egg

Language

"a poor 8th" !! 8th is 8th, and in a league season you only have to do better than the teams below you that season. Flipping your point on its head, if we finish 18th on 42 points and get relegated but 42 points would normally be enough to finish say 12th, nobody would be saying "but it doesn't' matter, it was a good 18th" would they. It would still be 18th which is shit. 8th is good, and better than 11th.

Your argument was that people are "saying Ralph is worse than those two, let alone 46 point, 8th place Puel" . Nobody has said that Ralph. He isn't. However, if we finish with a points tally starting with a 3 then he hasn't done any better this season than those guys did.

Jeez, that's ridiculous. Even Mrs Egg has had a whinge and she never moans.

Nobody has said that Ralph is worse than Hughes and Pellegrino! If we don't get much than 36 points this season, it'd be hard to argue that Ralphs performance this season is better than anything that either of those 2 did. Puel. He was better than many give him credit for. Forget comparisons with others, 8th place, and a cup final, was a decent return.

I doubt there's anyone who wouldn't agree with you. The difficulty is why would anyone throw north of a £100m to buy us, then tens of millions a year thereafter to keep is going? They'll probably never get back. In the current economic climate, I just don't see it, and why would anyone in business, wanting a return in the future, do that?

Cottages

I thought this was a wind up at first, but you're actually serious. The only way to judge the success of a league season is by where clubs finish in a league. If a club finishes 3rd on say 80 points, but win the league the following season with say 78 points, on your rationale they've done worse despite winning the title. That's a bit crazy. 8th is better than 11th.

Eric

He's a CB finding his way into English footy, playing him out of position in midfield is not a great idea. That said, I think he has it in his locker to play LB. He drifts into that position and made a lovely little run down the left side against Leeds. If any of our defenders were to play out of position I'd say Bertrand could do a job there.

Addiction

It's irrelevant. The goal was ruled out. Move on.

I'm not convinced, but I like the way his teams play, and the Howe / Tindall duo is a good one. He's also available and the players may just need a different approach to give them a lift. I agree that something isn't right at the moment, and if we don't get a turnaround soon, change will be hard to argue against.

I agree. He is very limited. Has a lot of heart and energy, but so did Long. Judging Ralph on his inability to get Adams firing is a bit daft.

Hardly the elephant in the room for me. Adams is not great truth be told. It's Ings who is out of tune.

Blimey!! That would be weird. Especially if Tindall is back with him. Hopefully it won't come to that though - get something from Everton, beat Sheffield United, don't get disgraced against City, and it'll look very different.

If we lose the next 3, I think Eddie will be getting a call. I don't think he's any better, quite the opposite in fact, but no points before Brighton and I think he's in trouble.

Yep. Add to that continuing to play a high energy game with players who are struggling to cope with the demands of it.

I'm not sure where the lack of gratitude from the poster is. There's an honesty though which is possibly correct. The theory to our tactics is fairly "shallow" . It's press, win it, give it simple, break, pass back if no options. Repeat. We've simplified the on field roles to FB, CB, 6, 10, CF. We've adopted that across the club. It's not a deep and complex plan. It's starting to look "unsustainable". We've had some horrendous results. It's no exaggeration that Leeds could and should have had 5+ second half goals, and that's with 11 men in the pitch. No var issues. No dodgy decisions. Just us being undone. That's no improvement on a 9 nil with 9 men on the pitch, indeed it's arguably more inept. At least one factor in our decline is that system. Sure, we have a small squad, but the job of the manager is to tailor his system / tactics to his players. Ralph hasn't. He just plays on with his pressing game, in his favoured/only style, regardless of his players. That's resulted in what we're seeing on the pitch. If you think what's happening is sustainable we'll have to agree to differ because it looks pretty unsustainable to me.

Quite, and it deserves focus. It that's the example shown by our captain, its no surprise that the rest of the team hide when the going gets tough.

Forget the excuses. Confidence and motivation comes from the manager, and then from the senior players showing the way. Ralph appears to have lost the ability to keep his players playing, and there is no obvious on field leadership. To be fair to the players, they're not helped by Ralph being unable to adapt to the changes other teams make. It's easy to blame VAR, contracts, injuries, lack of signings, bad luck etc, but our run is down to more than that. We've fallen away badly and much of the blame lies with Ralph and the players.

Yep. And all in one half. With 11 players. No dodgy decisions. No excuses this time. We really are in a mess.

Nobody will be fit enough to play anytime soon so it's pointless. People need to be realistic and accept that we have to go with what we have.

He's been below his early season levels for sure, but he's been better than Romeu and probably our best player still. Other than Chauke or Jankewitz, we literally have no other fit centre midfielders so his form is irrelevant as he plays by default.

Not for me. First half we were better. Second half we were awful. It's no exaggeration that they could have scored 5 or 6. In one half.