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They went from not qualifying for any major tournament for a decade to being ranked no.1 in the world for ages and smashing their qualification groups every time. Even if you don't rate some of those players above as world class or whatever, a golden generation is relative to the players you've had previously and on that basis I don't know how you could argue it isn't one.

If you think the squad is that bad then it also kind of undermines the entire 'Cooper In' argument because in that case it is going to take a much better manager than him to keep it up, unless you think it's so awful that nobody attainable could hope to do so in which case we might as well have just not replaced Enzo at all and saved the money.

Obviously a player like Rodri is always going to be a huge miss and they have players who can fill in all over the place but how has a team with that much money and such a good record in the transfer market ended up with a squad containing one defensive midfielder and one striker?

Aside from the very obvious point that plenty of others teams have played that way and not been relegated, having a defined and consistent style is not about possession or playing out from the back. Bournemouth under Iraola, Brentford under Frank, Wolves under Nuno or more extremely Burnley under Dyche are good examples of teams who had/are having success while being direct and having relatively low possession. The complaints about Cooper's style aren't that we aren't sexy enough or we don't have enough of the ball, it's that there is no discernible style, no real philosophy or plan that guides him and that the team can work towards perfecting every week other than vague notions of working hard and trying to stay solid - that is not enough at this level.

He's mastered the art of the fronting up interview where he says something along the lines of "that's on us, we'll hold our hands up" and then goes on to complain about all the ways it was not, in fact, on us. Like a lot of people I assumed Forest's victim complex around officiating came from the owner but maybe that was not entirely the case.

Some of the problems yeah but the problems of the team visibly being awfully coached and having very little belief in/idea of what they're being asked to do, hopefully not. I won't argue for a second that he's been dealt a particularly brilliant hand but nor do I believe for a second there doesn't exist somewhere in the world a willing replacement who could play it better - we're not a plum job but we are a pretty well-known club in the richest and most watched league in the world and currently our expectations are pretty low. For me if the squad isn't up to it (which I might debate) and neither is the hierarchy (which I wouldn't) then it's even more important to get in the best manager possible but the argument always seems to be that everything else is crap so we need to keep our crap manager to complete the set.

Something something pragmatic something something give him time something something but who would you get in

He may not be the biggest underlying problem but that doesn't mean he isn't a problem, and it's quite a bit easier to solve the problem of the manager not being very good than it is to change the ownership or entire squad. I do back the team and I do largely blame the board but I also think that as a Premier League manager, Steve Cooper is not up to it and there's not really any point in perservering with him on the basis that the people above him also aren't.

By the way, how many ****ing yellow cards is this ***** on now? He must have more than most players

Our preparation for Brentford should be having the whole squad spend the week digging the biggest hole possible and then chucking this twat in it

I wish I could see it but I can't, especially now we've scored and made it look respectable. Even if Palace and Ipswich somehow both win and we go 18th I don't see them having the appetite to get rid

Then as Fernandez is getting onto the rebound he's stood there shrugging his shoulders, top work all round

I've got good news for you

The ones that stand out as probably being worse in recent years are summer '21 and then the double whammy of summer '22 and Jan '23 - the former for Ryan Bertrand and ultimately not improving the first team at all despite being our record net spend, the latter for heralding the start of Project Danny Ward and seeing Fofana replaced with Faes while we sat on money that we then spent anyway only to still get relegated. Buonanotte on loan and Ayew for not much redeem this one slightly but spending £35-40m on two players in Skipp and El Khannouss who aren't regular starters is pretty ****ing silly, and that's before you look at us selling one of our best players from last season and giving Vestergaard a three-year deal after losing the only manager to get anything out of him.

It sounds like a proper diamond in the rough which I understand is basically the grand tradition of Stalker. I will definitely be having a crack a few big patches down the line when hopefully it's a bit more stable and the performance has improved to the extent I'm not going to have to set everything to low, crank up the upscaling and turn on frame gen just to stop it running like a slideshow.

The fact is that he joined in 2021 and being our third best player in a game we lost 3-0 is genuinely one of his highlights - that is why people want him gone

Yeah it's no surprise whatsoever that very few people want to be refs and the ones who stick with it long enough to make it to the top often turn out to be complete weirdos. You're expected to be both an impartial arbitrator with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the laws but also an elite athlete quick and fit enough to keep up with Premier League footballers for 90+ minutes. On the day you actually do your job you spend the game being berated and lied to by every player on the pitch, and afterwards you get publicly called out and blamed for the result by whichever manager you're perceived to have shafted. Then between games your every decision gets put under the microscope on TV/podcasts/newspapers etc. while millions of fans around the world say you're corrupt, useless or both while being mystified why the standards aren't improving and ex-pros would rather go into punditry.

There's four across the whole season which doesn't strike me as being far too many. Four weeks out of a season that runs from August to May is not really that bad and as much as it's not ideal how the first three have been so close together, there's now not another one until March so we can look forward to four months of sweet, uninterrupted Cooperball

Could maybe just not set up in a way that leaves him very badly exposed when he's clearly struggling and getting targeted by opponents every week then

This is the sort of insight I want to hear from a manager

If no-one else wanted it - which I have to say I'm not 100% sure would have been the case - then presumably a large part of that was because it was widely expected we had a points deduction incoming, which we now don't. That was the only reason why appointing him made any sense and it has since vanished. In the make-believe utopia where Cooper is sacked tomorrow morning, we wouldn't be asking someone to come in and perform a miracle with us starting on -10 or whatever.

Nobody can respond to this in a way that makes any sense. It's like because the squad isn't very good we need to pair it with a manager who also isn't very good. I'd have thought if you reckoned our squad was shit you would therefore want to get the best possible manager in to give it a fighting chance but apparently not.

"He needs time" - the team and indeed most of the players look worse the longer they spend with him, not better. "It's not his fault, the squad isn't good enough" - if the squad is really that bad then it's going to take a better manager to keep it up, isn't it? "Well who would you get in instead?" - I can't be convinced there are no available managers who are better than Cooper and would want a Premier League job. "We're 15th, what's the problem?" - we are so poor in so many areas that we are unlikely to finish that high and we look comfortably second best unless we're playing against 10 men. "People are only against him because he's ex-Forest" - couldn't be less relevant. "It's not Cooper, it's Rudkin and the board" - him not being the problem doesn't mean he's not a problem. I don't hate him or even really blame him - not his fault he's not a very good manager or that we thought appointing him was a good idea.

Why would he make a change? A meek defeat but by a narrow enough scoreline that he can talk up our effort and competitiveness will be exactly what he was hoping for

Be careful what you wish for