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Surprised our plan of getting it launched up to three forwards who are all under six foot isn't bearing fruit

Well the only thing I was particularly looking forward to in November was Path of Exile 2 which has been delayed, but you certainly shouldn't let that dampen your own enthusiasm for any/all of the following: 8th - Slitterhead (PC/PS/Xbox) - hot off the heels of the Silent Hill 2 remake we have this very weird-looking survival horror offering from the creator of Silent Hill. Not my thing but the setting looks cool and the monster design is appropriately bizarre in the way Japanese devs seem to specialise in. 12th - Farming Simulator 25 (PC/PS5/XSXS) - I cannot imagine you need me to describe this for you. 12th - The Rise of the Golden Idol (PC/PS/Xbox/Switch/Mobile) - indie murder-mystery puzzler and sequel to 2022's The Case of the Golden Idol. The mobile release is via Netflix apparently and for us PC folk there's a demo on Steam. 14th - Lego Horizon Adventures (PC/PS5/Switch) - it's Horizon made out of Lego which is not an enormously attractive proposition for someone who found the Horizon games quite boring and doesn't care about Lego, but it does look to have a certain charm to it. 19th - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (PC/XSXS) - please refer to the entry for Farming Simulator 25. 20th - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (PC/XSXS) - post-apocalyptic survival shooter, first entry in the series for 15 years and the product of a troubled development even before its creators had their country invaded by Russia. Despite everything it looks great and supposedly it'll be arriving on PS a few months down the line too.

Most of the posts I can see are either predicting we'll lose because we're shit or rightly pointing out it's a game we should really be aiming to win because as a fellow promoted team you're also quite shit and haven't won any of your games. Sorry we're not all sat here creaming our jeans over how brilliant Ipswich are and shedding a tear over what a privilege it will be to play against you but I would suggest you're probably in the wrong place for that.

Wank

Shame the result and performance took the shine off his goal somewhat because it's a brilliant finish, probably just about the only way he could score from that position and he executed it perfectly

Yeah we all know he's shit but he is so far down the list of people to blame for that result it's probably not worth bothering

Hahaha that is class. We were absolutely dominant having already conceded four in the first half to the most profligate team in the league, and then conceded another for good measure. I did start off feeling a bit sorry for him because he's obviously well out of his depth and it's not his fault we appointed him but any such sympathy is long gone now.

Just please not a draw. A win is obviously good against anyone but particularly a relegation rival and helps claw back some of the momentum we've lost over the last two games, a loss pushes Cooper closer to the edge (though probably still nowhere near over it). I can't be arsed with us scamming a point and then hearing about how well we battled and how many positives we can take from it.

We've very nearly just conceded a 42 minute perfect hat-trick to ****ing Casemiro

Jobby Reid

Some hit to be fair from that big old pudding

The Leeds team he finished 9th with was, with one or two exceptions, pretty ****ing rubbish. Luke Ayling and Stuart Dallas played every game and he got Patrick Bamford scoring as many goals as Son. As far as I can tell his success at Leeds was based largely on his ability to get a pretty average squad playing way above their ability.

Yeah I wasn't hugely optimistic but even compared to my relatively low expectations I think it looks properly crap, which is a shame because in theory it ought to be exactly my sort of thing. Maybe it improves the more time you spend with it but the writing, particularly where the companions are concerned, seems so lifeless and bland which for a story-focused RPG is a dealbreaker for me in a way something like wonky combat isn't.

Yeah I thought sacking Ronaldo off was one of the few good decisions he made during his tenure

Unable to sustain a performance sounds very familiar but finish we can definitely do. Man Utd are the biggest underperformers on xG whereas we are the biggest overperformers, and the stat that we're the only team other than Man City to have scored in every game is even more remarkable given how few chances we create and shots we take - we are lowest and joint-lowest for shots on target/90 and shots/90 respectively.

There are quite a few crap teams in the league and obviously it's relatively early days but I have a strong suspicion all three promoted sides are going to drop again (has this ever happened twice in a row?). Ipswich I just don't think have a very good squad at all, Southampton are Southampton and though I think we have enough quality about us to keep our heads above water it would be no surprise whatsoever to see us sleepwalk into another irrecoverable situation as we did with Rodgers. Everton simply can not and will not ever get relegated and the sooner we all make our peace with that the better. Wolves are crap but you would expect to pick up after a very difficult start. Palace and West Ham are no great shakes either but both have good enough managers that I think they will be fine and Forest look alarmingly solid.

He could but that would have meant turning down another crack at European football and the opportunity to reunite with the manager under whom he'd just had his best ever season, so I think it would be unfair to say the only possible motivation for choosing Chelsea is money. The impression I got was that he was not in any great hurry to leave regardless of the destination.

It was about the money yeah but primarily for us rather than him

We seem to have ended up with the worst of both worlds in that Cooper is a defence-first coach who doesn't actually appear to be any good at coaching a defence. I don't think we need some kind of miracle worker who's going to dramatically improve us across the board - if we had either someone who could make us more difficult to break down or someone who was capable of harnessing the attacking players we've got, we'd probably be OK.

On the plus side, we are almost at the magic 10 game mark where the consensus seemed to be that it suddenly becomes acceptable to sack someone

However slim the current pool of candidates is, it will be slimmer still after another month or two of Cooper working his magic. It might not be the plummest of jobs but I'm fairly confident it is a big enough draw that we could reasonably expect to improve on the present incumbent, provided we don't wait so long that whoever arrives does so needing to perform a miracle.

The bit I don't get - if you think the squad is shit then fine but surely in that case you would be even more keen to have a manager capable of elevating them above that level? The argument seems to be the players aren't good enough to stay in the league on their own merit so we might as well stick with our crap manager and make it even less likely.

This second half and in particular the complete lack of any positive response after conceding is enormously concerning given one of Cooper's apparent plus points is that he's instilled fight in the team and we're always in games. It could quite easily have been twice as bad and we could have had absolutely no complaints.

Nah of course not. I am well and truly resigned to seeing quite a lot more of this season slip away with him in charge.

Right how has he scored that then