The Doctor

wages go absolutely insane second season I've noticed. Even in the women's game, I've gone to renew rantalas contract and she's asking for 6k per week, about 10% of the entire wage budget

oh no, I agree, what I mean is that typically abuse comes from when players are perceived as being lazy and disrespecting the club (see Faes for the men's team), but that's just not the case here

criticising the way we're run and the fact that we're not as appealing a job as we should be because of that is the exact opposite of belittling us and wanting us to be relegated? its anger that the relegation and the sliding back of the club has been allowed to happen and an acknowledgement of the damage done rather than a heads in sand "we've got history" attitude. History only goes so far to appeal, no-one worth their salt would go to Wednesday now, or Forest 10 years ago, because despite their history, years of mismanagement turned them into basket cases. Having standards and stating that we are not meeting them and are en route to being another basket case is not loser mentality or belittling the club, it's demanding the club do better

genuinely do not understand anyone abusing these players. It's clear watching that they care and put everything in, but that they just don't have the talent for this level.

I mean we did exactly that this time last year. Wasted the international break then sacked Cooper after losing to Chelsea. If Chelsea was must win for him then he should already have been gone. Hell, same with Rodgers, wasted the march international break then sacked him after palace. I think the last time we actually sacked a manager mid season going into an international break so their replacement had time to work was Sven going and Pearson Round 2?

this is the same as advocating for Pearson in the position. Yes, their records in terms of putting progression plans in place suggests they might be able to adapt well to this sort of role, but if we're serious it should be someone who is actually experienced as a technical director with a proven track record of success

the manager has input obviously, but the problem is also that we have a dof who makes an absolute mess of his job. In practice, how it should work is the manager goes to the recruitment team and says "my squad is missing (for example) a box to box midfielder and a left back capable of tucking into a back three, we need to get them in to fill the gaps". The recruitment team profile players for those and present options to the manager and DoF, from which a committee with manager input determines a priority list of targets, which the DoF attempts to sign. Because we're not a professional outfit, that partially happens picking gems out to cover something we need (Hermansen, Fatawu, BEK), and players who fit a gap but are perhaps 3rd choice from the list (Coady would be a good example, there would have been the discussion of "I want a dressing room leader"), but also the manager is able to just say "I want this specific player" and get them (Doyle under Enzo, Skipp, Ayew and Reid under Cooper). Coady type signings would happen still in a competently run club, the profile of a player Vs how they integrate to the team isnt 1:1, but a manager like Cooper coming in and actively requesting specific deadwood like Skipp and Ayew should never happen.

it would have taken about 5 minutes watching the season highlights in match order to find one, the save from Simms on opening day to stop cov going 2-0 up... He was a top keeper in the championship

if you can be critical of the running of the club, surely you can understand why someone who isn't a fan (because we're not appointing fans as technical directors) would look at us and not consider us a particularly appealing project?

History wise, yes, we're bigger than Palace. But history doesn't mean much compared to current trajectory when someones considering a new job. It's why Sheffield Wednesday, despite being orders of magnitude bigger on history, would never outcompete Bournemouth in recruitment nowadays.

Finding new ways to ruin the mood of a nation, it's the Steve Clarke Way

And that league position is likely going to last a long while. We're not an appealing move compared to Palace because of how comprehensively king power have bollocksed it up

except we're never even going to challenge for higher than 2nd bottom with this complete neglect of the team. Given as of next season it's bottom down, second in a playoff vs 2nd in WSL2, that basically means just accepting a return to WSL2.

moving it so that the kids can't go after grassroots games in the morning sure as shit doesn't help. Killing the future of the game for a small bit of tv money

8 subs and two keepers the lack of investment in the squad is pathetic.

Right? like their duty free monopoly was already underway when we went into admin in 2002? surely if they were fans of the club they'd have stepped in to buy us out of admin at that point.

Except a significant number have said that realistically, since Rudkin is in with King Power, the best we can get is him gone by moving him up to King Power Sporting Operations Director or some such title, where he is not really involved on a day to day basis with us and is instead on paper looking after the polo stuff and Leuven as well. Which is what we've got. It's a promotion on paper, what it means in reality is we've got him gone, away from where he's been creating problems for the last 5 years.

also Darren Fletcher is better than Steven Gerrard.

was giving him control of recruitment a pre-requiste for him joining then? As a tactician and a coach, he's perfectly competent, but every club he goes to has serious recruitment problems and spends a lot of money with minimal ROI from those players... a sensible dof sidelines him as much as possible on that element

oh he 100% saw the mess he'd made and that was to come, had the massive payoff in mind and made deliberately bad decisions on the hope they'd sack him and he could spin it as not being backed. Thing is, his record of leaving things in a worse state than he found them as far as recruitment structure goes (Swansea the outlier) was obvious before we appointed him, so someone didn't do their homework. Someone who's job it was maybe to oversee football operations, a director of football if you will

yea but he can pass it a bit (completion rate this season 73.2%, 3rd in the division behind Palmer and Stolarcyk)

rivals will bad mouth absolutely everything, but the reaction to Hearts radio gaga/Claudio Braga chant shows people will generally get on board with new songs that aren't just sloop John b?

safe to say he's one of the better keepers in the division. How longs he out for?

notice also he's playing in a two. We signed a 23m striker and actively played against his strengths at every single turn, both in terms of playstyle and formation. Cracking work on the recruitment there.