Fabrice29

He doesn't mention the English game or understanding what English fans tick once so that's not what his post comes across as and also the idea the idea that someone needs to understand "the English game" or "what makes English fans tick" is still pathetic. It's quite literally the same game across the world.

Looks like Romeu competition to me more than anything. Good move.

He was tasked with implementing a slightly more possession based game so we could manage two games a week with Europe. At the same time, especially at the end, he had some really out of form strikers which just lead to everything becoming stale and Tadic just racking up his chances created stats and the strikers their games without scoring stats. There were issues with him and his management of course but there's no doubt he was let down by poor strikers (bad recruitment plays a part here) and the whole Fonte debacle as well.

Turns out I've not read other threads.

...is absolutely fine...the set up for it however is awful. We're hardly a big team anyway but two of our biggest threats are kept back for it.

Fonseca has tasked his people with linking him with every possible job in the PL in the hope of actually getting one seemingly. Age old tactics, Howe doing similar too.

There was no way he was going from being injured and one (i think? maybe 2) sub appearance to starting 2 games a in a week.

Okay, looking forward to Pep, Klopp, Simeone etc fighting over the job. This Fonseca/Howe thing is clearly a smokescreen.

The idea that Newcastle could have any manager they want now is more hilarious fwiw.

1.5 for a Charlton win. Over evens for HT/FT and Charlton -1 though.

Find the calls to push Tino higher slightly bizarre tbh. His two best attributes this season have been his defending and the driving from deep past players. His final ball hasn’t been great and he’s played every game facing the goal. If you move him up he won’t be defending, he won’t be able to drive from deep and he’ll have to play with his back to goal more and find an end product. Not saying he can’t do it but it’s a strange clamour to move our best performer so far into another role. Our biggest issue right now is being predictable in our build up. Just after they scored we created our best chance when Romeu played a lovely through ball from deep. Sadly that deep through ball was totally out of character. We’re slightly too concerned about attacking in patterns in my opinion. There’s not enough ‘randomness’ (I’m sure there is a better word).

They haven't scraped all TV fixtures for the competition or even the round fwiw. The tweet is slightly misleading. Two fixtures on Sky Sports this week.

I'm surprised people are "expecting" us to go 4141 again. I thought Ralph made it clear the tactic was designed to allow West Ham more of the ball and draw them out a bit because they normally don't care for the ball in their own half. I don't think City need that encouragement. I think we'll go back to disrupting the opposition.

As Leonardo said last week, they know full well PSG will reject it but they can convince Mpabbe they were willing to throw loads of money at it to get him when he has the pick of clubs in 6 months time.

Nixon is just below Crook in terms of credibility imo but young top talents is clearly a part of our remit now so sounds plausible. Although Everton have been keen on this kid all summer and with Kean leaving they can offer him a place right behind Calvert-Lewin which we can't (at least for another year anyway). Nixon is clearly fed information by selling teams a lot as well to boost buying teams into moving quicker (see his insistence throughout the Armstrong stuff that Palace and Norwich were in advanced talks) so again, I'd take it with a pinch of salt for now.

Offside and it also wasn't VAR who disallowed it, it was the linesman.

Denial of a goal scoring opportunity = red card. It's the clearest red card you'll see all season by the rules.

No. He started Liverpool’s first game of the season and only missed the second because his girlfriend went into labour. There’s no chance he’s uprooting himself or his family for 6 months.

Think we’re likely to keep the loan spot open for any January shake ups. Lyanco has played both CB and CM so I suspect that’s us done for the window unless Forster gets himself a move and then we might accelerate next years GK hunt.

If this is true…and I’ve no idea how reliable the source is…I wonder if Tino’s exposure to the starting line up has been the clincher.

Out of interest if we actually lose 4-0 and therefore hit your definition of doing well will you be coming on here and praising the team?

I love that you saying we're fine = we're fine and you have completely disregarded any notion that maybe, just maybe, someone else has a different opinion which is as equally as valid.

Wonder if Diallo fancies a pay cut to play with his brother?

Interesting comment from Semmens "sometimes we see a player isn't good enough physically to play in the system anymore so we choose not to renew"...would explain why Bertrand was held in a back three towards the end of last season and why Betrand made a strange comment about being allowed to play the way he wants to when he left.

Top marks on timing though and content quality as always can't be faulted.