Saint Garrett

Surprises me, the amount of disrespect Ralph gets on here.

The only reason to be looking at Jones, is to prepare for a promotion push next season. Would be a woeful appointment. Give me Ralph over Jones every single day of the week. However, I would be very very surprised if he became manager.

Should also be covered by his other DM, AMN was in the box and didn’t close Rice down against West Ham, and Lavia is nowhere for that goal yesterday. It’s also a great finish. He can’t do it all himself.

I was told a few weeks ago that Semmens has been told he’s leaving. Was no timeline on it. So would guess they’re trying to find replacement first.

So are these the best options out there right now, will be interesting to see how things progress this week… Domenico Tedesco Marcelo Gallardo Bo Svensson Matthias Jaissle Franck Haise Kjetil Knutsen

I am clearly in the minority but I didn’t think we played that badly at all today. I’ve certainly seen us play worse. Everything seemed to fall for them and nothing seemed to fall for us. Our keeper doesn’t make enough saves, we miss sitters for fun, and Newcastle were unbelievably clinical today. It was just one of those days, but unfortunately we have too many, and it’s the right time for Ralph to depart, if they don’t see a long term future with him. It’s time to freshen it up. But without a goal scoring striker, and a little more creativity in midfield, we aren’t staying up, whether we have Ralph or Guardiola. Even despite our relatively impressive defence, we can’t keep clean sheets. I know this is also a knock on affect of giving the ball away.

He’s not shit, he’s got loads of potential, but right now he’s the worst keeper in this league. We went a step too far this summer.

He hasn’t been “extremely poor”. He just hasn’t been as good as last season, but neither has the team. I’m sure his form will pick up, once Lavia is back fit, and having a striker up front would help him too.

On the positive side, if we win tomorrow we’ll be 13th.

He's definitely a "safe" midfielder, but if he had the passing ability of De Bruyne he wouldn't be playing for us. Personally I think he's just fine, probably not quite at that top level and probably never will be. But I do think he'd look better in a better side.

A fair point, but I think it's also related to the movement in front of him. It's not like there are passes forward on and he chooses to go backwards. He goes backwards because of the lack of movement ahead of him. I think he also needs to play safe at times, as it's when we're just trying to get hold of the ball for a bit. There were times against Bournemouth, when they had the majority of the ball, but once we won it back, we simply had to just try and keep it for a bit, it wasn't a case of getting it forward and turning the ball over.

What makes you think that? IMO, despite some promising games, we are probably in the bottom 5/6 of Keeper, midfield, and forwards. Defence I don’t have a problem with. DM/CM I think we have the potential to be better than that, and Lavia has buckets of it. AMN is getting better and JWP is a class act. Attacking mids and forwards, we are definitely in the bottom 3 of quality, my opinion anyway.

Would love to know where these valuations are coming from.

Embarrassing. Every single game.

Not a big surprise, given how easy it is to get tickets atm. There is no doubt the relatively poor form. The match ticket prices, and the cost of living crisis are all impacting the attendances at home this season. They’re on a high. When you’re in that situation you make sacrifices elsewhere to be able to go, fair play to them. Been really impressive under Howe, far better than I ever thought they’d be.

That disgraceful barmy lineup that got us to the top of the premier league 2 seasons ago....

You seem to have picked out one of the only negative comments about him. If you read the last few pages of the thread you'll get a better balanced view. https://thefightingcock.co.uk/forum/threads/pierre-emile-højbjerg.36773/page-305

We couldn’t when the club was in the lower leagues.

He was a very important player for us at the time too, but we weren't getting the best out of him at the time, no doubt about that. Also hes a proper leader that we lack. He's done really well at Spurs, and their fans love him.

We didnt have a chance recruiting the best youngsters in the area when we were outside of the premier league, basically. And Chelsea doubled down on that by recruiting all over hampshire, similar to how we got Bale from the Bristol satellite centre.

Yup - certainly wouldn't be uphappy with that. ---------------Bazunu--------------- ------ABK------DCC-------Sali------ AMN-----------Lavia------------Perraud -------Armstrong-----JWP----------- ---------Armstrong-Adams------------

He comes and gets relegated? Has to move away from Manchester? Think he's got a pretty sweet deal at Burnley right now tbh.

Very good solid side, they bullied us off the pitch last season. RB is obviously a problem for us, but the options are basically, AMN, Lyanco, Elyounoussi or JWP. Not sure I fancy any of those really, who plays left wing for them? Almiron? Fingers crossed Lavia can sit in alongside AMN and maybe JWP RB?

I fully expect us to try, now Tuchel has gone, but whether he would come now or Chelsea would now let him leave I don't know. He's played quite a bit for Chelsea this season.

The deal was on until Tuchel pulled the plug at the end of the window. Was waiting for Aubameyang deal to happen.