ClaphamFox

We’re conceding an average of 19.3 shots per game? Assuming 10mins of added time per game, that’s a shot against us every five minutes on average. Golly 😳

Man Utd is a big club that has been a basket case for a number of years and needs somebody with a very strong character to transform its culture. Given that Potter was sacked after less than seven months when given such an opportunity at Chelsea, I can't see Man Utd touching him with a bargepole unless they literally have zero due diligence (which I suppose is possible).

Did he happen to know any rumours of likely replacements if Cooper gets the boot?

I'm not arguing that he needs longer. I'm explaining why our board won't sack him after the six results we've had so far, and what might eventually prompt them to do it.

I don't think anybody is defending it. It's just that if a team is losing narrowly or drawing every week, there is probably going to be enough doubt in the board's mind to give the manager a bit longer than they would if the team were getting thrashed every week. That's where we're at right now.

Based on what? Spurs and Villa are much better sides than Bournemouth and we got a point in one of those games and should have got a point in the other. Getting thrashed at home by Bournemouth is not going to happen under Cooper. What probably will happen is that his long-term pattern (including his time at Forest) of mainly narrowly losing or drawing games in the PL continues until the board cannot ignore it any longer. I'm sorry, but this is just as irrational as believing the board is going to sack him after three points from our first six games. Relegation back to the Championship, where the EFL is already sharpening the knives and boiling a vat of tar in anticipation of our return, would be a disaster. The club is no more likely to sit around and let that happen than it is to pull the trigger after six games. It's simple. Will Cooper be sacked after a draw or narrow loss on Saturday? Probably not. Will he be sacked if that continues over the three games after that? I think he will.

In the not getting thrashed department. As I said, we've had three draws and three narrow losses. The only game we were expected to win was Everton and our first half performance in that game was a major red flag, but overall the board will probably look at our first six games and conclude that we've been competitive. It's not a rule, just reality. You might think that Cooper should be sacked now and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but it's highly unlikely that any board would sack a manager after the six games we've had so far this season. Managers only get sacked after six games if their team is being thrashed every week, and that's not happening to us. Wolves and Southampton have had much worse starts but O'Neil and Martin are still in place for now. If in a few weeks' time Cooper has shown he can't even get results against Bournemouth, Southampton, Forest and Ipswich, there will be enough evidence for the board to do something. They won't. There is nothing in our performances so far this season to suggest that a team like Bournemouth will 'thrash' us. They might beat us by the odd goal or we might even scrape a draw. Either of these outcomes will provide further proof that our pattern of drawing or narrowly losing games isn't just an early-season period of adjustment to the PL, but rather something fundamental to the way Cooper sets us up. If that continues, it really will be the end for Cooper.

I think we need to be realistic about the timeframe. No newly-appointed manager of a newly-promoted team is going to get sacked after six games in which his team has been competitive in each one. If we were getting whacked every week he might have gone, but not with three draws and three narrow losses (I’m counting Arsenal as a narrow loss as we were level on 90mins). The question is whether he can turn our sporadic periods of looking decent into actual results. If he doesn’t do that within the next four games (and the signs aren’t encouraging), there will be enough of a pattern for the board to take action.

Nobody's expecting them to get anything at Arsenal on Saturday, which means their home game against us could be both Martin's and Cooper's last chance to save themselves.

I'm convinced he got the job because he reassured the board that he'd pick up where Maresca left off and the board thought, "Great! We thought we were going to have to fork out for Corberan but now we don't have to." Then Cooper started work and it became apparent that he had no intention of playing Maresca's way despite having a squad that was ready-made for it. Will Cooper revert to a style that more closely resembles last season's (and brings Fatawu and Ricardo back into the fold)? It seems unlikely. So his only hope is that he somehow manages to get the players to play his way. And if there are no clear signs of this happening soon, that will probably be it for him.

Interesting. I haven't come across any credible reports that the club are close to sacking him. Which media are you reading?

This story haunted me for years after I read about it. The documentary is unbearably sad. https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/09/joyce-vincent-death-mystery-documentary

I always used to enjoy the Champions League and would often watch games, but I haven’t seen a single one this season. I just can’t get on board with the new format and I’ve completely lost interest in it as a competition. The way it’s structured now just makes no sense to me.

He'll be after Hermansen again in the summer, and possibly even January.

My understanding is that the club were always very confident that we wouldn't get any deduction. But I suppose it's one thing to be confident of that and quite another to convince any managerial candidates or transfer targets of it, particularly given the ludicrous consensus in the media (swallowed by some of our own fans) that we were about to be clobbered with an unprecedented punishment even though our circumstances were very similar to Forest's...

You seem to have fallen into the trap of assuming that anything bad must be because of Cooper anything good must be in spite of him. It's an easy mindset to fall into when you dislike a manager, but I don't think it's an accurate one. When I look at the way we play, I see a clear continuity between ourselves and Cooper's Forest. They also didn't have a clear style of play or a much of an identity, but they did have some battling qualities because the players were apparently willing to run through a brick wall for Cooper even when they didn't fully understand what he wanted them to do. In the end, this was enough to keep them up while we went down with a vastly superior squad - but one whose relationship with our manager had completely disintegrated. We're now a bit like Forest were that season - tactically poor and without a clear identity, but with some battling qualities that will gain us a few points along the way. I think in Maresca the club appointed somebody who is going to be an elite coach at the very top of the game. The players were in awe of him and loved playing for him, but then he walked out on us at the first opportunity. The club then appointed a manager who wasn't really qualified to carry on where Maresca left off, but was available for free and wanted the job. The players are struggling to adapt to this change. I don't think Cooper is anywhere near Maresca's level as a coach, but I also don't think he's quite as bad as some on here clearly believe. I also think the personal vitriol directed at him is massively over the top. He now has the opportunity in the next four games to prove that he can set us up to beat bottom-half sides, which is a prerequisite to survival in the PL. If he doesn't start winning games in the next few weeks, he'll be gone.

If he'd lost the changing room we wouldn't be consistently getting ourselves back into games after going behind. They're fighting for him, which is in stark contrast to how the players performed during the relegation season under Rodgers.

I suspect Top told Cooper he wanted him to play in a similar way to Enzo and Cooper agreed to do this because he wanted the job. Now Cooper is struggling because he has a squad that was coached to play a certain way and he's promised to continue playing that way, but deep down he doesn't really believe in it. The squad is probably being coached a weird hybrid of Enzo's style and Cooper's own style (whatever that is) and the players don't fully understand it, hence why they often look a bit confused on the pitch. However this is currently being masked to some extent by the fact that the players do seem to quite like Cooper as a person (he was very popular with the players at Forest too) and are willing to battle for him, which has enabled us to get three points on the board. I don't Cooper has lost the changing room, but I do think we're in a bit of a tactical muddle because we didn't appoint a natural successor to Maresca and the players are struggling to adapt. Cooper now has a run of games against 'easier' opposition to straighten out the muddle or I suspect he will be off.

And who do you think made the decision to do that? Maresca had an iron grip on the squad - they would only have changed their approach if he told them to. He's more pragmatic than people give him credit for. If he hadn't have gone to Chelsea I think we'd have only had him for another season, possibly two. But I think he'd have kept us up and put us on a sound footing in the PL before he left.

Yep. It's incredible how many people still don't appreciate how good Maresca is. This assumption that he would have refused to adapt to the PL even if it meant taking us straight back down is insane - he's a ruthless, ambitious coach who would never have allowed that to happen. Chelsea are still adapting to his way of playing and they're in fourth place, just two points off the top. He'll get them into the CL this season and may even challenge for the title.

There isn't an actual rumour - just somebody being silly on twitter. It's not going to happen.

It's the Premier League. If we're going to survive, we'll need to beat a lot of teams that meet that description.

This is a daft projection based upon a cultural stereotype. The Thais have sacked six managers since they took over. In only one of those instances (Rodgers) could you argue that they delayed the decision for so long that it damaged us. And that delay had nothing whatsoever to do with 'saving face' - it was because of the £20m compensation we'd have to pay Rodgers, which the club knew would put us significantly on the wrong side of a PSR breach (his credit in the bank following the FA Cup win may have further muddled their thinking). The sackings of Eriksson, Pearson, Ranieri, Shakespeare and Puel show that our owners will act decisively when they need to. The damaging delay in the sacking of Rodgers for largely financial reasons does not disprove this. Cooper will be given the next run of games to prove himself, but they will act swiftly after that if it still looks like we're in relegation trouble.

Now I’m not a Cooper fan and I don’t think he’s the right man for us, but I think we can probably put this one to bed for now. If the players are in revolt against Cooper, they’re doing a damn good job of hiding it.

They threw away a point deep into injury time. I’m glad they’re pissed off.