were just seeing out time. My 3rd concern is that we’d have to find somebody else who could quickly get a better tune out of this squad. I don’t like the summer signings (from Fulham and Crystal Palace) and that might be on Cooper. The squad is limited in ability. The type of manager that’s available mid season is generally not the same quality that you see out of season - especially if we’re struggling. We could end up in another Dean Smith type situation. The final point on this is that I just don’t see the point of the Cooper out thread going “hot” with every defeat or the generating of negativity within the fan base. It feels that we’re just making life more difficult for ourselves if we’re not vocal and united in our support. They’re not going to sack him so we may as well give it time. I think it’s inevitable that Cooper will go eventually. I understand the logic of acting before we’re too far adrift. I just don’t think it’s going to happen so we may as well be supportive. Whilst we’re out of the relegation zone nobody is going to sack him and the longer that continues is best for everybody - isn’t it?

Ipswich played with a lot of spirit last season and will this season too. They never give up and we will have to work hard to beat them. Wolves had a tough run of fixtures, but are now coming into a run where they play all the bottom clubs. I think the next 6 or 7 fixtures will decide whether they will be relegation rivals for the season or will eventually finish comfortably mid table. I want to be wrong, but I’m still struggling to find three worse teams than us. Maybe Southampton and Ipswich, but who are the 3rd? I thought it might be Everton, but I just think Dyche will ensure that they stay un-flushed for another season

As long as it’s Manchester City

I have him in my FPL team as well

I’m not sure what that exactly means as I have no fear of “Forest plebs” having us sussed. If, however, it means that Nuno has more tactical nous than Steve Cooper … well … yeah …

I’m just wondering whether this thread, or the other one, will be hot at 10pm tonight

This discussion always comes up when we play Forest. The real answer is not that difficult. Forest and Derby maintain their big rival is with each other. It’s an important part of their identity. Maybe it reminds them of past glories (1970s) when, briefly, they were important clubs in terms of the shake up for honours. For Leicester it is much more nuanced and depends what part of the county people live in. A saw a fan survey a few years ago and Leicester fans voted Forest their biggest rivals - but it was something like Forest 48%, Coventry 30% and Derby 22% (give a few percentage points either way). The important point to note was Forest came out as the biggest rivals, but less than half the fan base actually felt that way. I don’t know the numbers now, but I would imagine it would be similar. Perhaps more for Forest now we are both in the same division. One thing is for sure and I mean this seriously. The desperation of Leicester fans to be Forest’s main rivals is significantly less than the desperation of Forest fans to tell us that we’re not. As I say the rival thing is a much more important thing in a Forest fan’s identity. It’s rarely discussed here and generally only comes up when a Forest fan visits our board and raises it

I remember Leon Crncic but, I must admit, I can’t put a face to the name

Chilwell on loan

That’s not the point I was making. In fact it was the opposite! If you read this thread through from the beginning you would see that people were making comments about the make up of the group. Any group is never going to be representative of every community whatever its intent.It seemed a bit ridiculous to me that the thread was going to continue in that vein until we mentioned everyone.. I was trying to put a stop to it in a slightly irreverent way. Obviously it was too subtle for you - my apologies

It’s not the quality of the competition that is the issue for me. It’s the gradual erosion of any chance that 90% of the clubs will be able to compete. We’ve already got: European coefficients, seedings, tried dropping the failed CL sides into the Europa, UEFA FFP and now this group format. It’s Super League by stealth and they’re just throwing a bone to the likes of Leicester and Brighton when they really don’t want us in the competition

They were also prolific employers. There must be several million people who have relatives who worked there is some capacity as a groundsmen, coach, tea lady or steward. “I only support Man United because my great grandad used to mow the pitch at Old Trafford …”. Hmmm….

Agree 100% The whole system is more and more geared to the big teams winning everything in a perennial battle against each other. It’s a money trough because the bigger teams generate the revenue. It’s a yawn fest to me! I want to see smaller clubs compete consistently and that’s where the interest is. I’m not really bothered about RM winning the cup for the 100th time. Unfortunately, for us, it’s the armchair fan with a Sky TV subscription that generates the money and the direction of the game

It’s actually a pretty good level to aim for in the Premier League. Before the season started most pundits would probably have predicted a 10th - 15th place finish for Forest and a 15th - 20th place finish for us. If you were looking at this literally you’d probably say that Forest are a below average side and we’re a poor side. But you’re quite correct - the reality of the PL is usually that the top few sides are a different level. The rest are average to poor. On that basis this is a game we should target to win at home, but it’s likely we’ll need to be at our best

Unlike Eduardo, Ayew at least has a point. He’ll generally put some effort in, help retain possession and win fouls to take the pressure off the team. I think he’s a good sub to come on late in games, but he’s not a starter. Neither Ayew or Eduardo are great. Reading between the lines on the Crystal Palace forum they were pleased to see both go, but were thankful of past contributions from Jordan. They’re only reminiscing about JA now because they are doing so unexpectedly badly. Better a player who puts a shift in than one who goes missing even if they are technically inferior. It’s not about being proven right I’d really love Ayew to succeed. But his goals and assists record is poor at this level and it will go two ways from here. We’ll either get relegated and be playing more at Ayew’s level or we’ll stay up and have to transition him out of the squad. Ayew, Eduardo and BDCR are poor, uninspiring, signings - although Ayew is the best of the 3. One goal against Southampton isn’t going to change that view for many and, personally, I’m inclined to agree with them

Is this thread going to point out every single community that’s not represented within the photo? Ok Where is the disabled person? …. And … they all look very heterosexual

The sensible money would probably be on a 0-0, although I’ve got a horrible feeling of 1-0 to them with Wood as the goal scorer. So now I’ve said that - It’ll be a goal fest

Well I put him in my fantasy league team last week because we were playing Southampton. I’m going to keep him in for this one in the hope it’s a positive omen

There is actually a strong argument that one of the reasons for our demise was not selling players. Our model for years was sell one a year and then reinvest. A bit like Brighton are doing now. The season we went down was about the first time we didn’t sell one of our star players and had finished (from memory) 5th, 5th and 8th in the previous 3 seasons. The squad and team were easily strong enough to survive that season. The real reason we went down is that we’d got a manager who’d checked out and mismanagement off the pitch. It wasn’t selling players that caused it, but buying too many players that just weren’t fit for purpose

… evidenced by Brendan Rodgers playing Ward in goal and Amartey as the first choice CB

… or, presumably, throw away a 2 goal lead and lose in the last minute

They looked pretty good against us for 60 minutes. Might have been a completely different narrative if that Faes (almost) own goal had gone in

The narrative from Bristol City about Maynard was that they “wouldn’t sell to a rival”. They had relatively new ownership and were quite ambitious back then. Our bids got higher and higher. It really was like Monopoly money under Sven. Bristol City held firm, but eventually lost him to West Ham at a fraction of the price we offered. It turned into a very poor decision from Bristol City and Maynard never did much at West Ham. Considering the money we’d have parted with we were the ones who probably got lucky (Interestingly enough Maynard hasn’t played above Championship level since 2014 and is only 1 month older than Vardy)