Ex Lion Tamer

The other way of putting it is that we've stayed up comfortably every season under Ralph despite some horrendous runs, so why do you think this season will be different? If we stay up comfortably again this season then I'll be happy, especially with the potential for our young players to improve next season. That said, he needs to turn things around soon otherwise he'll need to go

No, I don't feel certain enough to say that we should make the change now or later in the year because I hope he turns it round. But I'm not going to commit to keeping him until the end of the season either. We need to keep assessing it over the next few games

We have been here before when he was playing a cautious 3 at the back towards the start of his tenure. Eventually we had to be brave and play the attacking 4222 that made him his name. It worked spectacularly

The problem is that his pressing system is so reliant on everything working, otherwise it falls apart. We've seen that in the 9-0s. Ely offering no attacking threat but keeping the system working is preferable to a humiliation. We need to get the likes of Edozie up to speed with our defensive game so that hopefully he can do both sides

The poll options are a bit skewed. He has a couple more games to prove himself for me. He probably should have gone in the summer but now we've kept him he needs to be given a bit more time

Stuey won a free kick at the end following an awful touch yesterday. I feel like everyone was infected by the uselessness

You have to laugh really. We looked like we'd never played football before. Even our good players couldn't control the ball or complete a pass

I get why we don't want people making jokes or singing offensive songs about minority groups as these people take a lot of shit all the time, but cancelling all football to protect people who will be offended because they liked the queen just seems like taking it way too far

But your argument rests on the idea that being disrespectful to the Queen cannot be tolerated. Whereas many of us question why we have to upend everything for the sake of people who won't even be at the game

But cancelling football forces everyone to mourn the same way. If football goes ahead, then people can choose to go or not go

This is what annoys me the most, that one group of people feels it can impose its values on everyone else

Absolutely ridiculous

Why though? Just saying "that's what people do" isn't an argument for doing it. Anyway, looks like hopefully sense is going to prevail and football is going ahead

There are plenty of people who work tirelessly all their lives to serve others and we don't cancel everything for them. All this is is that she was the queen and people want to force us to respect something that doesn't actually mean anything. It's basically another religion except this one gets imposed on us way more than any other

Why is it a big news event though? The whole thing is mad! And anyway, if people want to mourn then that's fine, but why force it on the rest of us?

Glad to see some people speaking sense on this thread. I find it utterly baffling that the fun police want to force us to put our lives on hold because a 96 year old woman died. And I'm not even a republican

Norwich fans were equally frustrated with him when we bought him so I think that's just the player we bought

Potter would be mad not to take the job. So many promising English managers fail to get their chance of the top six

Redmond named the Chelsea goal as his favourite he's scored because it was such a good team goal. Probably says a lot about him

To be fair, Pelle looked rubbish at first

Diallo seems a bit like a low rent Pogba in that he's only effective in a midfield 3

Quite hard to work out what happened based on the short clip I've seen on Twitter, but KWP does have license to attack, so if the break is quick then other players need to cover him

I'm willing to be corrected but I thought Romano was a very credible journalist? It is ridiculous if true though. Any inkling that we're selling him and City will be on the phone to exercise their buyback clause, which the player doesn't want at this stage, so we're back to square one. City would also be furious and would never sell us a young talent again

This is a fair point - it's good to have some model pros in the dressing room who aren't "the teachers", ie the coaches. Not sure Barkley fits the mould though

Where experience has some value is in a crisis situation in the pitch, like at the end of the Chelsea game when we kept lumping it out deep rather than getting up the pitch and keeping hold of it. An older head can calm everyone down and get them focused. I seem to also remember JWP giving the ball away in a silly position for a late goal last season in a way an older player wouldn't. Or Peter Crouch trying to score instead of take it to the corner during our relegation season. But the idea that Ross Barkley will mentor the youth is not one I go along with