Dan

Looks completely at home at this level. Looks better if anything than last season.

It is absolutely ridiculous how often we go 0-1 down at home in the first half. An absolute disgrace in fact.

Our conformity is going to be what relegates us. We're going to let him blow half a season here and we're simply not going to have the quality to get out of it this time. 2023 was infuriating because we actually did have the quality to get out of it yet persisted with the obviously finished Rodgers regime. I think we can actually stay up but it isn't a given and each game we waste on Cooper is just hurting our slimmer than last time chances of being able to get out of it. We're obsessed with reputation and image. We don't want to do what's actually the right thing because it might upset the orthodoxy. It's this stupidity that plagues this club, it did it two years ago and it will do it here. Cooper hasn't won in 20 Premier League games. I never wanted him so I don't class this as being reactionary - I didn't just decide I wanted him because we'd gone for it. I wasn't going to call for his head from day one, but it was never going to take a lot to convince me that we need somebody else. He's exactly the same manager he was at Forest - without the feel-good factor and camaraderie generated by being the man who ended 23 years outside of the top flight. **** me, that very thing works against him here if anything. Cooper was the best thing they'd had in a ridiculously long period of time. They were always going to grant him more leeway than they should've done. We've seen substantially better very recently. We're not getting a points deduction. We don't have to settle for this. I've had my expectations in this club and those running it lowered to a point I just can't even get particularly emotionally invested or angry anymore because I think the anger can only last so long. When it keeps happening you just expect it. It doesn't catch you by surprise. Nothing that happens this season can anger me more than two years ago. But I'm really fed up of feeling like this as well. I have no hard feelings with Cooper, it's not even the Forest thing for me, he's just bad. People would quickly overlook the Forest thing if he was good. But he isn't. He's really, really bad. An Everton team in complete turmoil, on the floor, with James Garner and Ashley Young as their full backs and he still can't bring himself to play two attacking wingers. It's as there for the taking as a game can be at this level and I'd say over the 90 we were probably second best if either of us were. If you can't beat this Everton side, who honestly are you going to beat? I fully expect us to go and draw at Southampton in a few weeks as well. Just end this nonsense and pretend it never happened. We're better than this. But then I really do wonder are we.

I don't see Bournemouth being treated as some basket case club for sacking Parker early. They acted and they're now a better team than us - an absolutely unthinkable prospect just two years ago. Things change quickly in football. Not here anymore though. We're on a downward trajectory under these total cretins.

I've seen everything I need to see. Cooper out.

Please just sack him. Survival is attainable if we do.

I think half the league wanted him on loan and we've loaned him to about the worst possible one

100% agree. Would've been unpopular at the time but not selling Tielemans in 2021 if he wasn't going to sign a new deal as well. We'd have been looking at £50mil+.

You are right of course. It's just pretty mad isn't it. I think a good side can go through a bad period but something does change it so that it doesn't stretch beyond say a couple of months. It's happened here before - under Ranieri and Puel specifically. Managers have a lull where they know they're out of the door soon and everyone's ready for things to be shaken up. This period usually lasts what, a month or two if that? We basically let it go on for 75% of a season. I've never seen anything like it. It was the only possible way you could relegate that team. We even sacked him at basically the worst possible time as well. Too late to give anyone a chance to make an impact. Too late to get anybody who would've actually been capable of making an impact. Even when you look at the timing of the fixtures - nothing for two weeks between Brentford and Palace then two within the next week afterwards, both at home, both which we lost, and then the write off of Man City away. It wasn't on the level of the title win in terms of ridiculousness but I don't remember many things that were less likely either. I'm not over it because we are still paying for it. We're heavily odds on to go down this season. That doesn't happen if 2022/23 doesn't.

It is just madness when you look back. How can you have Tielemans, Maddison, Barnes all get relegated in the same side. Vardy's since proven he wasn't finished either. If you added those four to even someone like Luton last season they'd have stayed up. I'll never forgive it. Why should anybody. It really was the most disgraceful underachievement.

Forest have fully ridden out their weaker period and they're just an objectively decent side now. Don't think they'll push for Europe or anything but think they'll be well clear of the drop - think a Palace level side. They're very good defensively now. I thought they were dire in 2022/23 but lucky, bad again last year and again, lucky with how bad the promoted trio were. But they've ridden it out I think. They've passed us and it makes me sick. How have we just let this happen? It was absolutely unthinkable two years ago.

The big problem I think you have with starting that team is that even if you go ahead, what do you do? You can't really go like for like with subs, you can't just do nothing because they'll be absolutely spent (Ayew, Vardy especially), but you can't really stick attacking subs on either. I'd have probably gone Buonanotte, Reid or El Khannouss for Ndidi and kept the shape as I think that probably gives you the best chance of going 1-3 up and really killing it off. Coady was individually at fault for their goal but 5-4-1 with that many defensive heads on the pitch. It's absolutely ridiculous, it doesn't work. It's why the original line up was still in fact wrong for me - despite going 0-2 up.

You can forgive things like lack of pace perhaps but that sort of thing for an experienced centre half. It's just piss poor.

I thought that was a really poor end to be honest. For a ground we're generally good at.

He's pleasantly surprised me. Hope he keeps it up.

He's what I expected. He's got his uses but he's never going to be a big threat.

Feels too early to declare a game a must-win, but I do think a failure here just leaves us playing catchup that'll prove beyond us in the long run, particularly with an almost certain defeat the following week. Please please please just beat them. I'm fed up of this utter kack getting a result here.

Play with fire. Get burnt. His instincts are just too negative. He won't win more than 5 games here.

I just think there's a lot of mistaking cowardice and negativity for pragmatism. Pragmatic isn't playing a limited holding midfielder as an attacking midfielder when we have perfectly viable options. It's not like Buonanotte doesn't try and defend either, he isn't some luxury. I just don't see that method yielding results. I really don't agree with the way this game has been largely written off on here either. I mean I think we'll lose, but bloody hell, they're only on 1 point themselves and they've had nicer fixtures than us. I do expect them to pick up but I don't get this attitude on here that we're playing Real Madrid.

To me it's just an inevitability when you're setting out to defend. If you carry so little going forward you are going to let the opposition grow in confidence to eventually put more and more numbers forward and get that goal. After the way Rodgers had us playing in his latter time I do appreciate that there is at least an attempt to make us tougher to play through. We are battling and we're going to be a pain - it's really not dissimilar to his Forest side. But I just think we're going to constantly sell ourselves short. I think if we had somebody like I don't know, Iraola, we would take the odd fisting but we'd pick up a few more surprise wins through simply being more ambitious. I really do think over a 38 game season setting up this way we'll do well to win 5 times. If he plays Ndidi attacking midfield at Palace then that's me done with him to be honest because what's the point. I don't believe in that method and that to me would prove it's what he's standing for.

I think they're replacing it with a two week break in October. I could be wrong though. I've always thought it about September's break specifically. I'm not quite like I was probably 15 years ago where I'm lost without football for the weekend but I do think this one is complete crap. Like I said, too early into the domestic season and I feel like the Euros final is too fresh too. It's too soon to go back to internationals imo.

Best one to prove this was @The Doctor he found some game state xG tables which basically tell me that we're going nothing with the game even and only really attacking when behind. It's only three games but the trends do worry me. This isn't a method that is going to yield wins.

The September international break is the worst weekend of the season. Too early for a break and it's too soon after a tournament as well when that applies. It's going next year though thankfully.

Got a bad feeling they'll move Ipswich to Monday or something crap. We never seem to get that game at a decent time and we've just simply not had many moved. Man Utd away by my calculation has to be Sunday regardless.

This is exactly what I fear it'll be. If we're on 2 points from 7 I think Cooper's got to go. Although it's double the tally we had last time after 7 games and the manager survived that.