Lord Duckhunter

Pony. They make excuses for the bad. We were fucking woeful at City, they stuffed us whilst in second gear, if you read some of the cult it was a decent performance. The 9-0 was down to the officials, other defeats it was tiredness or injuries. We lose to Spurs and it’s all about how well we played first half, not that we chucked the game away AGAIN. You haven’t answered the fundamental point, the cult judge him differently than previous managers. If Mark Hughes had us 11th one season, suffered two 9-0’s, been stuffed countless times and had a run like this, they wouldn’t be sticking up for him or making excuses.

I doubt there’s many supporters who thought we’d be in the bottom 4 or 5 this season. All of a sudden 16th is ok. However the Ralph cult try to spin it, this season has been a terrible disappointment so far and can’t end soon enough.

How do you explain our awful start to last season then? Maybe he’s just not that good.

Wish it was Bantz... But cult and fan boys sum it up perfectly. How else can you describe the posters who refuse to look at his record dispassionately , and keep making excuse after excuse for his inability to react to the game in front of him. There’s absolutely no doubt these people don’t judge him as they’ve judged other managers, and if his name was Ralph Higgins they wouldn’t be so generous.

He’s not better than Che Adams imo. Burnley play to his strengths, Ralph won’t.

That doesn’t count, it’s not a calendar year. The cult only recognise calendar years as a measure of success

People seem to be forgetting the god awful spell we had at the start of last season, before a couple of scrappy wins against Watford & Norwich. He’s had 2 pretty horrendous spells with a great run in the middle. The great run coincided with lockdown and teams coming to terms with no supporters & bubbles etc. Can the cult not contemplate that the good run was the blip, and the 2 shitty periods the norm. Maybe the great run was a one off, why do people think that run will be repeated. Sport it littered with people or teams that do well for a spell, but then go back to their natural level, Ralph maybe one of them. One criticism I had of Poch at our club is we rarely ground out wins we didn’t deserve. We had to play well to win (and we did frequently), however when we were off, we lost. Ralph seems to be the same. I can’t recall too many games we’ve won where the opposition wonder how they lost. When we win, the opposing manager generally says they lost to a better team on the day, and the pundits generally say we deserve it. We never pinch games. A continuation of that will cost us in the long run, because non top top players are incapable of playing at the top of their game week in week out. For a club like ours having a manger that can grind out results when we don’t deserve them, is crucial. The main part of this is being defensively sound and having a structure that makes us hard to play against. Ralph seems incapable of doing this and that’s why his future should be in doubt.

Of the 7 teams that finished above Puel, who should we have been disappointed not to be higher than?

Where were all these caveats around money quality & wages when Hughes, Puel & Pelligrino were getting clog?

Agreed. With Kane they stuffed 5 past us.

1) you did.....

So we can’t judge him over 4 months and we can’t judge him at the end of the season. We can only judge him now? I haven’t once called for his sacking, not once. Yet. I realise the cult have made their minds up, one even posted “legend” when he cried , but I’m waiting until the end of the season, if that’s ok with you.

Teflon Ralph, more excuses.

Let’s see where we finish first shall we?

His tactics cost us the game. I don’t give a flying fuck whether that’s first half or second. If a Marathon runner sets off at 5,000 meters pace and loses because he runs out of steam at the end of the race, would you say that because he was winning the race at 13 miles, he got his early race tactics spot on? If he kept doing so race after race, would you say he was a fucking idiot and maybe he should change his tactics.

Corrected for you.

As he was tactically inept in both Spurs games, how do I know which one people are referring to?

They will be if they’re as bad in his second full season.

Bale wasn’t playing when Ralph produced the most tactically inept performances I’ve had the misfortune to witness. Other teams play against better players, they don’t get turned over by 9 and they don’t surrender without a fight. Their managers adapt their plans, set up properly and they and be hard to beat. Our bloke does the same thing week in week out. Have Wet Brom got better players, what about the 9 Newcastle players we lost to? Stop making excuses for Teflon Ralph.

We’ve also suffered some horrendous defeats that we didn’t under the other 2. I’m not just talking about the 9-0’s. Spurs earlier in the season was the most tactically naive game I’ve ever seen, and I’m nearly 60. Leeds, WBA, Newcastle, wolves last season, Burnley last season. Weds was horrendous, same old same old, out thought by a 29 year old manager in his first game. Awful

When it’s mark hughes & pelligrino it’s their fault, when it’s Ralph, it’s the players fault, is that how it works?

I was answering Soggy, not yours.

I think you need to look at the conversation before calling someone an idiot. According to Soggy we “ amassed more points than anyone else” which was the point I was addressing. Of course in the Ralph cult this is sacrilege

We were top for a few hours, if that’s amassing more points than anyone else, then my cocks a carrot. Had our game been on the Monday night TV, we wouldn’t have been top. We had played a game more than everyone else. “Stop the fucking count” .

Dear god. You see no difference between a team winning some, losing some and finishing 17th after spending most of the season around that spot, and a team top of the league in Nov and then falling to 17th and only winning 3 or 4 games? If it was the other way round you wouldn’t be coming out with such pony. If we lost the first 25 games and then show champions league form to finish 17th , would you be looking forward to next season, thinking “we’ve finally cracked this” , or would you think that our end of season form had absolutely no barring on next season and we only just avoided relegation so should be concerned. Has it not entered your head that we’ve been sussed out, that other sides know how to beat us. It took them half a year, but they’ve done it. Do you really think Ralph is going to change over the summer, are the players going to toughen up? Why will the start of next season be any different