Midfield_General

Have to win today and win convincingly. No excuses from players or manager. I want him to succeed but he needs to start showing he’s got what it takes to turn this group into a team, starting today. Bollocks to scar tissue, we should be smashing these all day long.

Mate of mine who’s an estate agent in Millbrook WhatsApped earlier to say he’d shown Bob Bradley around a few flats this afternoon. Make of that what you will

Followed by New York New York ‘The club that never sleeps’ That shut at 1

Who wrote that? ”His physical presence allowed him to excel in hold-up play”? He’s got the physical presence of a fucking twiglet, the only key difference being that a twiglet lying inert on the pitch might occasionally end up in the same vicinity as the ball, which Downs never is. I’ve never seen a player manage to be in completely the wrong place so relentlessly. Archer’s been crap too but at least he seems to understand the basic theoretical concept of being a footballer.

It was pretty apparent last night that Harwood-Bellis, for example, was hiding and didn't want to take any responsibility or show any leadership at all. Get the ball, stop, turn inside, give it to someone stood five yards away so it's their problem - all fucking night. When he wasn't doing that, instead of actually being a centre back and trying to win physical battles and dominate his man, he was falling over pretending to be fouled, crying like a little bitch, mouthing off and giving away stupid petulant fouls. He was an absolute disgrace last night and I'd bet a pound to a penny that he's one of the ones who is first to be making the excuses afterwards. He is the embodiment of our mental weakness hangover from last year, he's nowhere near as good as he clearly thinks he is, and he sets a terrible example to the new players. He looks like he'd rather be anywhere but here and I'd have him out alongside Stephens. Wood, Quarshie and Edwards aren't perfect but at least they look like they might care and it would be one less of last year's embarrassments hanging around stinking out the place.

Harsh on Martin. It’s obvious they haven’t shaken off the influence of Eric Black.

Just what is your beef with Welington?

Still’s just said that Jelert is out for 4-6 weeks so we might be needing both of them

Rangers will probably appoint him January after Rohl's been run out of town for a 0-0 at home to Kilmarnock. They were looking at Hasenhuttl before appointing Rohl, they appear to be obsessed with us, might as well go for the hat trick.

I think he's going to get eaten alive, personally. He's another appointment the fans don't want and the mood he's going into there is far more toxic than it was when Martin went in, and look how long he lasted. Rohl can do himself a few favours simply by not behaving like as much of an arrogant, aloof twat as Martin did (he can buy a few easy, early brownie points with the fans by wearing their club suit and stuff like that that a lot of their fans take really seriously, and not wanking on about loving the players and all that), but he will need to deliver instant results or they'll turn on him as quickly as they did Rusty. They have got their knives well and truly out for their owners, they see Rohl as those owners taking another massive gamble, and if he doesn't start winning straightaway they'll chew him up and spit him out like they did Martin, just as a means of trying to make the CEO/ DOF's positions untenable and getting them fired.

Ange also started him for Forest in their last game against Chelsea last weekend, before he got canned. He's not been playing as he's been out with injury but he appears to have recovered now and will be part of Dyche's plans there I would have thought, either starting or off the bench, given how he values physical presence up top. Can't see him being willing to drop down a division, and knowing SR I'd imagine we'll be shopping abroad in January and looking for a nice, young risky prospect to gamble our future on, possibly with a history of career-threatening injuries.

1. Footballers earn lots of money. 2. Money can be exchanged for goods, services and property. HTH

Who were the safe choices?

Presser:

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Man up you bunch of fannies This is the game it's going to click. We're going win 5-0 and Damion Downs is going to score all of them

A fine custodian

‘Not a massive disaster’? When Sport Republic bought us we were 12th in the Premier League. Now we’re 17th in the Championship. How is that not a disaster for what was an established top flight club? Looking at success purely through the lens of how much money we do/ don’t make is exactly what’s got us into this mess. It’s bad enough that SR do it, we don’t need the fans doing it as well. But even if you do look at it like that, they haven’t made any money either, and they’ve made the club less valuable than when they bought it. So by any key metric, their ownership strategy is a failure.

Been dead four years unfortunately Probably still more effective than Downs however

That's the problem though - we won't be able to just fix it in January. What goalscorers capable of scoring the number of goals a promotion-chasing team needs from its centre forward do you think are going to be available in January? Goalscorers are hard enough to find at the best of times - no-one's selling anyone who's any good half way through the season. In January you end up either massively overpaying because teams know you're desperate, or taking yet another punt on someone who's out of favour, a massive injury risk or who no-one else wants, or all of the above. You're feeding off scraps. And it's not like we've not been burned by this before. It's how we ended up paying £20m for Carrillo and £18m for Onuachu. Other, properly-run clubs saw we were desperate and sold us their absolute shite at hugely inflated prices. They were rubbish, did fuck all and six months later we couldn't give them away. Whoever scouted Damion Downs and whoever looked at that scouting and off the back of it made the decision that he should be our centre forward signing should be sacked immediately, because the staggering ineptitude of those decisions has basically cost us our best chance of promotion this season. Now, unless Cameron Archer steps up and suddenly becomes a 20 goal a season striker, we are fucked.

Needed to identify that fixing the spine was the top priority and that the goalkeeper, CB, centre mid and CF positions needed sorting before worrying about anything else. Failed to fix any of them with the exception of Jander who looks like a decent player. Completely fucked up the strategy for the gk and cf positions, and Quarshie has got potential and may well go on to be good but is far from the finished article and hasn’t been a regular starter. Result - relying on a keeper who was already here and was 3rd choice 2 years ago, and has built a team that is leaking goals at the back and utterly ill-equipped and toothless up front. This after £60m+ spent. Then the jury is very much out on the manager but it’s not exactly been a great start. So I think it’s fair to say Spors’ performance has been pretty underwhelming so far. In fact no, it’s been shit hasn’t it. He’s fucked it up.

‘Ross Stewart likely to be out for months rather than weeks’ Wow Literally no-one could have seen this coming I can see why no-one would bother contingency planning for this massive shock and would instead simply cross their fingers and hope for the best with £100m+ potentially riding on it Fucking jokers

Interesting and well-written analysis of exactly where and why it all went wrong for him up there. Not just an attack piece, but rationally identifying many of the specific reasons why it went so bad so quickly, especially with his relationship with the fans, and a lot of common themes that we will recognise: https://www.followfollow.com/russell-martin-disaster-class/

It’s the opportunity cost though. His individual cost wasn’t that much* but gambling on him meant we didn’t buy someone else who could actually score goals for us as a CF. Now Stewart’s injured again, that decision means we don’t have anyone with the profile of a strong, oven-ready centre forward who can score the goals we need to challenge for the top of the table. If that decision means we miss out on promotion, as it could well do, then the cost of that utterly failed gamble is potentially £100m+. (*Although other teams in this division have also spent much less on centre forwards who are having much more impact)

He laid one off with his nut sack in one of the early games as well. Maybe that's his thing. Someone tell WhoScored.com, they can put it down as a strength, give the boy some confidence in case he googles himself.