Finnegan

Er, yeah, they sacked him

The club know what THEY think of their finances. We're waiting for the league to tell us what their verdict is. If the two were always the same, we wouldn't have been in dispute with two separate governing bodies in the last year.

You don't read this forum much, huh? Pretty much constant criticism for the current running of the club. Don't think I've seen someone say you can't criticise our top scorer when our biggest problem is the defence but it might seem odd behaviour. You definitely don't read this forum much. Almost none of the players that won the league got relegated and there was significant criticism for the players that went down...? This one seems odd to me. It's a functional stadium, there's worse around, it'll do. There's plans to develop it but they've understandably been slowed down by our current troubles? Brother, you can criticise whatever you want, it's a free ****ing country. In my experience, when the vast majority of people disagree with my opinion that doesn't mean I "can't" give it, just means there's a good chance I'm waffling shit. Something for you to reflect on there perhaps.

Narh it's based on seasons not calendar years.

I doubt we do anything before we hear whether or not we're due further punishment. If we have money to do anything at all I guarantee we do it late in the month.

They're having an off day but claiming the team currently sleep walking the league aren't good is a bit silly.

If he hadn't gotten injured, I'd love to know how close we were to actually signing Diallo.

Second best. And head coach. And I doubt he'd claim to have built the squad. But other than that, sure why not.

He's a very talented head coach that's had a squad assembled by a talented sporting director at a club owned by a man that understands recruitment.

Game is absurdly open. Would have been nice if Liverpool could have been this shit against us.

But we don't pick the team, pal. We can't control who Ruud picks. What we can control is how we, as fans, treat the players that play for our club. My point is just that, however poor his form might be at the moment, we don't need to cross a line.

At the risk of sounding overly sensitive, I'm starting to get really uncomfortable with the way some posters are talking about JJ. He's always come across as a really hardworking, honest pro and a pretty likeable guy. He absolutely always gives his best in every game, never stops trying, and historically he's put in good performances for us and done pretty well. He's in some absolutely hideous form at the moment and there's no hiding from that, in an ideal world he'd be well out of the starting lineup and out of the spotlight so he can hit the reset switch and hopefully get back to his best. But we can't give him that because we've hilariously few options. Let's not all kid ourselves that Hamza is the answer, by the way. Ruud has very little choice but to keep playing Justin and it's going to keep happening. He desperately needs a break from the side and he just isn't going to get it but none of this is his fault. I know there's a perception sometimes that foxestalk is a bubble and nothing you say here matters but I dunno. I reckon if I was a professional suffering a crisis of confidence I'd be tempted to fall in to the trap and doom scrolling and reading what people were saying about me. We've seen before players falling in to absolute spirals of low confidence that have murdered their form and our fanbase are absolutely relentless sometimes for piling on the criticism instead of trying to lift these guys up. We've seen Maddison, Iheanacho, Daka, Vestergaard, even Vardy go through this at times at the hands of our fans. I'm not saying you can't criticise a bad performance or you have to pretend everything is OK but definitely some of the posts in here are getting closer and closer to abuse and I think people need to just check themselves and find a different outlet for their frustrations.

If ever a player desperately needed a goal

For the record, it's not the decision I'd make.

I assume the perception is that Mavididi and Ayew will work harder defensively and be stronger than FB. If this was a home game against a bottom half side I'd be surprised if Facundo wasn't starting again. I assume the plan is the same negative stuff, stay in the game until the final third and make changes.

No offence but there really isn't a lot of value to add if you genuinely believe what you're writing on here. One is a petulent and silly child who (and he did it to his former club before us, so lets not kid ourselves here, it was always coming) threw his toys out of the pram to brute force himself out of a contract that he signed. The other is a consumate professional who worked the entirety of that contract and fulfilled all of his obligations to the club. Contracts go both ways, no footballer has an obligation to make sure he leaves a club early so they get a fee. We signed a deal saying we'd pay for him for X years and he agreed to play for us for X years and both parties stuck to their agreement. He wasn't very good the year we went down but any suggestion he downed tools or was unprofessional is just moronic. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. Anyone who'd even consider booing Tielemans, or Maddison for that matter, is a moron.

This is a really, really stupid take.

If we can send him back we can presumably send him back at any point in the month. Would assume they won't do it until they need to. Either we find someone else to use the loan slot on or get a replacement forward. Either way, no particular need to send him back the very second the window opens.

Yeah but... how have you read what I put and concluded that I believe a defender shouldn't be able to tackle at all? I'm just saying it's not the most important part of a centre back's game and you listed a whole bunch of defenders who are, or were, celebrated for their all-round game...? Like, VVD is brilliant for all of the reasons I described in my post and his ability in the tackle isn't really top of that list (as good as it is?) Our biggest problem at the moment is how often our defenders are either nowhere to be seen or are just straight up beaten to the ball. Look at the Haaland goal the other day, ****ing hilarious, he's the best 9 in world football and he's not exactly hard to spot but he's alone in our box unmarked with neither CB having a clue where he is and our left back desperately scrambling back to try and catch him. Somewhere in the stands Robert Huth was having a stroke watching that.

This rumour is clearly nonsense so I wouldn't worry about it. That said, if we're spending millions on a player in January it's to try and save our Premier League status, probably not the time to gamble on a kid.

Tomayto, tomahto (sorry, MC Prussian, wherever you are.)

We'd need to sell him (which it might surprise people I'm not opposed to doing, haha) for something in the region of 7m this January to avoid making a loss in PSR that we almost certainly can't afford to. Nobody is buying him for that when he's scored 4 league goals in the last 12 months and dropped in to the 6th percentile for G/90 in the last 365 days (whilst remaining in the 88th percentile for xG/90, which is... hideous.) The only way he leaves the club this month is on loan and I'd be very surprised if we do that without buying which, again, we probably can't do without selling and the cycle goes on. We've probably got more chance of selling Cannon this month than Daka.

You mean the league Patson Daka scored 50 goals in 44 lots of 90 in? You take that back.

I know you're half making a joke but I wouldn't have tackling at the top of my priorities for a CB in all seriousness. Aerial duels won is vital in the Premier League. Beyond that, reading of the game, spacial awareness, strength/use of size, blocks and in an ideal world some pace are all bigger priorities than actual tackle success. You could almost argue that if a CB needs to rely on their tackling, something else is going wrong. Players with the highest tackle numbers in the league will nearly all be full backs and central midfielders.