S-Clarke

In my lifetime, I'd have to say the following: Koeman - the most exciting period of my time supporting this club, so many good players, so many wins and some European visits to boot. Poch - Stabilised us as a football team at this level, gave us an identity which was exciting to watch. Strachan - Got us to a final and a finish in the PL in the top half. Great defence and we had a great centre forward, whom he got the best out of. Ralph misses out, just....can't put him in yet, although I have a feeling he may replace Strachan by this time next year. If we're going to talk worst managers... Pellegrino - Absolutely horrific. He had no idea what he was doing, it was like watching Mr Bean try to manage a football team. The players had no respect for him and it showed. Hughes - He kept us up, but he took us backwards the next year. A really dated and ineffective manager in this day and age, I didn't know what he was trying to achieve towards the end. Puel - 8th place and all that, but I must have fell asleep 20 times during that season. Pass, pass, pass, sideways, backwards, on a forward pass...no, backwards again. rinse and repeat. More focused on passing for the sake of passing than actually doing anything with it.

Winners: Liverpool (can't see anyone beating them yet...City still need to do work on their team, as illustrated in the CL) Relegated: WBA, Palace, Villa Top 4: Liverpool, City, Man Utd, Chelsea (no real change tbh) Us: Top half I hope, maybe a sniff at a top 7 finish towards the end of the season - if we keep up the pace Surprise team: Leeds Surprise poor side: Wolves First Sacking: Hodgson (with him moving upstairs as a DoF type) Resignation/mutual leaving - Bourinho.

My top 3 were Redmond v Palace, loved that goal. Ings v Spurs in the league at home - such quality to flick that over Toby. Moussa v Sheff U for my third. Just jinxed past everyone, they couldn't get near him. The Redmond goal v Chelsea would have been my first choice had it not taken a deflection off a Chelsea player before it got to him...that ruined the goal of the season!

It's pretty much what the JPT was, they've had this group stage for a few years, where they invite the 'U23s' of 'bigger' sides to compete. Think we were knocked out by Charlton last year.

Turkish league it is then, Mario. He's technically very good, and he knows it, probably more technical than some midfielders in top teams, but he just has always lacked application and consistency, not through injuries either really. He's an enigma and someone who will ultimately waste his natural talent by floating between clubs.

He's probably their best player technically (in midfield), but he's struggled with commitment at times and has been known to switch off. Technically very gifted though, above the Scottish level without question. I worry he may be another Lemina style player.

To be honest, I think it would take Salisu some time to get up to fitness with the rest of the squad anyway. We were an ultra-fit unit at the back end of the season, it would be surprise to see the likes of Jack or Jan drop off that much during the summer break (may be wrong!). But I agree with LeG, Ralph is shrewd and he'll know exactly what and where we'll need to strengthen, and if he feels one of our starters could raise some funds in order to get a better player for his system, then I'm inclined to trust his judgement. Let's see how it pans out.

It's a bit of a poisoned chalice isn't it? Xavi will probably get it next year when he's 'ready', so in effect he's just in caretaker charge until then! He's their most experienced European manager they've had for a long-while though. It's a really big ask though, that's a very ageing squad and it needs a big overhaul. They tried to evolve with the signings of Coutinho, Dembele, De Jong etc, but they've just not adapted yet. If Ronald can get the best out of those guys, it's a start - there's like £300m worth of player in those 3. Be good to see him in a big job like this, don't have any problems with Koeman, we were lucky to have him for the 2 years we did. He knows a good player when he see's one.

He's come on leaps and bounds under Ralph. Ralph is a manager who appreciates his technical ability and his tactical awareness, he's a very clever player in a football brain sense. He is very much what you'd call a teachers pet kind of player, but he's perfect at putting Ralphs game into action ( when the press, how to be positionally etc). He's not that strong, he's not that quick, but he's learnt to read the game very well and he's agile enough on the ball to be able to receive and pass quite quickly, whilst retaining the tempo. Towards the end of last season he was dictating games for us and that's something I've not seen him do before. It looks like he's grown with the captaincy and this will hopefully allow him to flourish even more. There have been comments from people in the past that he's 'not established' himself as a set starter, but without question - for me - he's one of the first names on the team sheet nowdays. He's certainly our most technically gifted midfielder in my opinion, he can play in the pivot now or he can play in a 3 to the right hand side quite adept. Very good player for a (Good) manager to have in the squad. How Mark Hughes treated him says everything about his management and awareness of football. Good news all round this one.

Guly was a top bloke, but if we were being truly honest he wasn't a PL player I don't think. We needed to evolve the side, which is what we did. Never will forget his contribution though, absolutely loved the years with Guly and co. For some reason he did divide opinion in the area I used to sit, never understood why.

I think most of us shared his frustrations at the time, especially during the first half of the season! He was sent out on loan pretty sharpish once we got Jay in though. We did have Jay, Mayuka (whoops) and Lambo as our options though - he would have found it tough. We didn't really play with two up that often in the PL.

Very highly rated apparently. I saw an article ages ago (we were linked a few months back too) and he was looked at as being the 'new' Cavani (maybe that's because he's Uruguayann). Got a low release clause as Almeria weren't promoted I don't think. Big clubs like Napoli, Dortmund and Roma have sniffed/are sniffing as well as Wolfsburg, and they're no mugs when it comes to identifying talent.

It's been off all evening for me, pretty dreadful all be told. Can anything be done, or is this just a 'forum' problem? and the lack of development of it makes a fix unlikely? How about trying another forum? XenForo, MyBB, Flarum, or go totally old school with phpBB..!

There's a lot of shite in the media like this. Honestly, they've described him as a positive/forwarding thinking midfielder, someone they haven't had since Eriksen and now someone who gets fans off their seats. Spurs fans are going to be completely bewildered when they see him. Maybe the media are just having a huge troll-fest with Spurs fans? Would be funny.

Do you mean Chris Woods from Burnley? Agree, not our sort of signing in playing style.

Don't leave that there! So, truth around the Bedernek rumours then?

I think he's been quite a challenge for Ralph, in a tactical sense and a physical sense. He's got a very unique body type, lots of upper body strength and lots of power in movement. Because of that he needs to look after himself a lot more than other players, something I don't believe he has been too good at (hence the injuries and strains etc). It's probably Ralph's call. If he feels he's now getting somewhere with him, he may want to keep him. If he's still as frustrating as ever to coach, he may feel like it's worth letting him go and using that money to replace him with the Arsenal lad.

LD sports are a dodgy company and have been from day.dot. Some sort of vehicle, linked with Lander Sports, which is linked with Gao. Money movement etc. This article isn't saying they're dodgy, no, but I think everyone can see they are dodgy.

They probably paid us year 1, but I doubt there was ever any intention or substantial finance to fund year 2 and 3. They were a fake company, so I can't see where it would have come from. We were duped by our own owner.

My hope and dream is that this is now the beginning of the end of any Chinese influence at our football club. This entire sponsorship and Gao's ownership of us needs to be investigated by the authorities. He owns us for reasons for his benefit, not for us. It needs to be looked into, as it stinks and has done from the start.

It was all fake anyway, so no real loss.

I didn't ever know where they were getting their money from anyway. They probably knew their entire sham was unsustainable, there was probably some very corrupt reason behind this deal. My hunch is involving some sort of money flowing between countries, hidden inside a sponsorship deal. They did what they needed in year 1, faked it all, and now they can 'break clause'. Gao probably knew every single thing about it, It was probably in his benefit. Lots of guesses and assumptions there for sure, but it always stunk of a corrupt relationship for reasons not benefiting our club.

Apart from the fact he's got 131 goals in 394 games as a winger! He missed a sitter, but he is a pretty lethal finisher from the wide areas in pretty much 9/10 games. They lost this due to Pep's total tactical overthinking in the first half. I don't know why some coaches worry so much about the oppo, just play to your own strengths and believe in your own philosophy. Yes, plan for their strengths, but don't abandon your entire identity to try and nullify them. They abandoned everything in the first half. So weird.

This was an absolute disaster from the word go. It wasn't a valid company from the off, they tried to create content on their website which was a direct copy of our OS. I have no idea what their purpose as a company was, what they do, what they offer. There were lots of lies and made up bullshit in their pages as well. The must suss and horrific sponsorship deal we've ever had. We'll probably lose out financially due to this as well, but good riddens to dodgy as hell crap. Hopefully Gao follows, as i'm sure he was involved heavily in getting this deal over the line in the first place.

Looked at the options a bit more myself earlier, including the instalment plan. Wouldn't be able to afford the two initial payments atm (they'd both come out in August now too, so double whammy in one month). I think that counts me out for this year unfortunately. Certainly not adding to a credit card in this current climate.