Steve Earle

Faes out! He’s dreadful. Coady or Vestergaard with Okoli surely the way to go until January when hopefully we sign an upgrade on him

Literally every thought and touch after the penalty was crap. There’s nothing in this team to give one hope.

Faes being sold?

A Premier League quality back four.

I’m joining in. With some reluctance. But relegation is inevitable without a change of manager. We have 27 games to go & will get bu**er all from the 14 against the big 6 + Newcastle, Villa & Brighton. This manager isn’t capable of getting the 20+ points we’d need from the other 13 fixtures.

Does that imply we’re on our way back to the Championship?

That’s very interesting. 10 points from 10 games has been great, on the face of it, but we’ve only played 2 games against the Big 6, meaning 10 of the next 28 are against them. And 5 of the other 18 are against Newcastle, Brighton & Villa. I don’t see too many points coming from those 15 fixtures, and if we perform as we have done this far in the remaining 13 fixtures, we’ll be relegated.

That we didn’t buy him?!?

No. Madness we didn’t sell in the summer when there was a level of interest in him from the Championship. That’s the best level he’ll reach consistently, if that.

We played Wolves first home game of the season a few years’ back (2018-19). We were in Copenhagen that morning, flying back to Manchester and due in at about 11.00 - obviously the trip had been planned before the fixtures were released! If the flight left on time, landed on time and there were no delays at Manchester Airport, I’d be home for 12/12.15 with time to do the 2 hour drive to Leicester. Went like a dream! 2-0 by the way. Apologies for the slightly off topic post.

£600M spent on his own players and they’re worse than when he took over. The FA Cup win was, like ours, an against-the-odds miracle and quite clearly stopped Ineos sacking him then. They’d seen enough and let emotions get in the way of acting prudently

We’ve seen enough to know he’s not a Premier League player. The rest is gossip.

I remember the oh-so limited Paul Reid with affection, but for him to be one of anyone’s favourites from any era just made me feel for you @Claudio Fannieri 🙁

It’s WeTaxi

We’ll see! My point was simply that you could see why Ndidi played yesterday. He didn’t play as a DCM at all, but a right-sided KDH. Alas, his limitations in possession remain significant.

Well. Where to start? I can only start by assuming all the Cooper-out bedwetters won’t read this. I thought we were decent yesterday, by some way our best performance of the season. We showed intensity from the off, players were determined to win their duels, and you could see a team working together & for each other. The selections of Ndidi & Ayew made perfect sense. Ndidi showed his limitations in possession but lead the press superbly with Vardy. While Ayew did what he was brought here to do: held the ball, carried it up the pitch, drew fouls & protected his full back. Expect to see that 433 against top 8 sides, because it largely worked. The timing of the first substitutions was spot on IMO. We were on top & looking likely to get the next goal, so why change? The reason to change was Villa scoring against the run of play, & Cooper reacted immediately. The change then to 4141 worked too. We actually ended in stoppage time playing 316! More positives: Mads was superb, the back four wasn’t going to be embarrassed by pace, Okoli showed promise on his full PL debut, as did Skipp & Ayew. We lost to a better team & because we as a unit were asleep for their first. For the first time this season I have hope. I can see a plan. We were well coached yesterday, and I have some optimism that we might get the results we need against bottom half teams.

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Literally incredible that we're going to have poorer striking options from now til at least January than we had in the Championship. Shambles of a club.

I don’t understand you well enough to help you. Soz & all that.

Why do people do this? Genuinely can’t understand. Is it a cry for help?

That’s almost certainly true. But we don’t know that a deal hasn’t already been done, subject to the player coming through this crucial game unscathed. I hasten to add, I have zero optimism on this.

Mav's first half performance was appalling - over-elaborate, poor decision-making, showboating, no end product. He just about redeemed himself second half, no doubt after a word from Coops.

This Luke Thomas chap. Any relation to the professional footballer used to play for us?

Is it too soon to despair?

Mavididi showing why Coops hasn’t been picking him. Ndidi awful but shouldn’t be playing there. Alves now for Wilf please.