Midfield_General

I still think our best option to get the best out of lopsided squad would be 4-3-3. Provides more control in the middle of the pitch and then Scienza and Armstrong or Fellows could go either side of Archer, who I think is crap but would be probably be most effective playing in that formation.

That's a bit of an odd take when Poyet won a promotion, won the manager of the year award at Brighton, managed a team to a League Cup final and kept a terrible Sunderland team in the Premier League. Keeping that Sunderland side up was quite an achievement - they were dead and buried, 7 points adrift at the bottom of the league in the second week of April and he got 13 points from their last five games and kept them up. He's been shit since then, and was obviously an absolute weapon, but he achieved more as a manager in English football than anyone we've had in a long time.

Who’s got squad number 14 at the minute then? The OS doesn’t show it

What, the Champions League?

It would be fucking hilarious if they appointed Eckert now, just for that

Yeah. Going to Fratton with a weak team and a skate in charge. Surely even SR aren’t dumb enough to put themselves through that

How’s the Risk Register looking re O’Neil?

Admit it - you keep a spreadsheet, don’t you

Brilliant signing. I’d love to know how it came about and who was behind it.

3 points or not, that was embarrassing

Sweet jesus

Fans Advisory Board? Well I didn’t vote for them

With impressive results clearly

"I'm a boy....man... retired" is a genuinely amazing opener it's like his entire life flashed before his eyes in three seconds We do have a high ratio of shall we say... 'unique' fans, don't we

In the last few seasons the points needed to make the play-offs have been: 2024/25: 68 2023/24: 73 2022/23: 69 2021/22: 75 So let's take a probable worst case scenario and say that 75 points is pretty likely to get you into the play-offs. We'd need 63 more points from our remaining 33 games, or an average of 1.9 points per game. So we just need to go on an unbeaten run from tonight until the end of the season, and if we can just spawn wins in 15 of those 33 then we can park the bus and draw the other 18 games 0-0. Over to you, Tonda.

Couldn't agree more 🙂

Don’t have the link unfortunately as I don’t subscribe to the Echo, but it was the interview Alfie House did with Dragan for the Echo in the summer if you want to google it. It was around late June I think, and Dragan talked about the rumours the club was up for sale, as well as saying that he would have given Martin more time but felt his hand was forced by the negative sentiment against him (or words to that effect)

It's a strong pitch and you've convinced me. So, who to devote myself to next? For me, it's a toss-up between Al-Ettifaq, Shanghai Shenhua, wherever Ronaldo CR7 goes next or just spending Saturday afternoons having some alone time in a personal underground wankden dedicated to Gianni Infantino.

Which is fine but that is a very different brief to helping select the new manager. The point is that Alfie was saying that ‘the board’ don’t like Martin and wouldn’t reappoint him, but if that’s not Dragan (who said he wanted to keep him), not Spors (who wasn’t there), not Parsons (who is focused on commercials) and not Rasmus (who is focused on Goztepe), then who is left that Alfie is suggesting would block an RM return?

11 English players too. In the late 80s England could have done far worse than put that side out as the national team.

Have you got a link to that press piece about advanced talks please? Cheers

I heard that too, but who at the club specifically? Dragan said in his big summer interview that he didn't want to fire him and would have given him more time. Spors didn't join until after Martin had left. So in terms of people in positions of enough power at the club to influence the selection of a new manager, that can only really mean Parsons or Rasmus. Rasmus's focus is on Goztepe now he's unlikely to be a key decision-maker, and if it's just Parsons then that is very different to 'the whole board hate him', particularly if Dragan thinks Parsons is also a bit shit, which surely he must do by now.

As far as shortlisted candidates go I'm hearing whispers from a lot of people I trust about Heiner Backhaus, manager of Eintracht Braunschweig. Braunschweig are currently 15th in Bundesliga 2. They have won 3 of their first 11 games but they have been unlucky in a lot of those and their -10 goal difference doesn't reflect the amount of possession they have had in games. Backhaus likes a high-intensity, pressing game. He's got a recent promotion on his CV as he got Alemmania Achen out of the third tier, and he also kept them up. At 43 he's a younger manager, so he's still making his way in the game but has got a lot of potential and is under the radar at the moment. ...is probably what Johannes Spors is thinking.