Ex Lion Tamer

The spurs game was the first time I've seen him play in a while and his lack of pace was absolutely glaring. He is never going to be a premier league player

Any news on whether Ings trained?

At that time we needed someone to come in try to give the players some confidence, get them attacking and taking risks, even if that meant being more ropey at the back. Hughes had some success in doing this. A more defensive coach might not have kept us up. Unfortunately Hughes' inability to coach a defence / tactics in general means he wasn't a long term solution in the end, although I thought he deserved a chance based on his track record of mid table finishes at various clubs

I'm wondering if we will generate a transfer budget for the new manager in Jan by selling JWP and Targett. With £15m for each we could buy a first teamer for £30m

With the caveat that Leipzig had finished 2nd the season before they finished 6th, so a bit of a regression. But yes, generally promising

We could get Puel back then!

Although I'm sure he'll be excited to work with Stuart Armstrong again, a player he let go for £7m

If we all keep saying Brendan Rodgers enough does that somehow make it possible that he would want to give up winning the league in Scotland for an against all odds relegation battle with us?

Questionable whether any of those would come to us in our current predicament. The threat to their reputation from being relegated is huge

I haven't heard of four of those but why would Darren Moore join us? Given the choice between a good chance of promotion with West Brom or a high chance of relegation with us, it's surely an easy choice for him to stay

We've briefed that we will consider Mitchell, not that we will get him. If we don't brief that we are interested, then when we make an appointment, people will complain that we didn't consider him and didn't think ambitiously enough

Companies hate the reputational damage that boycotts create https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2606274/Starbucks-pay-tax-Britain-relocates-European-headquarters-London-following-customer-boycott.html

I would be amazed if Hughes was letting Reed tell him who to pick in the team. I think he'd rather walk

You've turned out to be right but his keeping us up and his past record of success at several clubs meant you were too early in calling for him to go

Did a fantastic job at Sunderland too, a club which was in a similar state to what we are now

The biggest problem here is either that Ross Wilson is no good or Paul Mitchell was irreplaceable.

Good post

What's worrying is that players at Stoke said the same thing

Imagine if we didn't have Gunn and were faced with bringing Forster back in

If i was Rodgers i would go to Villa over us because they have money to spend and are likely to be a club on the up

Allardyce would get us into mid table. Agree on the others

Not sure how you can say we're sleepwalking in a thread about players and senior staff arguing. They know things aren't good and they're searching for answers

Our academy will continue to be weak if we rely only on our local catchment area. We only need one prodigy to make us a big transfer fee and the investment in 30+ others is worth it

I imagine this is pretty common. Clubs aren't allowed to give contracts to under 16s, so try to exercise as much soft power as possible, giving financial perks, helping out with training options etc etc, in the hope that the player will be grateful and agree to a longer relationship. But ultimately if the player decides to sign a contract elsewhere, then that's entirely up to them

OK but they + Armstrong could make a difference