honeybradger

He was trying to do too much himself at the end of Cooper's time as well.

Is it necessarily a bad thing that a good decision by the club is rewarded with a positive response? I still beleive that there should be a major shakeup at the club but it's not constructive just to project unrelenting negativity even if they make a good decision. If anything if they promote local talent just to appease the fanbase at least it's a step in the right direction.

Monga and Evans getting their first team debut would definitely help the atmosphere around the club. Was hoping to see them against QPR but this would be better than it never happening this season (or maybe ever)

You could see the difference in our coaching and Atalanta's coaching in real time. Every season Castagne was here he transformed further from the sharp, intelligent fullback that he was when he joined to a ponderous, clueless player by the time we were relegated.

Van Nistelrooy - 11 games 7 points Wins - West Ham, Spurs Draws - Brighton Losses - Everton, Fulham, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Man City, Liverpool, Wolves, Newcastle Cooper - 12 games 10 points Wins - Bournemouth, Southampton Draws - Crystal Palace, Ipswich, Spurs, Everton Losses - Chelsea, Man United, Forest, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Fulham 4 of Cooper's 10 points came from playing the only two teams in this league who are as bad or worse than us. Cooper's time as manager wasnt any better than Van Nistelrooy's.

He speaks well and i would appreciate similar levels of communication here. As one of the bristol rovers fans on twitter said you have to also back up your words, it might just be the sceptic in me but it feels like he says exactly what he thinks the fans want to hear, a bit like Cooper. Anyone would add more direction to the club than rudkin at this point in time though.

Carlos Borges flopped but Ocar Bobb, Mcatee, Cole Palmer have done well.

I hope that if he does get a chance we allow him to have a couple bad performances like the first teamers regularly put out (Ayew, Reid etc). Despite being very talented Mikey Moore had a stinker against us the other week but Spurs continued to give him opportunities and he got his first professional goal soon after. Basically not only does Monga need opportunities but he needs the same level of patience that our 'experienced pro' get.

No chance.

The sad reality is that the players we have are the perfect level for competing in the championship, we'll be fine there. The problem will be when we start "buying players for the championship" we will bring in some championship midtable duffers.

At least championship football allows us to pretend that we've got a half decent squad and allows us to get away with poor transfers like Winks, Coady and Cannon. Watching the club bring in Cordova reid, Ayew, Okoli and Skipp order to try and stay up has just been brutal.

What has it stopped us from doing? It's likely we would have spent the money poorly anyway if we hadnt signed him.

Can't we just give them Coady?

Sporting director and director of football are synonymous. You are clutching at straws to try and defend this guy. A director of football is supposed to be involved in the transfer process, if that's not what he's doing then he's not a director of football. If his job is as you said: to pick the head of recruitment, pick the manager, be loosely involved in strategy and be loosely involved in financials then quite frankly he should be sacked because that's not a full time job. A director of football is supposed to be heavily involved with everything that goes on at the club, with the same daily demands that a manager has. The whole reason that role appeared is because football became too complex for a manager to do both coaching and squad building, so the 'manager' role was split into 'director of football' and 'coach'. The responsibility of the state of the squad lies entirely with the director of football at most clubs, sadly it seems that we are still 15+ years in the past and it's still the manager's job to decide what kind of player the squad needs and to contact players to convince them to sign.

They wouldn't be coming over to thank the fans, they would be coming over to apologise after a very poor performance. Personally if I were Faes, Vestergaard etc I would be embarrassed by the fact that I'm being paid PL wages whilst also letting down the fans with performances like that and would try whatever small act I could to improve that relationship but maybe that's just me.

Choudhury apparently a fan favourite already. He might be playing PL football next season whilst we're in the championship...

Winks is not half the player that Maddison is or was for us. There are also plenty of midfielders that can both hold onto the ball and win the ball back that you can get for less than £8mil. Buying a player for £8mil who is only good in possession and offers very little at this level is definitely an overpay.

Not really, £8mil should be able to get you PL quality. For comparison Leeds signed Ao Tanaka for €4mil who has the same quality as Winks on the ball whilst also not being shit defensively.

£8mil pounds for a player who cant cut it at PL level by the way. He's also considered as one of our good transfers in recent years...

Rudkin's supposed to be the person who brings in the head scout and sits above them in the recruitment process. Whilst Sporting Directors arent the ones that identify players themselves, they are responsible for identifying the profile of player for the scouting team to look for and reviewing the options put forwards, contacting the players and eventually green lighting the transfer. Saying that Rudkin doesnt pick the player is ridiculous, the Sporting Director has to be involved in the transfer strategy of the club and be the first and last voice on all transfers. If he's not we need to bring in someone who can actually undertake the role of Sporting Director properly.

It's not like he's a stellar defender in a low block either.

He's our sporting director . Have some shame, no wonder our signings are all over the place if he's not responsible for us bringing in players. It would be even more worrying if he was not responsible as it means our club is being run like the wild west with no responsibility or hiearchy. In fact on second thought you might be right, Rudkin probably is just sat at his desk twiddling his thumbs whilst the rest of the staff are scrambling around with no direction. That would explain our situation perfectly.

Rudkin actually had £12mil to sign a centreback this summer and signed Okoli . At what point is the penny going to drop for the idiots that keep defending him that this guy has no idea what he's doing. @Babylon@DJ Barry Hammond

What can you do when your defensive options are this bad. Faes, Vestergaard, Okoli all had clangers today. Not saying that Ruud is the answer either but these players are so bad.

Us being out of the relegation zone just goes to show how avoidable relegation would have been had we had relatively competent people running the club.