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Well, my expectations are low but good luck to him. Can't say I've noticed anything he's done recently, aside from being part of a team that got hammered by us under Enzo and lost to Steve Cooper's Leicester City, so I'm clinging on to him always having a world class first touch on FM for whatever reason

Sticking with Arsenal, not without flaws and capable of some truly honking football but they remain the best team overall, I reckon. Villa I think were always extremely unlikely to maintain a challenge and I still don't really believe in this iteration of Man City or their ability to go on one of their traditional late season rampages. Guehi and Semenyo are both obviously very good players but serious difference makers in a title race? Not sure.

Jamaal Lascelles

As far as I can tell he's started three games since 2023, came off injured after 16 minutes in the most recent of those, which was nearly two years ago. Might be that he adds a bit of character to the dressing room but if you're looking for someone to make an immediate impact on the pitch, I don't know how likely he is to do that. It's a bit Michail Antonio isn't it?

For what it's worth, the matchmaking takes into account how aggressive you are towards other players so to an extent you reap what you sow. I personally am the friendly and co-operative type, and a lot of the people I run into will worst case completely ignore me and best case offer to team up to help with quests and such, but the fact there is a possibility they might turn on me is one of the things that makes the game interesting imo.

What a worthwhile endeavour

Just seen the red, amazing stuff. How can you do that and expect anything else to be the outcome? There's definitely something going on where people assume because he's so horrendous with the ball he must be good at defending because otherwise that would mean he's absolutely shit, wouldn't it? What a defender, loves defending.

Other way around wasn't it? This comes up often enough that I regularly end up double checking and according to Henry Winter and James Nursey it was Vichai who made the call and was subsequently persuaded otherwise. Besides which, Pearson also went to work for Top at Leuven so unless that sacking played out particularly badly there can't be that much bad blood between them.

Remember his debut in the Community Shield, came on for the last 20 and Man City players were just bouncing off him. He can't have played another good 20 minutes combined over the rest of his time here. All the worst Bouba, you dosser.

Thomas, absolutely gash. I'm assuming the 10 he's on about is Bobby De Cordova-Reid who occasionally scores but otherwise doesn't ever really do anything of note. Skipp, while much improved recently after being utterly abhorrent for most of his time here, at 10 would be disastrous.

I've been looking at Understat and FotMob which together have a lot of what you would find on fbref, as well as some stuff you wouldn't, like shot maps

Our other strikers regularly look well off the pace in actual competitive games so I'm not sure that alone should be enough to disqualify him. I wouldn't have expected him to immediately step up and start banging goals in, and I do think he's better off going and (hopefully) getting regular senior football than hanging around here occasionally sneaking into the matchday squad at best, but I do think it's a bit of a shame he's not had any opportunities whatsoever, even in the cups.

This is it though - people think he's another Pearson and would make a Pearson-like impact and as far as I can tell it's largely because of things that aren't actually anything to do with what they're like as managers. The assumption seems to be that he's a stern, old-school manager who'll take no shit, instil discipline in the players, go back to basics and get the team organised when at West Brom (and I accept that there is more to a manager than their last job) basically the exact opposite happened and he got sacked with a worse record than Cifuentes had here.

Well fair play to him I guess for (finally) communicating but you can see why he and everyone else at the club have been so keen to keep a lid on this sort of thing because with every sentence it becomes clearer that we are totally ****ed. Comes across as broadly well meaning but alarmingly naive and utterly clueless. Doesn't know what's gone wrong, doesn't seem to really understand what had gone right beforehand, or how. It's one thing seeing the KP loyalist crayon eaters on Facebook and elsewhere droning on about COVID, Rudkin won us the league, just get behind the lads, we'll be fine and so on, quite another seeing basically the same stuff coming from the ****ing owner. I think I preferred it when I had the impression he'd just become distracted or completely disinterested because at least then there was the hope that he might get bored enough to sell up, but no, he's seemingly in it for the long haul. He openly admits he doesn't get how we've ended up here and we're expected to believe that he and Rudkin, who it is now abundantly clear is not only untouchable but is essentially getting a promotion, are switched on enough to oversee a recovery. What actually went wrong? "Dunno". What's the plan if, as looks likely, we don't get promoted this season? "Get promoted next season lol". It's so bleak.

He deserves better than this

Mavididi has been very poor but I have a degree of sympathy for any wingers in a team that offers them basically no support from anywhere and has Jordan Ayew the anti-footballer nominally playing as the striker. Some of the criticism of Fatawu I think has been pretty remarkable given he's one of our two players who actually ever does anything and he's usually had to run from deep in our half and skin about five players in the process. Not that it can be much easier being a striker under Cifuentes but Carranza I think deserves a mention for failing to clear the extremely low bar of being more useful than Ayew or Daka.

I get people want Mowbray primarily because if you squint a bit it kind of looks like we've got Pearson back, but the stuff about him sorting the players out, instilling motivation and discipline, getting results - he couldn't do that at West Brom and that's at a place where he was already thought of very highly. As far as I can tell the consensus among West Brom fans was that he was actually a bit of a soft touch with their players and their disciplinary record went down the pan after he came in. A lot of their complaints were very similar to ours about Cifuentes - weird team selections, players being asked to do things they weren't suited to, no real structure to the team with or without the ball, horrendous game management. What exactly is the appeal other than we want someone to get stuck into our players and we assume he'll probably do that because he's northern and "old school"?

We'll always have that first half against Fiorentina reserves

They would have to entertain for a moment the possibility that they had ever made any mistakes or done anything worth apologising for, so no. I would love to know what they actually think has gone wrong though. We very occasionally get mentions amidst the PR spiel of vague stuff like the "challenges" and "difficulties" we've faced but if you could administer some sort of truth serum to Aiyawatt, Rudkin and co. to get past that, I wonder who or what they would actually blame or cite as factors. My suspicion is that as far as they're concerned they've done everything right and it's all 100% down to external factors like COVID, PSR, the authorities etc.

Didn't see today's game so can't comment on that specifically but I have always been amazed by how little interest Choudhury has in having possession. Being limited and unadventurous with the ball is one thing, being so frightened of it that you hide behind opponents to make sure you don't get it is another.

I'm afraid I don't understand the question but I'm happy to assume we agree he's a useless sack of shit and leave it there if you are

A truly hateful footballer

I get we're playing somewhat fast and loose with the definition of "hate" here, and if you're putting together an XI maybe you're having to crowbar a couple in, but a lot of these I'm finding a bit strange. Most just weren't very good players or signings that didn't work out for whatever reason and I don't know how anyone can muster any strong feelings whatsoever about complete nonentities like Luis Hernandez, Stephen Clemence or Kelvin Etuhu. Dennis Wise was before my time which otherwise may well have changed things but I'm not sure I've ever hated any of our current or former players. Obviously there's been loads I've thought were crap, wanted rid of and/or was glad to be rid of. Coady was tiresome because of the media platitudes, the mythologising about his amazing leadership and the fact he was so shit, Soumare has been gash for a good 99% of his time here, Ward was Ward - hate? I can't get myself that wound up about it, which I accept might make me the strange one.

It's an exaggeration yes - well spotted! Any more of an exaggeration than characterising negative posts about him as "irrational" and "regurgitated groupthink dogma", I'm not sure, particularly when I don't think anyone actually dislikes him particularly. People criticise the club for the signing and him for his performances, which have largely been very poor. Now he's playing better, which is good and something I hope continues.

I don't think any team with a serious interest in signing him would be dissuaded by him not being able to play in the FA Cup for them this season, personally. Was looking like he could do with a rest, was given one when it made the most sense to do so - if he moves, he moves, but I don't think him playing or not playing today will have had anything to do with it either way.