egg

Good post. We'll slash lots of jobs, that's inevitable. On sales, we'll struggle to make money when offloading certain players. Take Forster. He's apparently on £100k a week for another 4 years. In other words £21m. We won't want to keep him. He won't want to lose any of that £21m. Nobody will want to pay him what he's on here, and his stock has dropped big time this season. If he goes for £10 million and gets £60k a week somewhere that transfer fee will go on paying up the balance of his contract and agents fees. That's before Carrillo, Boufal, Gabbi, and others who's values will have plummeted owing to performances this year. Relegation will have a huge impact which we'll only cope with if Gao turns out to be Markus mk 2 which seems unlikely.

To be fair Boufal was/is a good player, although he's been poor for us. Carrillo though is shocking, not one good attribute and our worst ever transfer decision in my opinion.

Plus agents fees, signing on fee etc. Scary bit is that we'll still owe millions next season on many of them, and stuck with huge salaries on them. Chances are we'll pay agents millions to move them on, more millions to negotiate their release from excessive contracts and in reality lose money from getting rid. That, or keeping hold of disinterested expensive players as per Sunderland, is the reality of relegation.

Looking that way. Was marshalling the defence today. Positionally good, and made some good blocks and tackles. I missed the first goal though so not sure if he could have prevented that.

I thought he faded and taking him off ahead of Lemina just about right but could have been one or the other, and the change of tactics was sensible.

Played ok. Keeper decent. Bednarek good, marshalled the defence and looked comfortable. Bertrand got forward well but crossing poor. Yoshida decent but looked all over the place for the second. Hoedt and Cedric not good. Romeu and Lemina did well after a shaky start, but Hoj faded and largely anonymous. Long was shlte, terrible touch. Austin shouldn't have started, you don't play a centre forward who can't run against a back 3. First 2 subs sensible although not sure why Bednarek went off. Can only assume it was cos Pedro on and Bertrand couldn't get up the pitch and we needed another forward to give the width. Whatever the intention, it killed us and cost us t second goal. Our goal looked like a foul on the keeper but I was up in the gods so couldn't see clearly. Fans were quiet throughout and why people boo players for keeping possession, then shout for a long ball, then moan when it leads to nothing I'll never understand.

Fair play to him for opening up, and even more respect for getting himself clean.

?That's the solution Hatch. 12 across the middle just to be sure.

People seem to forget that if we put another man up front we have to take a man from elsewhere. Our defence is shlte so 3 CB is sensible. Take one of them away then we lose that cover at CB and limit the ability of the full backs to get forward. We're also shlte in midfield and take a man out of there we'll get completely overrun and our shlte defence will be even more exposed. Short explanation is we're shlte but less shlte with extra men at CB and in midfield.

This. We have players who are shot of confidence, that's obvious and understandable, and gung ho tactics with 2 up top would have seen us torn apart in midfield and smashed apart. The players (well the ones that actually care) will hopefully take heart from a clean sheet and that's gotta be better than another game where we concede 3.

VVD. Players who want a move saw us hold him back. We get relegated, they get their move.

Because JWP has been sh:the, and Davis is about the only leader we have.

Yep, there's a few lads out there who don't look interested. Shocking.

Quite, I love a bit optimism but there's no substitute for realism.

You seriously think Giroud would have signed for us?! Anyway, all this 'we should have done this, we should have done that is irrelevant. We are where we are, on the verge of relegation.

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I can't speak for coaches but les had very high hopes for him, sims too. Personally I think they'll both have good careers but we've managed Targett badly. I'm not sure how he fell below Mcqueen in the pecking order.

I agree that he's better suited to CM, seems to be his natural position imo. Can't agree re Hoedt though. He's slow and ponderous. You say to give him a ball winning CB by his side but he's supposed to be the ball winner, the fact that he doesn't do that is one reason imo Stephens gets hung out to dry.

Good player not helped by his team mates. At the moment he has an out of form right back on one side, the dreadful Hoedt on the other and CM's in front of him who give little protection. No CB would look brilliant in that situation. Sure, he's not the best in the air, but he's good on the ground and a decent reader of the game. He's excellent on the ball too and pass as well. His partnership with Yoshida was a good one in which he looked very good.

And clinging onto Van Dijk did us the world of good! On topic, we won't go up. A big chunk of the squad will move on but we'll be stuck with Forster and possibly others on massive wages. That will make signings difficult and create an unhappy ship. We'll languish in that league for a long time and with the current owners and board I can't see that we'll bounce back. We've had a disastrous few seasons off the pitch, but somehow got away with it. Our luck has run out and I can't see any easy way back sadly. We'll do a Sunderland for sure, and I just hope it's not a Blackburn.

Edited a little but nail on head. I was shot down in flames at the time for criticising the club for holding onto van dijk. With his treatment as a precedent, it was obvious that the likes of Bertrand would have seen their chances of a move as slim had we stayed up. Relegation will suit a number of the players sadly.

Throw Hart in too.

We got dominated by wigan with 2 up top, and 1 less in midfield. Playing that way against any premier league side we'd get overrun badly. 4231 is Hughes system and it works as long as the 3 get forward enough. For me the issue this season is that the 3 have sat too deep but if that's addressed we can get players forward without being a man short in midfield. Cedric popping up on the left wing against Wigan gives me hope that the players will have more freedom.

Iceland is magical. Kind of how I'd expect Mars to look if it was snowy. Walking between 2 parts of the earth's crust is an odd experience. It's a must go place in my opinion.

Andy Sinton wasn't in that squad.