S-Clarke

He's got a decent chance of being their main striker i'd say. Their other option is McBernie and he isn't a professional football player.

Something like that, although it feels like 1 win in 10000 tbh. Endless misery at all levels.

How on earth have you worked that out? It's the owners fault we are where we are. The chairman is actually doing a pretty sound job in the circumstances whilst the 'owner' is AWOL.

To be fair, it wouldn't have made any difference. The whistle was blown about 1 second after the collision, it wasn't the fault of VAR for allowing it to continue. But I'd agree the delay generally in other situations can lead to those situations. But I don't think VAR did anything wrong here, the collision would have happened had it been flagged off earlier anyway. But all academic anyway, Rui is fine. No issues. Probably a bad headache!

Appreciate you writing all that. Your views are fair and balanced.

That is my view really. I don't really want to keep him, but I think the default will be that we have to. Given that we won't get a fee for him we wouldn't be able to replace him, so it's not worth the risk. Sad it has to be that way, because we do need to do better in that position.

I imagine Bertrand is just fed up with having to put up with Redmond in front of him, it would do my nut in. I doubt anyone in the squad can get on with Redmond. He's shit at his job and blames everyone else for his own shortcomings. I've worked with people like that and the general consensus is that they're dicks and you can't wait to see the back of them.

It's an interesting listen, but it also paints a grim picture of how much trouble we are in. Are we any different to other clubs though? That's all I'd add - we are all having to deal with football without fans and are all taking out high risk loans, so maybe it's a game-wide financial implosion in that sense. It does make you fear about what could happen if we did get relegated under this current owner though. It doesn't bear thinking about does it. I think we'd be done, finished. Unless we get taken over in the summer, I fear for us long term. It feels like a club on the brink at all levels, close to needing life support. Who is going to be our knight this time?

This isn't a slump, this is a club wide crisis and make no bones about it. We are in an incredibly bad place. There is nothing here anymore.

Really good article that, thanks for sharing.

We can't, so what's the point in even debating that? Seems a daft thing to say.

Good point. For some reason I thought Palace was our next game, that's why I highlighted that one! It's not, it's Burnley..!

This is getting incredibly concerning now. We simply don't have the players to play this style, if they're doing the same as the first time in terms of the high line/high press? The club has imploded at all levels.

You're supporting the wrong club if you want us to win something! Where we are now/what we are doing is probably par the course without investment/engaged ownership. Decent sized club, chance of some good seasons every now and then if things click into place, but without investment any fun will be fleeting and not sustained. We were massively spoilt between 2010-2016. Let's not forget that. Those years were not the norm for this club. Success every year, improving on league places every year. That all started at a lower level from an engaged ownership model, some clever investment and a driven/committed group of players.

I wouldn't agree with writing him off, seems a bit daft. but not unheard of in the football fan world. Any young lad coming into this setup at the moment is going to struggle. I think he has some interesting attributes, although in a technical sense his touch needs to improve as it's diabolical.

All this thread is doing is highlighting that getting rid of Ralph would be daft.

I think you'll see a relaxed/positive performance in this one. That's what I expect anyway. Pressure isn't on this game, so the players will come out of their little shells they like to hide in. When we're back in the league against Palace they'll have those shells in full force again I'm sure.

His impact as a sub at the weekend was probably the worst I've ever seen from a professional. What is the point of having him on the bench if that's all he can muster?

It's not even so much as lumping it forward, it's showing more purpose and urgency with the forward passing. It was very backwards/sideways for way too long. The crazy thing for me is that it was only in the 91st min that we actually put some purposeful balls into the box/in and around the box. 91st min FFS? What was stopping us doing that before? Are these players half asleep and it took the forth official to hold up the numbers to make them realise that time is nearly up? Our players act like incredibly dumb people sometimes.

What did Luke Shaw say? I must have missed that. The difference here is that Shaw doesn't play for us anymore, he's fully invested in Man Utd doing well. N'lundulu does play for us, that means he shouldn't go reacting/liking/commenting on the posts of opposition players who have just beaten the club who pay his wages. That is unprofessional and dumb. Opens himself up for a whole world of abuse.

To be fair everyone is a fail at Schalke these days, now that's a poisoned chalice. They'll finally drop this year.

'Skint' springs to mind. All about giving them a chance from within and all that waffle, but when that line is usually played out it means we haven't got any money to do better. He did manage to bring in Richard Kitzlbitlzer. I'm sure he'd like to do more with the backroom staff tbf, it feels like he needs some extra support sometimes. I'm sure I read it a couple of years back that he was trying to bring in some coaches/assistants. But we promoted Fleming instead.

I'm still struggling to work out Davis coaching attributes. Did he just land that as default because we're skint? I don't think he even started as an academy coach, he went straight in as a first team coach.

Most wants in this thread are hugely unrealistic. The best we can get would be someone like Pearson, Pardew, Wilder, Wanger, Hughes - those are the sorts we'd be able to attract. Or let's put this out there - Kelvin Davis promoted as manager with Fleming as assistant. I jest, but it's the sort of thing we'd do. Wouldn't cost us any money so it makes sense. Does anyone really want to roll the dice?

Wow, that is certainly a bit of a dumb arsed move. I imagine our leaders in the changing room will be having some harsh words with him about that. Oh, wait.