Midfield_General

Loving the song the Hearts fans have for Claudio Braga

That's got that quantity surveyed

Preach

Personally I’d like to see an unchanged team and shape. We’ve done nothing but chop and change this season, so some continuity would be nice and now we’ve shown we can play let’s let the opposition worry about us for a change. Guarantee they won’t be looking forward to it too much now they’ve seen what we can do a decent team if we hit our straps.

In a sick bed in Ipswich

Yeah, not only a good player but also seems like a GLTHATP. (Great Lad To Have Around The Place). An actual one though, not a Lallana/ Stephens one.

With Williams and Sesay coming through too, if we’re going to continue only playing two in centre mid maybe it will be time for Flynn to return to his spiritual home in January

The difference today was: - every time someone received the ball in midfield they had clearly been told to turn, look up, and drive forward - we played to the strengths of the three midgets/ wisps up front and played the ball along the ground as much as possible and into space behind rather than pumping the ball up in the air - we took our chances (Azaz early one aside) - we were aggressive and competed for everything (almost - free header for the goal aside) - we got our forward players who have the ability to hurt people on the ball as early as possible, to feet, in the areas they wanted it - specifically Scienza, Fellows, Azaz and Armstrong Basic stuff, but put it all together and it’s stuff we haven’t been doing and it’s night and day from the nervous, back foot shite that’s been served up by managers and players too damaged by defeat to trust our ability to attack.

One of the all-time match threads, this one. Spectacular stuff. Fucking Saints. Just when you think you’ve got out, they pull you back in. Magnificent today. Just magnificent.

"If it ain't relegated, relegate it"

Was just thinking the same thing. The best thing we could do right now, I was thinking, is to try out an innovative new approach to football management that nobody's tried before. Ideally masterminded by a disrupter, thought leader and out-of-the-box thinker. I think that just the suggestion that we may go down this common sense route, which we've all been crying out for, will give everyone associated with the club such a lift that I'm now pretty confident we'll beat Charlton.

The endless self-aggrandising about what a great manager he was grated a bit when we were playing poor football and getting beaten every week. The training video where he sounded like a supply PE teacher. The endless wanging on about the double hard mining town he came from, as if it was in some way impressive. The sub-Brent turns of phrase. As I say, I think the impression most people were left with was less about the football he produced and more about how he came across as someone it was very difficult to like, let alone respect. He was like the knob who corners you in a pub who you can’t wait to get away from. That on top of the fact that most people didn’t want him in the first place meant it was doomed as soon as he didn’t hit the ground running.

Absolutely this. Can’t deny he’s done well since he left us, and genuinely fair play to him for that. When he was with us though, his football was rubbish and we looked every bit as clueless as we have done recently. But rather than just buckling down and getting on with trying to sort it out, instead he made an utter twat of himself and by extension the club every single time he opened his mouth. The way he compounded his poor results and performances with making himself and us a laughing stock with the stuff he came out with made it a very easy decision by the club to sack him. I honestly think he may have been given more time by fans and owners to try and sort it out if he’d just talked less. You can’t deny he’s entertaining in a pantomime villain type way though, and I’m actually weirdly looking forward to seeing how he behaves this weekend, just because whatever the result, you can guarantee he’ll find a way to demonstrate once again that he’s an absolute, solid gold throbber.

Yeah that was my understanding too. But that's a bit different to 'he was all set to stay until something happened and he suddenly decided to leave at the last minute'. There had been no indications at all from either side that he was ever considering signing a new deal, we were obviously going down so needed to prepare for the financial impact of relegation which meant making some big sales (from a squad where only Dibling and Fernandes could really be considered 'big'), there was no way we could countenance letting him run his contract down, and Spors did nothing but talk up his sale price from the moment he arrived in February. That seems totally out of whack with suggestions of him being 'set to stay'.

Hadn’t he had a new contract offer on the table for some time before the summer though? If he’d really wanted to stay, surely he would have signed it. (With the caveat that we don’t know what the actual contract offer was of course - maybe it was derisory). I thought it looked like they offered him the contract, and then when it became apparent he wasn’t going to sign it they basically decided that they needed to sell him, which was when they started preparing the ground and trying to proactively ‘set the market’ (eg inflate the starting price in the bidding war they anticipated) with all that nonsense that they put into the press about him being a £100m player. Then when only Everton showed any real interest, and at a much lower price which was diluted further with add-ons etc, the club still pretty much pushed him out of the door at that point because we needed the money. Which we then wasted a big chunk of on players who haven’t been able to get in an already very mediocre team, and paying off yet another failed manager a few months later.

That story about him being ‘tipped to return’ is just some random former Everton scout giving his random opinion to a gossip site that only exists to create ad revenue that he thinks Dibling should go on loan, ‘maybe at somewhere like Southampton’. There’s no suggestion it’s actually likely to happen but it’s been spun into a headline which is meant to make you think it has some credibility. So to answer your question - yes, it’s the absolute definition of clickbait.

Agree. Going into a season where we were expected to be strong enough to challenge amongst the front runners with striking options of Armstrong, Archer, Stewart and Downs = midget, midget, crock and raw untried lower league gamble. Any fan off the street could have looked at that and said we are missing a strong, reliable physical presence who can hold the ball up, win headers and won’t break down after a few games but Spors didn’t see it. Also failing to identify or sort the obvious goalkeeping mess that again every fan could see was a clusterfuck and that’s both ends of the pitch scuppered, and top it off with appointing one of the worst managers we’ve ever had and voila, bang goes promotion. Criminal incompetence IMO.

I remember being very excited as a kid watching Cherednyk make his debut at The Dell, as it still felt quite glamorous to have foreign players at that point, and then feeling what was to become a very familiar sense of disappointment and dread as his first contributions were not one but two foul throw-ins, and it quickly became apparent even to my young eyes that he was absolute fucking dogshit.

Scored the goal that stopped us getting relegated though, surely that must count for something

I thought he was great on Saturday too, but prior to that he hasn't exactly torn it up has he? Regardless of who's fault it is (and for the record, I agree that he's been poorly managed and I think he's a really good player who's just not really shown it for us yet), until he consistently makes a meaningful contribution surely the jury is still out on whether he has worked for us or not as a signing? I don't think anyone would say he's been a smash hit so far in the way that Scienza, and to a lesser degree Jander, have been, for example. And bearing in mind the question is about Spors' performance, how much of that is down to Spors appointing a manager who clearly had no idea how to get the best out of him?

Again, take your point but what we would make on them is peanuts compared to Premier League TV money. Surely Dragan's brief to Spors is to get us back into the Prem, even if only for financial reasons so he can claw back more of what he's spunked so far. Honestly, with his investment sat 17th in the Championship after £60m spent this summer alone, and having just had to sack and pay off his first managerial appointment after less than four months of the season, do you think Dragan will be happy with Spors' work so far?

Take your point but Scienza is 27, cost £8.7m and is still playing in the Championship. Even if he tears it up this season and gets a move at the first time of asking, how much would someone realistically pay for him - £15m, maybe £20m at a stretch? There's probably a reasonable profit to be made on him, but not proper big money. At 23 I could definitely see Jander going for a few quid at the end of the season if we're still shit.

So, now it looks like maybe Juventus aren't quite as interested after all and he might be sticking around for a bit longer, where do you all stand on what Johannes Spors has brought to the table so far? For me: Successes: - Signed Leo Scienza - Signed Caspar Jander - Brought back Romeu (hopefully this works out as well as we all hope it will) Failures: - Grave error of judgement in failing to identify or resolve the glaring goalkeeping issue - Grave error of judgement in thinking Stewart would last the season - Grave error of judgement thinking Downs was sufficient quality - Grave error of judgement appointing Will Still - Gave Jack Stephens a new three year contract Jury still out: - Signing of Fellows - Signing of Azaz - Signing of Quarshie - Signing of Roerslev - Who he gets in as next manager So for me, he's fucked up a lot more than he's got right, and as it stands those decisions look like they are likely to cost us a shot at promotion this season. And of course, the next managerial appointment is absolutely massive. If he gets that wrong as well then he's not up to it as far as I'm concerned. The usual SR suspects seem to take all the flak but he has had his hands all over everything since last February so needs to be equally accountable. What are your thoughts on his performance so far?

They’re both embarrassingly shit. Spors had a chance to fix it in the summer, and even spent the time going into the market to buy a goalkeeper, but rather than trying to upgrade he instead wasted a squad place on Long, who was obviously somehow even worse than both of them. It was a ridiculous decision then, and it’s coming home to roost now as we just rotate between them, watching them both drop clangers every few games because neither is good enough. It was a major fuck up by Spors, to add to his growing collection along with promising to upgrade the spine and then signing Quarshie and Downs, and appointing Still. Three cataclysmic errors which currently look like they are going to cost us any chance we could have had of promotion. He needs to pull something amazing out of the bag with the next managerial appointment, otherwise he's proved conclusively that he's not up to the job as far as I'm concerned.

Surprised Redmond is without a club. He’s a bit limited but only 31 and you’d think he could do a job for someone (but not us).