nnfox

I've been watching football for a lot of years now. All I can say is that some managers work out, and some don't. Why that is, is a bit of an unknown. If it were known, then no professional club would ever select a "bad" manager. For me, Marti on paper ticks a lot of boxes. I'm disappointed that we haven't won a few more games, but then I remind myself of how the club is run... 1. Marti was brought in late into pre season. 2. We still had many of the players that have been poor performers for multiple seasons and multiple managers. 3. We spent zero pounds bring new players in. 4. We don't have a goalscorer and we don't have a creative midfielder. 5. There's a crap atmosphere hanging over the club, both from a bunch of relegated players and frustrated fans. 6. Points deduction incoming adding to uncertainty. I'm prepared to give Marti time. IF he's given funds to spend in January, then let's see what difference that makes. If he isn't given funds, then I say keep for the rest of the season (providing we're not flirting with relegation). We can't keep changing managers every 20 games, at some point you have to stick with one. It appears that we're about to enter a period of change at the strategic level of the club and who knows what that's going to look like. Maintaining a bit of stability on the training ground is, right now, of the highest importance.

Maresca would not have kept us up. We didn't have the players for his brand of football. Chelsea coming in for him was exactly what he needed.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that the situation must be pretty dire if raising income tax for the first time in 50 years is seen as a legitimate option. Another way still, is to present this as an option with no intention of following through to make the public fearful that it might happen, then deliver a less bad option and a proportion of the public will be relieved to the point of thinking that the less bad option is actually a good thing. I'm not sure there's much benefit for the anti-labour brigade to pluck stuff like this out of thin air to discredit Labour, because ultimately Labour hold all the cards come delivery and get the final say.

This is correct. The Chancellor does not do the maths. Whoever the Chancellor is, makes the decision. Often, they are tough decisions and rarely will everybody from business and the wider public agree that a given decision is a good one. Rachel Reeves will have been presented with a list of options to raise money for the nation. It is very likely that all options are crap. It is a very common tactic for these decisions to be tentatively made in the weeks leading to a budget and deliberately leaked to the press to measure public opinion. If it looks like the option will be a major vote loser, they won't do it because they want to stay in power. Sometimes they will use the tactic to present something very bad, then deliver something less bad - it can actually be a vote winner. Make no mistake, these decisions, whether blue team or red team are made with votes in mind. Actual finances are a secondary factor.

Squid Game - The Challenge is good

We need a striker. There is no point in discussing anything else until we have a striker that can actually score goals. Regardless of outgoings. Striker, striker, striker.

What a team we had around that time. Great memories.

They always leak ideas to see the reaction. Remember, the number one priority for government is to stay in power. Popularity is more important than doing the right thing.

So funny reading through this thread. Pointless. Did well. Get rid. Game changer. Never want to see him in the shirt again. First name on the team sheet.

Need some new deckchairs. Until that happens, all he can do is rearrange what we have.

We can't keep changing managers every 20 games. At some point we need to stick with a manager. So many bigger problems at the club right now, getting rid of Marti would increase the problems, not make them all disappear. Give him some money in January to buy an actual striker that can score goals and a creative central midfielder that can actually create chances. Nobody is winning anything with the current squad and until there are significant changes in the board room, or some decent funds are made available, nothing will change. Getting rid now costs us money we don't have to start a recruitment process that will not see a significant upgrade and make it even less likely to bring anyone in during January meaning we head into thr second half of the season with exactly the same dross players.

Surprised by this response to be honest. Taking Thomas and Carranza out of the team and replacing them with Kristiansen and Daka, does not suddenly change this club from mid table plodders to table toppers. I don't care who the manager is.

This really is a bang average squad, isn't it?

There was one witness saying that when police confronted him he was shouting "Kill me, kill me". Possible suicide by cop? This has shades of Nottingham. Utterly tragic.

Police just said it isn't a terrorist attack.

And how many operational cops work there on a Saturday evening? It won't have been bursting at the seams with cops sitting around waiting for a major incident.

I'm impressed with the police and ambulance response in Huntingdon. We're almost used to seeing this kind of thing in a metropolitan area where there are lots of cops in a relatively small area, but Cambridgeshire is essentially a rural county and Huntingdon is a small market town with nothing like the staffing we see in large cities. To have mustered that level of response on a Saturday evening so quickly is astonishing.

No. Strikers man marking goalkeepers, defenders dropping deep to counter it. You'd end up with both sets of teams in each others penalty boxes and the ball being lumped from one end of the pitch to the other. Ironically, I think there'd be even less space for creativity as teams defend deeper and deeper. Less Jamie Vardy, more Kiefer Moore.

Skipp for me. With Daka there was a player with a high ceiling. He hasn't realised that potential with us because of poor coaching and lack of game time, especially whilst in Vardy's shadow, but the signing made sense at the time. Soumare too, he had just won Ligue 1 in France, so on paper a solid signing. Hasn't worked out for him, he's clearly not suited to the English game (some players just aren't). Skipp though... Big transfer fee for someone who was a squad player at Spurs, who had one or two decent games alongside some quality teammates but had shown nothing else. Couple that with the fact we had cock all money at the time and central midfield was not the priority. So not only has it not worked out on the pitch (predictably) Skipp was also a bad strategic decision.

This forum is actually nuts. The club is in a terrible place and fans calling for the manager to go is frankly making the situation even worse. 22/23 - relegated with a squad that should have been competing for European football and then we lose Kasper, Maddison, Barnes, Tielemans, Evans, Soyuncu. They are replaced by Hermansen, Winks, Coady, Fatawu and Mavididi 23/24 - promoted, but lose KDH and Maresca and we are SKINT. 24/25 - We buy Skipp(?), BEK and Ayew and bring in Cooper as manager - we were always going to be up against it. Cooper goes. RVN comes in - another zero cost manager. Results are terrible all season, players bereft of any confidence. Relegated 25/26 - Another manager - Marti. He PAYS HIS OWN COMPENSATION to join us late in pre-season. Sees BEK, Vardy, Mads, Justin, Ndidi and McAteer leave. We spend ZERO money on bringing players in. Fans believe that we have some kind of golden generation of youth players that can somehow dismantle one of the toughest leagues in football. This season we've seen Monga quite a bit - he has a long way to go to fulfil his potential and I'm not convinced he strengthens the team right now. Page looked decent in one game and out of his depth in the other, Nelson looked extremely shaky, Alves is a way off yet. As for Evans, Aluko and others - maybe, just maybe, they're not quite ready yet and everybody needs to be patient with the core of a youth team that finished 10th in their youth league last season. These players are not about to set the Championship on fire, even if their potential is high. The squad is dire but there's NO MONEY to buy anyone. We demonstrated we have no money yet we're suggesting that before we're even half way through the season we should sack a manger and therefore have even LESS MONEY to improve the squad. It's plainly obvious that we are in desperate need of a proper striker that can actually score goals. It's plainly obvious that we need some creativity in the middle of the park. It's plainly obvious that we need to move more than a couple of players on. It's plainly obvious that the DoF is incompetent. It's plainly obvious that the owner is clueless. It's plainly obvious that we are desperately short of cash. Believe me... We have 99 problems, but Marti ain't one.

So maybe the manager isn't the problem?

It's currently a cat 4. Most models downgrade it to a 2 or 3 over Jamaica. Still likely to cause major disruption, but not as bad as it once looked (hopefully). Has generally been a quiet hurricane season this year.

Government sanctioned a couple of companies to leave their scooters lying around for all to hire... Hop on hop off type of thing. The schemes have been abused by many riders and it has created an unnecessarily dangerous environment for other road users. The scheme has failed as far as I'm concerned but it is further aggravated by private e-scooters that don't have the speed limiters or the lights that the government approved ones do. Frankly, it's a disgrace that you can walk into a reputable shop (like Currys) where they are all lined up ready to take away for a few hundred pounds. It's written in the small print of the small print on the label that these are for use on private land only and I'd bet that the sales staff don't point that out. They all need binning. E-bikes are even worse.

The thing is, I expect him to make mistakes and get things wrong at his age. My hope is that he's a fast learner and mistakes and wrong decisions become less and less. Little things like not making the run to the far post for a Fatawu cross, when that was the likely thing to happen. Things like for their goal, Carranza gets dispossessed because Monga wasn't available for a pass because he was stood stationary about a yard away from the ball. I have confidence he'll make a top footballer, just bear with him whilst he gains experience.

Meh. Just as I thought Daka was going to actually get the run of games he desperately needs, he gets dropped. Cifuentes the same as all our previous Daka managers... Clueless.