Guest

Partly the opportunity cost we would incur by spending wages and our second PL loan spot on someone who isn't particularly good, partly him being yet another signing who wouldn't necessarily improve our first team, partly him being another wide player whose game is more about work rate than goals or creativity when we already have Ayew, Reid and McAteer. He is probably better than the last of those but I wouldn't say there's any real reason to think he's an improvement on the first two or on Buonanotte. Even in our current position I would really like to believe we can do better, which I accept might make me a fantasist but if the alternative is accepting this is the quality of signing we are pinning our hopes on then I would prefer to remain in my dream world.

I also find his teams horrific to watch and think he often comes across as a complete cock but I would absolutely say he's a good manager - impossible to take a team of Burnley's relatively meagre resources from Championship mediocrity to European qualification otherwise. They consistently punched well above their weight and though I imagine the takeover at Everton probably means his days are numbered, his job there has again been to keep a shit team in the league and he's done so despite a points deduction and Frank Lampard.

It does mean however that if you go into a match thread and ask for a link to a stream, the SAS kick down your door and shoot you

He is well within his rights to see out the contract that we decided to give him and I don't blame him at all for doing so. Some players really want to start games every week, some obviously aren't as bothered - it's their career and it's up to them to do what they want with it. Make no mistake, I think he's an utterly shocking footballer and the thought of him starting another league game for us turns my stomach, but he didn't make us sign him and then give him a new contract just as he didn't make Rodgers and now seemingly Ruud choose him ahead of Iversen (who I also think is pretty shit but not quite to the same extent). If he'd rather spend a couple of years as our 3rd/4th choice on whatever insane wage we saw fit to offer him and make sure another generation or two of his family are financially set for life than go and play in League Two, fine by me.

Peter Drury doing everything in his power to ruin it

I agree completely with your general point about how opinions on everything from the squad and players to the training ground seem to swing dramatically from one extreme to the other every week depending on whether we've won or not. On Skipp though, it's not like that's his first ever game for us or in his career though is it? No I wouldn't expect anyone to look good playing next to Choudhury against Guimaraes, Joelinton and Tonali but he's not being judged on that game alone. He looks like a completely unremarkable player because that's what he is and my frustration is less about how good he is/isn't and more that despite our financial issues and a squad with some glaring holes in it, our biggest spend of the summer is on someone who now looks fairly set as our fourth-choice midfielder.

Shot in the dark here but I'm guessing it's because they would rather teams around us didn't pick up points

In that case even if we assume we're willing and able to send Edouard packing to facilitate it, it's the one loan signing we can make from a PL team with us presumably paying a fair chunk of his wages in the process, so again I would really rather we target someone who is going to be a definite starter in a position of more urgent need. As for guaranteed quality, we do know he can be a good player but his one outstanding season for us was a) in the division below and b) in a role that at this point there is no reason to believe Ruud has any great use for. Far be it from me to stop people being sentimental about a player they like but if we're honest that's what the enthusiasm about him potentially returning is about, rather than him being an especially brilliant player at this level or one who fits in with the new manager's system.

You could say that about any position though. Depending on how Stolarczyk is getting on we are potentially a Hermansen injury away from Wardageddon but that doesn't mean we should be prioritising signing a keeper. As much as I think everyone would be happy to have KDH back, if we're spending the £30m+ the (almost certainly bullshit) article claims Chelsea want then it really needs to be on a player who undisputedly improves the first eleven and looking at how we set up so far under Ruud, I don't think he necessarily does.

He's having a pretty decent loan spell and for the first time in his career seems to be nailed-on as first choice at Stoke so unless we think we can sell for a decent profit in Jan or we have our eye on a really good Prem loan and are able to sack Edouard off, leave him where he is. His development is not going to be served particularly well by dragging him back here to be our third choice.

If Cooper is in that neck of the woods for a job then I would think it's more likely Corberan is off to Wolves and he's the replacement at West Brom. Surely even the shittest Premier League teams aren't going to be looking at someone with two sackings under his belt in less than a year

Or West Brom for that matter. Spells at Saudi-owned Newcastle and the chaos that is INEOS Utd with their legions of directors and executives are probably not indicative of how he would perform here, though of course it's all academic because there is seemingly no chance Rudkin leaves or sees his power diluted

Pleased for him. Much as I never like to go all armchair psychologist/body language expert, his reaction to the equaliser doesn't seem like that of a player who isn't arsed and doesn't want to be here. Of course it will take a lot more decent performances to win people round but it's a start. I think with him we probably just have to accept that there will always be those inexplicable moments where he seems to forget he's participating in a football match and hope they're outweighed by the moments he turns into part Vieira part Zidane.

Personally if getting home a bit earlier was more important to me than seeing the game in its entirety, I would probably just not go in the first place. Never mind avoiding the worst of the traffic, you get to avoid all of the traffic and also don't have to spend loads of money on tickets and travel. In the same way a lot of our fans seem to go every week not because they actually enjoy it but just because it's part of their routine, I imagine many of those leaving early don't really have anywhere to be, they just leave early because they have always left early. Obviously if you want to do that every week irrespective of how the game is going then that's your right but it's also everyone else's right to think that doing so makes you a bit of a bellend.

Yeah same, just about to enter the last area of the first act. Went Monk and though it's a lot of fun I am tempted to start over as either Witch or Sorceress which I think are slightly less hard work