honeybradger

I'm fairly sure it has been edited.

That's where the confusion is then. Corberan didnt take over as a manager who was expected to reach the playoffs, he took over when West Brom were in the relegation zone. That's why he's so highly rated, West Brom were seriously mismanaged after being relegated from the PL and were looking down the barrel of a second relegation when he came in. Compared to the other teams in the playoffs, West Brom's squad are by far the worst in my opinion. It's like if Fulham managed to get into an FA cup semi final with Man City, just because they are there doesnt mean they have an equal chance to win and it's an achievement for them to even get there. The only reason they're in contention for promotion and not near the bottom of the table is Corberan and most West Brom fans would agree. It's not like it's a fluke either, Corberan took over a Huddersfiels side that had just survived relegation to league 1 and took them to the playoffs. Since he left they have returned to championship mediocrity again.

Steve Bruce has experience at the top level but Maresca and McKenna dont, I know who I would prefer to be my manager. The important thing for me is that West Brom fans love Corberan, none of the Swansea, Brighton or Chelsea fans rate Potter nearly as highly as the media/our fans do. At the end of the day his style is slow negative football, moreso than Maresca. I hope Potter does well but he seems to very much be of the Brendan Rodgers/Russell Martin archetype of manager that I am not a fan of personally.

Rodon is a clear example of a player who is great in the championship but not good enough in the PL. There are plenty of players who will be cheaper and better.

If we sell dewbury hall and buy longstaff for 15 mil then that would be a terrible decision. Thankfully that probably wont happen.

After weeks of tough negotiating Rudkin has managed to reduce Potter's wage demands from 7 mil a year to 6 mil a year. Win in the book for Rudkin. A few months down the line after a win on the first day of the season Potter threatens to leave for Man United, followed by Rudkin rewarding Potter with a new contract at double the wages to fend off any suitors.

Man city have a decent sell on fee so getting money isnt that valuable. McKennie was really good last season so it saves them having to replace him with another midfielder.

Cooper got into the playoffs twice with Swansea, then went on to do the same and win them with Forest who were in disarray before he came. I would argue that his success was unlikely to be down to Potter due to his consistency across both clubs. Out of the three I would prefer Coberan > Cooper > Potter. I have a bad feeling that Potter would be a disaster here, he's very much a possession for possession's sake manager, more so than Maresca. He also seems to have climbed the ranks of English football through reputation and playing 'the right way' rather than performing well at the clubs he has been at.

Corberan even having a mediocre West Brom squad in the playoffs was an achievement. Potter was mediocre in the championship and got blown out of the water by Steve Cooper when he left. Yes Potter has EPL experience but his major success there was placing high on the xg tables, I wouldn't say that makes him hands down the better choice. Based on achievements Cooper is arguably the standout manager but his football in the PL and how he looks seems to have put our fans off. The manager best suited to us is Corberan though, Potter has not be liked by any set of fans since he was in Sweden and we need a manager the fans can get behind.

Justin has always performed better as a left back than a right back. His best position is right centre back which is why I think some people are confused in saying that he plays better on the right. Also no chance that we drop Ricardo into being a bit part player next season, he was arguably our best player last year and we were terrible when he was injured.

Fair play to Cannon, it's hard to come into a game against Portugal at 3-0 down and leave a good impression.

How were they?

Maybe best ever wasnt the right terminology. Most important transfer might make more sense, Vardy and Mahrez dont come good and win us the league if we dont stay up in 14/15 and we dont sign Kante at all if we didnt sign Huth. That transfer was a massive defining point.

Arguably our best ever transfer

We spent 7.5mil on Cannon and Coady each. We should be able to spend £4m on a manager if he's the right choice.

To be fair, outside a ridiculous anomaly of a season, that FA cup win was the pinnacle of our club's history and Iheanacho was front and centre of the run to the final. It's unlikely that either of us will have similar success any time soon. It's likely that a decade on from now we wont have come close to another trophy, hopefully the guy that carried us to the FA cup final will be remembered more fondly then.

Tiki take is fine when it works but is incredibly frustrating when it doesnt work ie. playing overly risky passes out from the back or taking a major risk to beat the press only to not capitalise on the space that's been created. Possession managers seem to like to stroke their own egos by likening the style to a tactical game like chess but if it was chess then it would often times be an overly elaborate gambit that results in blunders and missed opportunities. At the end of the day it's about finding something that works, not what sounds the smartest on paper.

I think we needed some higher quality rotation for Mavididi over the season. You have to consider that Mcateer only didnt play for a while because he was injured, otherwise he had regular minutes. I think with Alves fit he could have gotten Mcateer's minutes and more.

Sadly our owners/board probably dont see it that way. I have a feeling we will go for short term success rather than long term, the issue being that the players we can attract to do well in the short term probably wont be of very high quality and will be harder to shift than academy graduates.

I wonder what Vestergaard losing a yard of pace would look like. Does he just stand still?

Not sure I like Potter at all. He's apparently asking for a large wage packet, hence why discussions between him and Ajax fell apart. Also his football is slow and risk averse, more than Maresca's is. He's also proven that he's not very good at grinding out wins from his time at Brighton and Chelsea. Feels a bit too much like Rodgers 1.5 to me.

He's alway been highly rated by youth scouts. He got a big Nike sponsorship a while ago which is quite rare for one of our youth players. Pretty sure they're only given out to players they think will be top PL players at some point and want to hook onto early on.

If we dont give Alves first team minutes next season then i fear that he will go somewhere else to get regular playtime when his contract expires.

His wages for 1 year are probably higher than the amount we can sell him for