S-Clarke

We played the Ralph situation like morons. This is a guy who'd given 4 years to the club, built up a philosophy and a style of play. It went stale, no one can deny that - it went stale last year. The optimum time for change was at the end of last season, and maybe even give him the opportunity to help appoint his successor. To then go into the season with someone you've kind of half backed kind of makes it inevitable. He was never Rasmus's man and he was desperate to get his own man in. So to then sack Ralph, 6 months too late, and replace him with Jones who is a totally different type of manager is just disgraceful management. It shows whoever made that call has no real understanding of what Ralph had built over 4 years or any real respect in it, his legacy has been pretty much trashed in 3 months and I feel pretty bad for that.

Personally I think we've made our bed with Selles now and that's where we're going, we'll re-asses in the summer. I don't see anyone 'realistic' out there who is a good fit for what we have, Marsch was the best of what I'd call a bad bunch really.

Are people actually suggesting Allardyce?? This is where you have to look at the squad we have and what sort of person is a good fit. Marsch was a good fit. Benitez and Allardyce are not good fits for the players we have. Selles is a better fit than him because he already knows who is here.

Leeds looked at him, but he has a £6m buy out in his contract at that Saudi club. Non-starter.

It's all speculation at this point, but I personally didn't see the problem of a 6 month deal with numerous options in the summer - there are ways to build a deal like that by not seeming disrespectful. I think there is something else that has moved the goal posts here, whether that's him willing to give up a pay off at Leeds or us unwilling to cover that cost - no idea, but I think something else has gone down in addition to the 'short term' chatter we see. The 'verbal' agreement would have been on the understanding that it was a short term deal, today was the finer trimmings of any contract and that's where it's fallen down. But basically, as you've said, it's an absolute cluster fuck because we've come out of this with our dirty laundry plastered all over the media - again.

I just want to feel some hope, hope in the short-term and hope long-term that they know what they're doing. I have neither right now. Selles isn't a bad bloke, but he's not going to give us the hope we all need. And everyone needs hope in football. You usually see these sorts of things happen at badly run clubs and laugh at them, but I have to say that we are sadly now an incredibly badly run club. No getting away from it. Facts are all in front of us. Ankerson came with huge reputation but he has created an almighty mess here. Over his head comes to mind.

I don't know what is with peoples obsession over Potter, he will not be coming here. He's not leaving a team like Chelsea to take over a Championship club, or walk into a relegation battle for 3 months. It's a non-starter. I want to have confidence that there is a view that there are better on the horizon who they wish to wait for, however based on everything that has gone before I'm seriously losing any confidence in anything they do. Feels like they're swimming against the tide on everything.

At the end of the day he's not Jones, so that's an immediate win. But....he has been involved in our worst ever PL season at every stage, so he cannot be excluded from any blame in terms of how it's gone so far. Obviously as a coach he wouldn't have had full autonomy, so it'll be interesting if he's going to make any drastic changes now he can.

They have undoubtably made a total pigs ear of this season, their first in charge. Everything they have touched has gone to shit so far. I do appreciate the reasoning behind a short-term contract for Marsch, but the situation we find ourselves in now all stems back to the November horror show appointment. The club PR machine will be in overdrive to make us feel as if this has been their plan all along, Selles is well respected, they feel he is a viable option etc etc, but in reality if they did this right in November then we wouldn’t be hearing those things.

Well that's odd, I assumed this was all done. The short-term thing makes more sense to us, than to him - maybe. But I can see why we were keen on a short-term deal from our side. We've created this shit storm by getting it all wrong in the summer and then November. Now we're somewhat paddling against the tide.

He posted this one just after Everton had nabbed Koeman. He had an issue with the lack of loyalty he was shown by Koeman when Forster came in, so he fired back -

Is that the vision he sold to people by using someone elses money, but not actually asking them if he could use it first? What sort of project can you sell anyone right now - we're two wins from being off of the bottom of the league, look utterly doomed. I'm not sure what you could fluff up and sell to anyone in this current situation.

We shipped him out to Bournemouth didn't we, once we bought Forster in. I remember some tweets he put out, he was clearly unhappy with how that played out.

They will, yes, but that will give us around £100m in transfer income. Plus the 70m in parachute payments (I think it's 35 over two seasons). And that's excluding any additional investment SR provide, which they've already said will continue should the worst happen. We wouldn't have to spend a fraction of that to have a competitive team in the Champ, but any new manager would have the scope to develop and build his own squad. This is the crazy thing with us, we are struggling but our players are on decent contracts and would attract genuine interest for decent fee's. When Koeman came in he had the scope to do that and he found it an attractive propoisition, and so would a lot of other managers.

I don't think he will be shocking at all, but I think committing to anything more than a 6-month deal at this stage given the position we are isn't sensible on either side. As i said above, there are 3 scenario's here. 1 - We stay up amazingly; he does a great job. We offer him a new deal to stay on and continue his work, if he accepts, he accepts. If he doesn't then we are a PL club with a pool of managers to choose from with a clean slate again. 2 - We give it a good shot but ultimately go down. We decide we want to offer him a new deal and he accepts to continue the work in the Championship and enables some continuity. 3 - We bomb and no one wants him to stay. He leaves by the backdoor after the final day of the season, we don’t lose out financially and we are then free to sound out managers for a promotion push. You'd be surprised at the level of managers interested in us if the worst was to happen. I don't think you'd have said Kompany would be going to Burnley, but he ended up there and they're not exactly flush.

Think about it another way, if he is shocking for us and no one wants him after we never improve at all, we'd be relegated and then have to potentially find another payout in the Championship to ditch another manager, when we'd have less money. Potentially impacting who we could then replace him with or players we could buy. I stand by what CB Fry said, in the championship this will be an incredibly attractive project for a decent rep manager to get stuck into. Not only finance from SR, but potentially over £100m from play sales (or the possibly to work with some great young players). This wouldn't be like us going down under Redknapp with 90k to spend on fuller, this is a totally different ballpark. I don’t want it to happen at all, but you’d be surprised who’d be interested in the summer if we were a managerless championship club.

I thought that re: Hughes, but it was actually a contract until the end of the season initially. Reed just got a bit excited in the summer after he'd kept us up (which was from a much better position than we are now by the way) and decided to give him a 3 year deal, and £60m to spend on Elyounoussi, Gunn and Vestergaard.

3 and 1/2 years too long tbf. Hopefully we look back and laugh at this charade in a few years.

I think people would also be having a moan if we'd given him a long contract, as if he flops then we've got another payout to consider. Nothing in football as as black and white as it seems from the outside. It may not just be ourselves who want to focus on the short term, maybe he is also giving himself a chance to reasses in the summer as there are still lots of chats linking him with the USA job (and given that the next WC is a home WC, it could be a huge pull for him).

3 1/2 year contract I think.

I notice Villa's owners are heading down this multi-club road now as well. Aston Villa's owners have entered a sale and purchase agreement to acquire 46 per cent of Portuguese club Vitoria S.C. The Guimaraes-based club have been in talks with Villa for the last two years, with the Premier League team announcing it is "an important step forward in the global expansion of the V Spors portfolio". The move still needs to be proved by Vitoria, who played in this season's UEFA Conference League qualifying rounds. President of Vitoria Antonio Miguel Cardoso said in a statement: “Since first meeting we found out that Mr Nassef Sawiris is a man of serious commitments and available to be the right partner which VSC needs in this important moment of our history."

I think as a club they're taking the opportunity to look at the short-term right now, which I think is sensible. Offering anyone a 3-year contract at this stage doesn’t give you any wiggle room in the summer to re-assess. If he does well, somehow in a crazy reality keeps us up and is sought after elsewhere...then so be it, he's kept us up and we'll have a bigger pool of managers to choose from then. If he does well enough, but we do go down (the most likely outcome), then we may like what he's instilled and offer him a chance to build something in the championship. If he totally flops, then we go down, he goes off into the distance and we rebuild with a new approach in the championship and no one is out of pocket. (Apart from us losing TV money!) I think as fans we cannot judge his success on keeping us up, given the position we are in it's going to be very difficult for anyone to do that - so if we do likely go down then I don't think that automatically equates to him failing in my book.

I cannot take views seriously where people discount Marsch in one breath, and then as an alternative suggest Wayne Rooney. I just don't understand how that makes any sense.

Doesn't everyone in football? I think even I have a better record than Jones at St Mary's.

I think that's the way you beat these better teams to be honest, certainly for clubs like us. That’s why counter pressing is seen as a viable alternative for sides away from the elite, we don’t have the KDB’s or Oddegaard to be the play maker, so alternatively the stress the press causes becomes our playmaker. The ‘top teams’ want time on the ball and they hate being stressed and crowded around, expectations are on them to find a way through so you often see counter pressing teams that are on it continuously winning the ball back in attacking thirds. It's how we played at Spurs, in what I thought was our most complete performance under Ralph to be honest. Sure, we conceded two goals but in terms of stressing them and counter pressing we were absolutley on it that day.