CB Fry

I wanna hold you wanna hold you tight They're dumping shits all through the night

Good news for Derby. If Rooney doesn't win the league now he's a total failure.

What "perspective" do you think "we're only 6 points from the top 10" gives you? After 9 games that's loads. That's miles away. Clue: it is absolutely not "two wins". For us to be top 10 at the halfway point of the season - 19 games - we will have needed to win probably 8 games, based on a few recent seasons. So seven more wins in the upcoming 10 matches to get to halfway. Seven wins. Reckon we're close to that? That's what your perspective is telling you?

So I looked at the last 29 games of last season and we are 17th with 7 wins, add that to the 1 win in the 9 of this season and we are where I'd think we are - bottom four - for the rolling 38 game "season". It's possible we can stay up, but incredibly likely we'll go down.

Why not 38?

The only thing this forum dislikes more than having shit players that won't leave is having good players that won't stay.

Fantastic week for the boy Widdrington this week. Kai and AJ delivered an excellent Argentine Tango and through to next round. Also, Twitter and newspapers telling me that he's banging it. He's doing the city proud.

If you look at the games they've played, Man U are only one point off par this season or something. And definitely really unlucky. And he needs time. After all typical knee jerkers wanted Sir Alex Ferguson out and etc etc etc.

Meh - it's a bottom six squad and we need a manager to try and finish at the top of that, so 15th. All I can see this season is whatever we do we're in trouble. Ralph is very very capable of relegating us, but also very capable of getting us to 15th. Every other managerial choice we make from here is really in the same bracket. Howe I think is more likely to relegate us than get us to 15th. But Howe could also get a new manager bounce and get us to 15th. Right now I still don't think that twisting will really benefit us more than sticking. It's such a marginal choice that we might as well stick with a manager and the squad that is entirely his. Give me three more matches and I may change my mind. This is not a ringing endorsement or defence of Ralph.

He said in "his lifetime supporting Saints" so lets say no it doesn't count. My lifetime also, won nothing (apart from the JPT). And trust me, I ain't young.

Jay Rod on for the winner.

Gordon Strachan was an absolute failure because we didn't win the Uefa Cup of something. Am I doing it right?

None of the thick cunts who say we should have won the Championship would have said that on August 1st of that season. None of them. League One he took over several games in, and again no one would have said he would win the league no problem. 100% bullshit hindsight. Absolute bullshit.

If we can keep the Elyounoussi hype-machine pumping out propaganda we could be onto some serious coin from El-Toon.

Just feels like an appalling appointment to me. Doesn't feel like a good fit, and could be argued that the team he took down was better than the team he will inherit. He's got history of not coping with pressure. Everything about it feels wrong. So fingers crossed it happens.

This mythical "treatment" of Sadio Mane was seven years ago. You probably should be able to get over it by now.

But we wouldn't have got £5m for Bertrand if he'd signed a contract extension, he'd be in our team and we probably would not have signed Perraud. Ditto Vestergaard, he'd have to have signed for at least two more years, at least. So he'd be our first choice CB. Ings we spent a year plus trying to get him to sign an extension. I heard what Semmens said, but he didn't necessarily mean that we just extend everyone's contracts come what may. You can't just get extensions signed with the objective to then just sell them for more money. Look how long it took to shift Lemina, the loss we made on Boufal and the moaning there has been about Forster from about 6 months into his extension.

Except none of those was a fiasco. Bertrand it was clear it had reached a sensible end point: no fiasco. Vestergaard, it would have cost an absolute fortune to extend his deal and he really wasn't that good, and we got our money back just about. No fiasco. Ings, we got far more cash than many were expecting, the second best outcome after him staying. Could have been a lot worse (eg nips off to Spurs on the last day if the window for £20m). No fiasco.

I think Sean Dyche will be able to get a tune out of Cornet.

Just covered it on BBC 6 o'clock news, speaking to an England fan called Graham Hiley and son who were at the game - looked like former Echo Saints correspondent Graham Hiley.

I broadly agree with your general point (we do seem much better than the second half of last season) but you're underpaying how bad we were vs Wolves. We never really looked like winning and their goal and the inevitable result was straight out of the 20-21 playbook. The "we played some good stuff" stuff is smoke and mirrors sometimes. Propaganda football as WGS used to say. That's the type of performance that will keep us in the relegation zone, and I don't know yet how many of them we have in us this season. If it's a few, we're screwed. Burnley next week an excellent test.

Where was it "proved correct" that we were paying unemployed Mark Hughes a retainer from January 2018, within days of him being sacked by Stoke, some two-three months ahead of him taking over from Pellegrino. I've never heard this, so would be interested to see this detail. It would basically mean we were paying Hughes a retainer at exactly the same time we were giving Pellegrino £20m to sign Carillo at the end of the same month. Feels unlikely. I think the specific point of this thread is not that Howe might be in the frame. This has been a rumour for a long time, and everyone recognises that there is a "fit" there. The originator of this thread is not the first person to make this connection. If we sack Ralph and employ Howe it will be the least surprising news in football, after Steve Bruce being sacked. There is absolutely no revelation there, zero insider knowledge. The point of this thread is that we are going to sack Ralph this month, even if he wins three in a row. Whatever he does he is sacked by Halloween. That is what the claim is here. We beat Burnley and Watford and then he's sacked, with us on 13 points from 10 games.

Just two more wins and the Howe era begins.

Well, it's a line up. I'll give him that.

If we do well in the next few games Ralph is safe - I can't see us desperate to sack him (otherwise we would have already done so). If we do terribly, (ie no wins in ten) then its untenable and he will just have to go. Howe feels like an incredibly likely candidate but to be honest if we are sacking Ralph soon because he's started badly and recruiting Howe I think we're relegated. I don't see Eddie as the man to get us out of the shit. I think that if that is the chain of events then it feels to me that this really is the year we go down.