smudgerfox

It’s going to be less about whether we get rid of these players than about how. Who will bid for this band of lily-livered failures? Winks can have a whole Aperol Spritz year in North London on decent wages and leave for nothing next summer,,, And I fully expect that’s what he’ll do,,,

The very threat of a transfer embargo is extremely damaging as the mooted points deduction this summer proved. It scares off the best managers and players ..

Left Arsenal as a failure and nearly replaced by Brendan - had we swapped managers at that time , I assure you there would have been uproar

Some of the managers who would have caused uproar had we appointed them in the past five years Marco Silva Nuno Esprito Santo Sean Dyche Thomas Frank Unai Emery

According to Rob Tanner on BBC WYC this week - manager identifies where he wants to strengthen, the scouting team identify A, B, C candidates and when they get a yes - over to JR to do the deal.

Davie - we are a million miles from a top 10 PL side right now. Id say at least five years and minimum three managers..And that assumes we take no major backward steps… First and foremost the finances need sorting because they are constantly undermining team and club building right now.. We need someone who can do that and we need a director of football who can find talent for next to nothing and we need a manager with the experience and resilience to progress the club without throwing money at it. And we desperately need people in those three positions who wont jump ship when a more exciting offer comes along.

You don't think that's us? Points deduction, possible transfer embargo, players who have already demonstrated they don't care, on PL salaries, no money, need I go on?

I agree..we get a young, up-and-coming, "modern" manager and he loses a few games and everyone says he's got the wrong philosophy and no experience. We need someone who has the personality and determination to clean out this club while improving performances and results on the field. Dyche is the only man in town and if he's ever going to play a more sophisticated style of football, he'll get the chance. So many fans have ideas way above our station.. Moyes wasn't good enough, Dyche isn't good enough - if we'd got the latter before Everton grabbed him in the Rodgers relegation season we wouldn't be in such a mess in the first place....To preserve Burnley as long as he did, to keep Everton up amid a shambolic off-the-field setup, are not achievements to be sneered at. Plus we need to start signing players with character and hunger again - not the likes of Winks and Vestergaard...

Not sure how you can blame Ruud. Did he post the picture? Did he go to Copenhagen with a sign saying :"We miss you Enzo..: " And you're delusional if you think it's a harmless picture. Like the Enzo message it's designed to say - what's happening at the club is sh!t but I don't actually give a sh!t...I've still got my big watch, my fancy clothes, my new born baby, my Aperol Spritz, my access to beautiful bar and no doubt my footballers' girlfriend and it really doesn't matter that the club which pays for all this, is getting relegated today..

Has to go - hugely implicated in the Copenhagen Enzo love-in as well… thinks hes far far better than he actually is…

Great interview - very revealing and let the so-called Guy hang himself with his own words. An absolute moron who should be nowhere near a position at our club and typical of the inward-looking mentality that has been instrumental in our demise. Despite his "I have a season ticket" claim, he seems to have no understanding what it means to support our club. Do I follow our Academy, check its progress, take pride in the players who make it to the first team, because they will eventually be sold to improve the balance sheet? No. it's because I want my club to build a successful team, and finding your own talent seems a more cost-effective way to do that than playing the transfer market (which incidentally makes money for agents). If we accept that Monga will go to Man City or Chelsea (so-called Guy seemed to think it inevitable and that's one point he might be right about) for next to nothing in the next couple of seasons, then really what is the point of the Academy at all? He seemed to imply the club could live off bonus payments when Academy products play for their country, win trophies, reach a certain number of appearances. But there are a lot of "ifs" in there and I simply don't believe that these can amount to more than the odd million pounds. Well done to BSLB for a great piece of journalism...more please!

Facial recognition technology on the way - then they’ll have us… At Brentford you can lose your season ticket if you dont go sufficient times - st holders regularly offer up their seats to the likes of me to avoid a yellow card…

We were selling Daka to Bournemouth, Ihenacho was going to Afcon so we were in danger of having only Vardy in the busy Christmas/New Year period. So in that context, buying a proven Championship scorer did make sense. But the Bournemouth transfer fell through (funny that) because they wouldn’t match his salary (how on earth is a transfer strategy based around a move where pay hasn’t been agreed?) and when Enzo preferred Daka to Cannon, the full incompetence of our director of football was exposed (again). That said Daka also went to Afcon…so the situation was much the same except we had one more striker than we were ever going to use, outside of Afcon.

Part of that is a lack of awareness about other clubs. Ive seen Brentford, Bournemouth, Fulham and Palace described as crap on here and they quite obviously aren’t. No Premier team is easy to beat any more which is why the promoted teams get relegated. Instead of being condescending about these clubs we should be looking to learn from them. Their underlying finances are little different- but they are all massively better run..

He lives M25 ish north London - so not quite as bad as it sounds tbh

Jack Harrison on £100,000 a week - rescued when Leeds pulled out Pretty much every loan for our Academy players except KDH and Barnes

Far from being leaders they are clearly toxic. And it’s probably affecting every aspect of the club. Why would you want to bring young players into an atmosphere like that?

I know what you mean. But it doesn’t chime with Club PR that everyone is straining every sinew in their body to prevent relegation. As others have said, i have a dog, live in London and fairly regularly leave the dog with a dogsitter - which leaves me free to “enjoy” going to Leicester to the match without worrying about the dog. That a multi millionaire cant do something similar smacks of entitlement and of taking the p1ss…

Awarding Vestergaard a new contract was the singularly most stupid decision the club has made in a tsunami of stupid decisions in recent years.. i thought Brendan was idiotic to bring home here in the first place and after he flopped in the Prem - to keep him on was disastrous..

Why is that set piece coach still here ?

It is part of the delusion at the top of the club (and among some supporters) that we have a genuine choice. That the club is attractive to that tier of manager below Champions League level. Potter was never coming here and we wasted time chasing him - twice. There's a huge job to do with no money to do it. Getting rid of deadwood, getting the wage bill more comfortably within PSR limits, while trying to keep the club afloat as it hovers between the EPL and Championship. Enzo, I believe, said Top wanted a team that played like Manchester City which is a childishly simplistic aspiration - do we have the money to buy a latter Kevin De Bruyne ? I don't think so....

I think the Forest cup game. Defending the trophy. Lower division local rivals. And nothing. As lackadaisical performance as you'll ever see. Also I'm pretty sure Brendan slagged the squad BEFORE the match. To say what he said after the match beggars belief but to say it before was suicidal. His comments are regularly reported as a reaction to the performance and result. But I'm not sure that's right. Happy to be corrected on that one.

I couldn’t believe he was doing it but he was good - second in the queue to Pipes definitely… Fryatt is the worst - says nothing that you wouldn’t hear in the pub ..Howard not much better, Stowell is dull as well but he does know more about the internal thinking of the club and offers the occasional insight - even if it’s not a quarter of what he knows.

Last night he gifted the ball to United in a dangerous position, was fortunately given it straight back by a poor touch of the United player - then gave it straight back again…farcical.. Showed his leadership qualities in. Copenhagen along with Coady and Vestergaard..

West London for me too. Night closures on the M1 are the biggest pain. You find yourself stuck behind lorries in Country roads in Northamptonshire for an hour . Ive now found a decent reliable parking spot, but getting out of the city to the M1 takes ages and I sometimes drive to Harborough and catch the train from there. Certainly hasn’t seemed worth the effort on a lot of days in recent years. I was at MCG on Boxing Day for Australia v India and there was 84000 crowd and public transport was so good I was home 20 mins after leaving the ground..