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I think getting our best young players minutes and experience is a necessity, not a luxury. If he doesn't want to chuck the likes of Alves into a relegation six pointer then fair enough but if we're not going to give them starts against League Two teams in the early rounds of a cup competition I'm assuming we currently don't really give a shit about, when are we?

I would be more inclined to share that position if I thought the next 5 games were likely to tell me anything about him that the first 5, or his managerial career to date, haven't already. I'd love to imagine that he uses the theoretically easy run post-Arsenal to get some wins on the board and generate some real momentum but if we can't win a home game against - or really even look any better than - an injury-hit, confidence-sapped, totally crap Everton, I'm not sure I see it. 10 games is a fair old chunk of the season and my view is that we will have wasted it by giving it to Cooper. Ultimately I think that with very few exceptions, managers are short-term concerns and consequently my thinking is: is he realistically the best manager for us at this moment and if not, move on - maybe that's too ruthless a mindset and obviously I don't expect a new appointment after every defeat but broadly speaking that's how it seems to be. Change "the best manager for us" for "the best job for me" and I imagine that's how Cooper or any other manager will be thinking. We don't owe one another any loyalty. If people rate him and think he'll come good then though I don't agree, I find it easier to understand that position than "no he's not very good but we can't get rid just yet" which I accept isn't what you in particular are saying.

Interestingly, nobody who thinks he needs to be given time seems to believe he is actually a particularly good manager or will necessarily do anything positive with that time, more that he is a manager and all managers need to be given time, essentially out of courtesy. It's like we have to wait until we cross an invisible line in terms of games wasted until we can get rid of him, when it will suddenly arbitrarily become acceptable. You can't sack a manager after x games but x+1games? Yeah go ahead.

He's so bad and there's not really anything to suggest he's going to get any better but nonetheless we've got to GIVE HIM TIME just in case he does. What's the point? I don't know if it's a British thing and our attitudes just haven't caught up yet, like how we were really weirdly suspicious of sporting/technical directors up until fairly recently, but we badly need to get over this idea that sacking a manager is some monumental thing and the ultimate dishonour you can bestow on someone. Steve Cooper is not going to be made homeless and destitute if he loses his job, and he'll probably get another one fairly quickly at a level he is actually comfortable at. He's not very good, someone else could almost certainly do a better job, let them do it - no hard feelings, everyone moves on. Managers get sacked, it's fine. Worrying about our precious reputation and letting our fear of people pointing and laughing at us get in the way of making the obviously correct decision is how we ended up letting Rodgers sink us.

No hard feelings Steve but please can you **** off, you are shit

What a result. Can't see many teams taking points off them this season, they are a top quality outfit. Good work Steve

Not if Steve Cooper has anything to do with it

Probably not? Our Premier League winning captain was a Forest academy graduate and their longest serving player when he joined us, and one of our greatest ever managers won the European Cup with them. I'm sure there is a minority who hold it against him but I think most people who have a problem with Cooper are less concerned about him having managed them and more about him not being very good at this level.

I also thought that most of our really good performances last season came against better teams - Southampton home and away, Leeds away (arguably our best performance despite somehow contriving to lose), Bournemouth away in the cup - and the games we really struggled in were mainly against bus parkers. I've no doubt we'd have been on the end of some hammerings along the way but I think we'd probably have been OK if he was given the same sort of backing as Cooper. For all that they are spoken about as being at opposite ends of the pragmatism scale, Enzo for me did a much better job of actually utilising the strengths of his squad than Cooper has in his admittedly short time. That is maybe more reflective of the fact that as far as a lot of people are concerned, pragmatism = none of this tippy tappy nonsense, get it launched rather than what it actually means.

To add to this, the periods in which we are "competitive" usually come when we abandon his plan of getting everyone behind the ball and hoping for the best in favour of actually trying to attack and get our creative players on the ball in decent positions. When we indulge his conservative instincts e.g. the first hour against Spurs, the 5 at the back Coady masterclass against Palace, the Villa game until Operation Keep It Tight had left us two down and we threw on our actual footballers, we've looked properly crap.

But then we might not have been able to afford to give Bobby Reid a three year deal

That last 25 minutes or so was absolutely rank from Spurs. Aimlessly serving up crosses for Gabriel and Saliba to swat away.

Tranmere, where he started out looking very rusty but was ultimately fine, and?

The consensus when he came seemed to be that no, he's not very good but with the points deduction looming we couldn't do any better. Now there's no points deduction, what exactly is the case against binning him other than it being a bit impolite? Nobody can seriously believe he is the best available option.

If the player in question has no business being on the pitch then yeah probably. Coady is both lacking in match fitness and crap so it's not an enormous surprise that if you throw him into that situation it doesn't pay off. The mistake is his fault but it is Cooper's fault he had the opportunity to make it - that's not hard to understand either is it?

Well we've gone from sitting back at the start of games, hoping for the best and conceding to doing it at the end of the game instead so you can't say he's not willing to mix it up. Nobody can have been the least bit surprised by that ending when our plan to secure the win was to bring on ****ing Coady and Hamza and get everyone behind the ball.

Yeah and that is an argument that actually makes some sort of sense whereas saying he's out of form doesn't, that's all

I know it's not mate but I'm not sure why you're rolling your eyes given you're the one saying he's "shit out of form" based on one cup game. If you want to talk about his form you'll have to forgive me for referring to when he was actually playing regularly.

He's just been one of the key players in the team that won the Championship and since then has played 0 league minutes

I was encouraged to give WoW a try so had a crack at the free trial. I've been playing games of all sorts for a long time now and I can honestly say I can't ever remember being so bored. Presumably it livens up quite a bit once you get better gear and more powerful abilities, are doing more difficult content that requires more coordination and strategy etc. but I had so little fun I never felt even vaguely tempted to stick with it for that long. Would be interested to know if anyone else has come to it recently and really enjoyed it or if it's the sort of thing that you need some sort of previous attachment to in order to get anything out of it.

Even as someone who has never been massively into international football and was hugely underwhelmed by England at the Euros, I had a lot more fun watching the two Nations League games than I have watching Leicester's first three

Not quite what I was hoping for but it'll do

Fingers crossed someone, ideally Rice, sticks the mother of all reducers on Coleman second half

When you see that list it really is incredible people still talk about it like some guarantee of success - none of those are what you would consider good signings. Vestergaard is probably the closest and yet he's made a positive contribution in one of the three seasons he's been here. Perez was an OK-ish player but one we either overpaid or dramatically overpaid for depending on which of the reported £16m/£30m fees is accurate. Bertrand was a complete and utter waste of space and Ward was the biggest on-pitch cause of our relegation. Bennett was shit but at least he was presumably cheap and didn't stink the place out for longer than half a season.

Listened to a lot of Gorillaz this week. Last few projects have been a bit hit and miss for me but I still love Plastic Beach, which I was quite alarmed to see came out 14 and a half years ago