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The one thing he's almost certainly not going to do is quit - it's the only way for him to lose in this situation. Keep us up and he's done a good job with his reputation increasing accordingly. Fight bravely against relegation but end up going down and he can point to the squad not being good enough, as well as him being the ideal fit for taking us back up. We absolutely stink the place out and his position becomes untenable, he gets sacked with a nice juicy payoff while still being able to reasonably blame the board/squad. I've no doubt he's frustrated but unless he's got a better job lined up - which he won't have - there is no good reason for him to leave. A few people were convinced Rodgers would quit as well when he was complaining about the squad to anyone who would listen and unsurprisingly he came to the conclusion he would rather get paid a lot of money to **** off than do it for nothing.

If the embarrassment of getting relegated with the 7th highest wage budget in the league, having hundreds of millions worth of players walking away for free and wasting so much money that we wind up with a points deduction isn't enough to convince them something is very badly wrong, I'm not sure getting whined at on Twitter is going to be the catalyst for change

Yeah my concern is the regular changes he would make at Forest could be interpreted as him being flexible and adaptable, but it could also just as easily be him not really having any idea what he's doing and just throwing shit at the wall until something sticks. I can imagine us taking a few batterings early on while chopping and changing and then going full damage limitation 5 at the back everyone behind the ball for the rest of the season, which I can't see keeping us up or being at all pleasant to watch.

It's also just not realistic to expect a team without the very best manager and players to be able to switch between a variety of markedly different styles and be equally good at executing all of them. I can't ever remember seeing a team whose tactical setup completely changed from week to week depending on their opponent. Unless you have enormous wealth and pulling power the natural end point of the sort of "pragmatism" people want is a team that lacks any sort of coherent identity and, rather than trying to focus on doing one thing really well, ends up doing lots of different things not very well.

Well prepared for him to be the latest poor soul to disappear into the Bermuda triangle for promising strikers that is Leicester City

I don't think he's even that is he? Just played on the left of a three last season. I think the actual reasons for signing him were he's meant to be marginally quicker than our other centre backs and more importantly he's with the same agency as Cooper so we didn't have to do any scouting.

The fact there are bigger problems at the club doesn't mean that Cooper not being a very good manager isn't also a problem

Buzzing for this season. No more tippy tappy inverted full back possession nonsense, just good old fashioned pragmatism

That's part of the problem though isn't it - change of manager should not mean change of direction. The point of having a director of football is to ensure that isn't the case. If making a new appointment means having to rethink our transfer strategy and making players we signed for the previous manager suddenly surplus to requirements, that means we are doing something wrong. Then again, maybe it is actually better to have the club's direction dictated by the whims of the current manager than by Jon Rudkin.

I get people are disappointed by yet another humbling reality check but I have never really agreed with the complaints about "developing other teams' players for them" as if it's a good deed we're doing them out of the kindness of our hearts rather than a mutually beneficial transaction. The real question is why we decided to spend what was presumably a decent chunk of our budget on yet another centre back and then our target for a position of actually quite desperate need is a loan for a mid-table Premier League squad player, though with this coming totally out of the blue I suppose we can't discount the possibility we've got another attacking midfielder lined up.

You see in basically every thread someone posts something balanced and reasonable along the lines of "I think X" and then people jump on it with "so you're saying you think Y?! You're an idiot". Worrying the amount of posters who don't know how to hold two opposing ideas in their head at the same time or engage with arguments in a way that isn't completely binary, and it makes discussing things like the ownership even more pointless than it already is when you know people either haven't read what you've posted or are deliberately misrepresenting it

Worth a gamble at a certain price, yes. They supposedly want about £20m for him which is very questionable value for a 28-year-old with one good season above League One level and not a lot else. Look at the list of Championship top scorers over the past decade or so and then look at how many have come anywhere near replicating that form in the Premier League. Anyway, since this isn't the Szmodics thread - Carvalho would be good but surely a loan would be more likely? Wonder how much Southampton had rejected

If they really wanted to make amends they'd throw in Mac Allister, Szoboszlai, Endo, Tsimikas and Jota while covering all their wages as well

No emphasis at all on trying to get the team tactically ready for the season then? Again, I don't think people are pessimistic about the upcoming season primarily because we've lost a couple of friendlies - I personally don't give a shit at all about losing narrowly to Palermo and Augsburg. The squad is starved of creativity and our plan to remedy that seems to involve nullifying two of our three biggest creative threats from last season, having sold the other one. Our strikers are a 37-year-old who may or may not be fit for the start of the season, someone with 26 minutes of top flight experience and Daka. In midfield we are relying on Ndidi getting back to a level he's not been at for about three years. With the season starting in a fortnight we've made four signings and the net result is that our starting eleven is slightly worse. We have an as yet unspecified points deduction hanging over our heads. I think they are all valid concerns and have a lot more to do with why people are feeling negative than losing 1-0 to a mid-table Bundesliga team.

The results are not the problem

Friendly results mean very little - true We're going into the new season with a points deduction and (currently) a worse team, manager and tactical setup than we had in the Championship - also true

He had time off due to being at the Euros so he's played in the one friendly he's been available for. I would love to know more about how you've determined he thinks he's better than he is because as far as I can tell there is no substance to that whatsoever. He went to Bologna because he wanted to play as a full back not because he thought he was above the Championship, and even if he did think that I'd suggest the fact he went on to be first choice for a team who qualified for the Champions League would mean he had a fair point.

How good does he think he is exactly?

Reminds me a lot of [black_player_name]

I have always quite liked him, with the qualifier that I do tend to have a soft spot for non-scoring strikers. His numbers are pretty crap but you have to take into account most of his time at Palace has been under Hodgson with his game plan of get everyone behind the ball and then give it to Zaha. His work rate and ability to hold onto the ball under pressure make him a really good foil for proper goalscorers and creators and a handy outlet for teams that come under a lot of pressure, which you have to assume we will. On the other hand, we are in very short supply of those goalscorers and creators and having just signed a 30+ year old versatile forward with little/no resale value whose main attributes are his adaptability and work rate, you have to question whether another one needs bringing in. For a low enough fee I think it would make some sense, but sooner or later we are going to have to add some actual quality to the squad because graft and experience alone are not going to keep us up.

That's about right for Everton going off Transfermarkt figures. Stones, Lukaku, Gueye, Digne, Gordon, Richarlison, Kean, Iwobi and Onana all went for big money, then there's a few like Barkley, Klaassen, Lookman and Godfrey who fetched 10-20m each

Per 90 minutes, Daka scored and created more goals, attempted and completed more passes, performed more shot and goal creating actions, completed more take-ons and had more touches in every area of the pitch including the final third and opposition box than Cannon, yet apparently the former is absolutely useless and the latter deserves a chance in the Premier League. Cannon is fairly clearly third in the pecking order and aside from looking a tidy finisher I'm not sure from what I've seen of him so far what it is he's actually meant to be good at. Unless someone offers us reasonable money for Daka I think a loan suits everyone provided we can get someone decent in.

That's what I want from Cooper if we lose to Spurs

Like Weghorst, I don't really mind Ayew and despite his pretty crap goalscoring record he probably doesn't entirely deserve the reputation he's got. Can play a few positions, works hard, outstanding injury record. But also like Weghorst, not at all who I'd want to see added to a squad light on goals and creativity. Can't see that we need another half-decent 30+ versatile forward and at least Decordova-Reid was free.