S-Clarke

There's no comparison with 23/04, quality wise we are light years behind that lot for starters. Secondly this is setting up to a bit of a morph between 05-06 and 08-09. We won't even get top half.

They recruited well and lifted the level of that team up hugely, they weren't focused on 'PL' experience for PL experience sake - they went out and got someone like Xacka for example, who has lifted that entire team as a leader and in quality. The success boils down to recruitment 99% of the time. The only question mark I'd have over Sunderland is that they've signed 60-70% of African Players who will be heading to Afcon in a couple of months. I think they'll drop off hugely during the Christmas/January period because of that, so it was always critical they got off to a good start.

At this stage, the problem is beyond coaches and players. It's a lot deeper than that. Although I will say that there are some toxic individuals within the playing side we need out of here ASAP. The only way you change our trajectory is changing our ownership, but I don't see how that's possible really. We have no say in it, they hold the keys, they sell up when they sell up. All we can do is put pressure on them to do so, but the next few years are going to be bleak. We're heading into 2008-2009 territory, no avoiding it I don't think. Another relegation may force their hand.

On this note, at what point can we just sack off Downes? If I had as many sick days as he did in my job, I'd have been out of the door last week. The guy is a big, big, big part of the toxic rot in this club.

He's just got a job in Belgium.

I think he's a bit of a weakling if I'm honest, good technically but whenever I saw him he was brushed off the ball too easily. We don't really have the structure through the spine to accommodate players like him from what I've seen. Apparently that's also a criticism 'the club' have with Jelert - which begs the question, again, why the fuck recruitment thought they'd be good additions.

How many apps is Aribo on for us out of interest? Just something that cropped into my head, maybe the next appearance triggers an extra year on his deal or something at crazy money? That's the only reason I can think for his lack of visibility.

I don't think the club is currently in a place to allow anyone to build anything, until this ownership is removed we'll lurch from manager to manager, DoF to DoF and relegation to relegation. It's a poisoned chalice.

I do get where you're coming from, and it's another huge financial pay-out we'll have to handle as well. There's no positives to this because we'll end up with another left field choice, and the same bloated utter horrendous mess of a squad. I think his position is untenable and the atmosphere will mean he can't turn this around now, but the problems are so so far deeper than Will Still. And we'll see that when the next guy comes in and it's groundhog day.

For someone who has made a fortune in media, you'd assume he'd be quite savy - but fuck me, he is an absolute dinlo. They have no idea how to run elite sports teams and they should give up. Sport Republic is an embarrassment and he has been a complete and utter fool to fall for it all. Now he needs to have some dignity and fold it all up, pull the funds, sell the clubs as part of the group. He has the power to do that, and that's the only thing I want to see him do now.

Rasmus Ankersen.

Hopefully we get more and more of that in the coming weeks.

Eric Ramsay, heavily linked in the summer. A very hipster left field choice by clever fuckers., and we have clever fuckers in charge of us so we know how this goes. Totally the wrong sort as we all know, but I'm sure Will is offski imminently - another huge contract pay-out to cripple the club, and then the next left-field non-working choice will come through the door.

This thread is kinda pointless because they won't appoint an obvious choice, they never do. They will be clever again, so there's lots to look forward to.

It's so much easier said than done, I share and feel the pain of everyone though. They have and are continuing to totally rip the heart and soul out of this club, if we're not careful we're staring at L1/L2. They oversaw last season and that should have been bad enough, but they've gone even worse - again. This season for me was the last shot they had in my eyes, but they've totally fucked up. There's zero way back, their ownership is now untenable. I don't know how we do it though, I get the anger towards Will but I think more noise needs to be put towards the ownership. They are actively ripping our club apart in front of our eyes.

Never go back, that ship sailed. Getting rid of him at that point and replacing him with Nathan Jones was the first big call SR totally mucked up. And to be fair they're consistent, as every other big call since they've cocked up too. They haven't missed a beat.

I'm excited to see Sport Republics next pick, I can't wait.

He was part of one of, if not the worst ever PL recruitment efforts I've ever seen in my entire life. BBD, Taylor, Fraser, Archer, Wellington, Wood, Juan, Lallana, Gronbaek, Suguwara. I mean what the actual fuck.

You can believe that if you want, but in my eyes there's an underlying issue at this football club which is causing this turnover. The same underlying issue is causing us to lose every week, in whatever league we are in, and the same underlying issues keep making significant recruitment and scouting errors. The same mistakes are made across multiple Sport Directors and managers, there's something deeper at play which means nothing will change until that changes.

I don't believe that Sports Directors keep leaving us simply because other clubs come knocking, there is seemingly a will for them to explore other opportunities and open the door for these approaches quite quickly. It's usually a good 6 months > year and the cycle continues. They must see the chaos and they know they're better off running rather than committing long term, and let's not forget that if Rasmus still has his muddy hands all over everything, he could certainly be winding up any Sporting Directors once they've been in the room for a period of time. There is a consistent factor which pre-dates Sheilds, Wilcox and Sporrs - and he's called Rasmus.

Sell - Aribo Edozie Downes THB Bazunu Manning Archer Armstrong Downs Buy - 2x New Strikers - one powerful Awoyi type. 1x new CB to partner Edwards/Quarshie/Wood. A proper shithouse of a CB. 1x new shithouse CM, powerful, a unit. big, quick. Someone who'd complement the technical skills of Charles or Jander. 1x Goal Keeper who is experienced at this level and can improve us from day 1. Maybe 2 if we send George Long back. We have the wingers and creativity in Fellows/Leo/Azaz, and some decent full backs - but we neglected the spine of the team. We won't do any of that though, so it's a moot point really. But that needed to happen this summer really. I think we've wasted a summer and we'll struggle to regain competitiveness at the top end of this league now, certainly with Wolves/WHU coming down.

We have changed a lot, so you'd assume that Jander/Fellows/Azaz/Mads/Jelert/Downs/Quarshie etc would come with a new approach and wouldn't have the old crap hangiung over them. But when you look at what's left - THB, Downes, Fraser, Edozie, Aribo, Stephens, Bazunu, McCarthy, Archer, Armstrong, Manning etc - that lot right there is the problem in my eyes. We all know that Downes skulks around when he's not playing, so you can imagine he's being quite toxic in the background. I wouldn't imagine Edozie nor Aribo are responding too well to not even being in the squad either. THB/Fraser/Armstrong/Manning etc were team mates with these guys, they'll be talking to each other and probably moaning to each other. I'd sell the lot of them, they're finished here. We need to buy new ST's, new GK's, a new CM and CB. Park all those losers in the bin and move forward, because I don't think the new guys have a chance in an environment full of such toxicity. We didn't go far enough in the summer with the sales, that's evident now.

It does look like that, but I just think he times it all wrong. He plays like he's half asleep, he's two or 3 seconds behind everyone. I think he'll be shifted in January. He hasn't settled, he doesn't look comfortable here and our players don't seem to be particularly onboard with him either. £6m on this guy, with no other Centre Forward, is on par with the Carillo signing in terms of the damage it has done to our team. And we know for a fact that this signing is the 'statement' signing of our new recruitment setup in terms of their direct pick and recommendations, this is such a huge red flag.

I think we all had some hope, it was probably the only positive angle we could take. I know that I thought after some an almighty damaging season in the PL that we'd entirely restart and do a root and branch reset. We didn't go far enough and just started repeating the same. The entire 'fresh start' angle was removed as soon as Jack Stephens was given a new contract, and then we doubled down when we brought in George Long as our GK competition. Those two decisions proved to me that nothing was going to truly change, it set the tone and once again we accepted mediocrity - and when you do that, that's exactly where you end up. Everyone piping up and saying ''Baz is fine for the Champ'' 'Stephens is fine for the Champ'' is entirely missing the point. Someone is making these calls outside of Still/Sporrs etc - and until that element is removed, nothing will change.

Yeah these sorts of comments don't really hold truth anymore. It's like saying ''at least we're dying better than those guys''. It's the same process. The ownership is killing us in the same way the ownership at Blackburn or Wednesday is killing them.