Premier League 2024/25

[Royston.]

3 hours ago, Finnegan said:

Russell Martin is going be penetrated by Enzo in his dreams. 

 

[Jon the Hat]

10 hours ago, Grebfromgrebland said:

This is nothing to do with religion. Just bigotry.

Bigotry in this case taught by their religion, which is a legally protected right, as long as it doesn't impinge on the legally protected rights of others.  Him not wearing an armband impinges on no one at all, so he has the right to refuse on the basis of his religion. 

 

Personally I think all religion is literally bollocks so this makes no sense to me at all, but I don't believe employers should have the right to force their employees to show support for something they do not support, even if their belief is bigoted nonsense.   They also should not have the right to punish an employee for this.

[Lambert09]

11 hours ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

Look at adkins though, Southampton made the tough decision and ended up with a decade of premier league football 

The difference is that Adkins was on the way down, whereas Mckenna is likely on the way up. 

 

They haven’t been terrible, overall they’ve played quite well tbh, the premier league is just unforgiving. 

 

They have 2 winnable games coming up then about 8 fixtures from hell, so if they don’t get points in the next 2 l, then they will likely hit bottom for xmas…. then your theory may come true. 

 

I personally  see the promotion season as a free pass for a manager, unless they are making glaringly obvious mistakes. But i don’t think he’s underachieved, probably just doing as well as could have been hoped for. 

Edited 5 December 2024 by Lambert09

[Bilo]

McKenna probably gets the whole season provided Ipswich don't end up getting cut ridiculously adrift to the point that the board fear for them in the Championship. 

[Gazza M]

I think McKenna could jump ship before season is out leaving Ipswich stranded. Southampton seem pretty hopeless. I expect Wolves to make the manager change shortly to try and ignite some life in to their season. 

[Lionator]

Wolves are very 2022/23 us. 

[LCFCJohn]

I might be way off but it feels that for Ipswich, McKenna is their trump card and the success is in most, down to him. So a change of manager could be unlikely to be the catalyst it is for many sides. As others have pointed out, it was for Southampton all those years ago but that was a decade Or so ago and a different situation.

 

Southampton probably improve if and when they bin Martin. But with an average squad, they may already have left it too late for a new manager to improve to the level needed to survive.

 

Wolves probably will be fine if they act sooner but as with the comparison with 22/23 us, maybe they drag their heels for too long.

[Bilo]

52 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Wolves are very 2022/23 us. 

They look like a slower burning version. We went from 5th to 8th to 18th in successive seasons, while they've been stagnating for a few years now.

[fox_favourite]

Out of all the teams near the bottom of the table, I so want Everton to go down. They've been circling the drop for too long. 

 

I can see Wolves, Southampton and Palace (if things don't improve) changing their manager soon, which will be interesting to see how that changes the relegation battle. Ipswich will stay with McKenna. They know it was too early to come up, and they have bought for a very strong championship side. They won't sack him, but will he be offered a 'better job', that is another question. 

[whoareyaaa]

Man Utd are such a poor team, even under this new manager they look just as bad.

[Paninistickers]

16 minutes ago, Bilo said:

They look like a slower burning version. We went from 5th to 8th to 18th in successive seasons, while they've been stagnating for a few years now.

Yeah, wolves are going the more traditional slow decline route of Stoke or Bolton or Blackburn.

 

The only similar relegations I can recall were Forest under Clough, Villa (the year we won the title) ....tho both of them had total implosions and finished bottom by a mile. 

[purpleronnie]

I find it baffling so much attention is given to who is wearing or who isnt wearing.  If the media stopped making it an issue the only people who'd be offended would be those on their twitter echo chambers.

[BenTheFox]

1 hour ago, Paninistickers said:

Yeah, wolves are going the more traditional slow decline route of Stoke or Bolton or Blackburn.

 

The only similar relegations I can recall were Forest under Clough, Villa (the year we won the title) ....tho both of them had total implosions and finished bottom by a mile. 

Villa had been circling the drain for a good four seasons before going down that season to be fair. They finished 16th or 17th in 2014/15 and lost Benteke and Delph that summer. 

[Bilo]

35 minutes ago, BenTheFox said:

Villa had been circling the drain for a good four seasons before going down that season to be fair. They finished 16th or 17th in 2014/15 and lost Benteke and Delph that summer. 

It's not dissimilar with Wolves, really. 

 

They've sold Kilman, Neto, Podence, Nunes and Neves in the last two seasons. As we've learned all too well, it's difficult to keep selling players of that calibre and find like-for-like replacements.

[fox_up_north]

6 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Bigotry in this case taught by their religion, which is a legally protected right, as long as it doesn't impinge on the legally protected rights of others.  Him not wearing an armband impinges on no one at all, so he has the right to refuse on the basis of his religion. 

 

Personally I think all religion is literally bollocks so this makes no sense to me at all, but I don't believe employers should have the right to force their employees to show support for something they do not support, even if their belief is bigoted nonsense.   They also should not have the right to punish an employee for this.

It's also more effective if players do it of their own choice. If you've got 9 out of 11 on the pitch doing it, it shows that the majority are fine with it. 

 

Same went for taking the knee. Some did, some didn't. Their call. 

[KFS]

The good thing if we stay up is that you lose a set of entitled fans like West Ham, Wolves, Palace or Everton for at least a year. The bad thing is that Fulham, Brentford, Bournemouth are all still up here and untouched.
 

Going to be a long road back and now relies on Villa, Brighton and Newcastle falling off too

[Bilo]

5 minutes ago, KFS said:

The good thing if we stay up is that you lose a set of entitled fans like West Ham, Wolves, Palace or Everton for at least a year. The bad thing is that Fulham, Brentford, Bournemouth are all still up here and untouched.
 

Going to be a long road back and now relies on Villa, Brighton and Newcastle falling off too

Fulham, Brentford and Bournemouth are all one bad transfer window or managerial appointment away. I'd say that applies to at least half of the league. 

 

Brighton look an extremely well-run club who are here to stay, but the same was said of us five years ago. All it takes is for a couple of bad decisions, rotten luck or not replacing like with like and you're bang in the brown stuff. 

[BenTheFox]

8 hours ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

Do find it weird McKenna isn’t under little under pressure, they did spunk 100 mill not exactly Luton are they 

To be fair, they got promoted last season with many players who were playing for them in League 1 the season before. The gulf in quality between the Premier League and the Championship is big and they're not being embarrassed at this level. 

Edited 5 December 2024 by BenTheFox

[FrankieADZ]

9 minutes ago, Bilo said:

Fulham, Brentford and Bournemouth are all one bad transfer window or managerial appointment away. I'd say that applies to at least half of the league. 

 

Brighton look an extremely well-run club who are here to stay, but the same was said of us five years ago. All it takes is for a couple of bad decisions, rotten luck or not replacing like with like and you're bang in the brown stuff. 

tbf to Brighton, they plan so far ahead in terms of managers/players, even now theyve got names of managers to replace the one theyve got now, though that gets updated constantly 

atm under Tony Bloom they are incredibly well run behind the screens for the most part

[dmayne7]

9 hours ago, Daggers said:

Happy campers then, eh @The Bear?

 

 

Fair enough to some of those Wolves players for fronting up. Couldn't imagine our team that went down doing that.

[dmayne7]

8 hours ago, The Horse's Mouth said:

Do find it weird McKenna isn’t under little under pressure, they did spunk 100 mill not exactly Luton are they 

Not in the slightest. In fact, it would be the one managerial change of another club where you would feel you can make a reasonable judgement on it. They are where they are because of him. Watched a few minutes of the game and their approach is night and day to what we've been doing. The money spent is clearly about taking a punt on players that will at worst be very good in the championship (Delap, Clarke, Greaves, Hutchinson etc), but some of them have already shown they're good at this level.

 

He's basically taken a league 1 standard team and made them a PL team.

[Mike1983]

2 hours ago, fox_favourite said:

Out of all the teams near the bottom of the table, I so want Everton to go down. They've been circling the drop for too long. 

 

I can see Wolves, Southampton and Palace (if things don't improve) changing their manager soon, which will be interesting to see how that changes the relegation battle. Ipswich will stay with McKenna. They know it was too early to come up, and they have bought for a very strong championship side. They won't sack him, but will he be offered a 'better job', that is another question. 

They're never going down, at least not in our lifetime. Slap them with another points deduction and they'll just start winning every game from here on out. Everton will outlive even mankind, same as cockroaches will.

[Bilo]

If both Lopetegui and O'Neil somehow make it to Saturday, and I think the former might as you'd think he'd have gone already if their loss to us was the final straw, that game between West Ham and Wolves is going to be a proper El Sackico. 

 

Absolute last chance saloon for both managers.

[Facecloth]

This went well last night 

 

 

[BenTheFox]

21 minutes ago, KFS said:

The good thing if we stay up is that you lose a set of entitled fans like West Ham, Wolves, Palace or Everton for at least a year. The bad thing is that Fulham, Brentford, Bournemouth are all still up here and untouched.
 

Going to be a long road back and now relies on Villa, Brighton and Newcastle falling off too

Having watched a fair bit of the championship this season, I'd say the biggest positive if we stay up would be that it will most likely be more straight forward for us to stay up next season. We'd probably be a more attractive proposition to potential signings and  I can't see Sheffield United, Burnley, Watford, West Brom or Middlesbrough seriously competing if they get promoted. Sunderland or Leeds with their current squads would get slaughtered but are big enough in stature to make a better fist of it.