Steve Earle

How I envy you your world view!

Gosh, and you can add millions to that in transfers cocked up. Just one example from, I think, August 2023. Crystal Palace bid £4m for Iversen. Rudkin holds out for £5m. Result? Palace go elsewhere and we’re stuck with Iversen and his no doubt inflated wages for two more seasons before he leaves on a free. Man’s a clown. Well intentioned I’m sure, but keeps making the same mistakes. So, for a contemporary example of the above, witness our handling of Luke Thomas’s departure. Can anyone see it ending well?

Well, he comes with a great song, which some of you might remember from his England days? To the tune of Sting's 'Englishman in New York' (you'll find it on Spotify!) 'Oh-oh, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain...'

Pay €6m and get a FREE Director of Football!

I don’t think Elon Musk, Dan Ashworth, Juergen Klopp & Harry Potter would help. We well and truly cocked up, yet again.

Only if we’re relegated, obviously?

Did he say it twice?

So much for our strategy of expecting three clubs to be even worse than us. What’s next Top?

🙄

Hmmm. A full back, a centre back and a winger you say? In a January window? With the club staring at relegation? Sounds somehow familiar...

Very true Peaky, but sometimes it’s good to go with the flow. I’ve read all the suggested definitions of ‘legend’ above and they all have some merit, but none, for me, nails it. FWIW, I can’t nail it either, and think on balance it’s easier to say who isn’t a legend than who is. So, for me, Andy King isn’t, because of his top-level limitations set against his loyalty & selflessness over many years. Albrighton fails too, just not quite good enough as a player. From my 60 years of watching, and being ‘tight’ with my definition of legend, it’s a big handful: Banks Weller Worthington Lineker Walsh Schmeichel Mahrez Vardy Tielemans Plenty come close: Shilton, Nish, Elliott (in my all-time XI), Lennon, Cambiasso, Morgan, Kante & Maddison…but surely legends are the (very) chosen few, not every player who’s stayed a while or won a trophy?

Meh and perhaps

Thanks Bobby

Region? Vintage? Producer? Main grapes? I mean, it’s a start but must do better @Ely fox Happy new year anyway!

It’s not looking at all like 1 January…

Shame. He’d had a good half until that moment. But that moment was unacceptable from a professional footballer.

So four games and out for you? I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt for now. He has a poor squad with not a single Premier League defender (leaving Mads to one side) to rely on, and missing two crucial players in Ricardo & Fatawu. I’m not sure a Tuchel-Slot-Guardiola coaching team could do that much with this shower. Recruitment has been one of the main issues since we won the FA Cup, arguably longer than that.

Statistically he’s right: fewest shots conceded so far. Score first in that game and anything could’ve happened. Littered, I grant you, with horrendous individual mistakes.

Speaks really well. Imagine a Cooper press conference in the same circumstances!

Wait a minute! You have a job as well??!?

Dan Ashworth as Sporting Director anyone?

Poor sod

We absolutely do need a Huth/Wasilewski figure (Bob Hazell for older readers) to bring some authority and organisation to the back four. Who? I don’t know, but saw Ben Mee mentioned somewhere. If fit, I’d take Jonny Evans too (tho will now absent myself from FT for an hour or so while the anti-Evans brigade get stuck in!).

True story: met Warnock at a Torquay game a couple of weeks ago. He is a character and a half! He said to me ‘no offence but I hope you get relegated’. Asked why, he said Cooper had screwed him over three times: ‘I hate the bloke’!