alpine_saint

This was clearly the incident in which the white flag was run up the flagpole, but it wasnt the trigger. The more we discuss, the more I feel it was Markus's death.

Oh, thats terrible news. I spoke to him on the phone a couple of times and met him in a meeting with Lee Hoos. Nice bloke. RIP.

Weeeelll, yes, that was the trigger for the downturn. But the complacent/arrogant culture of "we can sell our best players, and handle the disruption of managerial change" was established 2 years previous when SRL, Lallana, Lovren and Pochettino left within a few weeks and we bounced back spectacularly under Koeman, Pelle et al... And that happened because Cortese had quit a few months before. Seriously, Wreck-it-Ralph cannot hold a candle to Cortese for driving the club forwards and onwards.

Lets hope/pray this works well and they offer him a permanent contract.

Yes, but I wouldnt like to face up to Big Dunc.

Hard to argue against. However, the writing was on the wall when Markus died; KL simply wasnt that into it and didnt have the personal relationship with him.

F**k it, why not ? Only thing I'd change is to drop Forster for McCarthy.

A lot of good points made on here. I think that ML and NC gave the club such a massive impulse in progress that a lot of the highs are directly attributable to them, and momentum carried us forwards to the PL 6th place. However, things were already going wrong, such as the yearly summer picking off of our best players; there was no way we were going to be continue to sustain the success in replacing them. In this sense, the sale of Pelle and Mane were the straws that broke the camels back. I think Reed thinks he has a Midas touch and has become so believing of his own hype and complacent, that this led to the back-to-back appointmnet of Puel and Pellegrino, which is proving to be the kiss of death for the club. In addition, Mitchell has gone and the black box seems to have ceased to exist. I dont see, and have never seen, exactly WTF Krueger has brought to the club. He certainly isnt Cortese, driving the club forwards. I really wonder what would be different if Markus were still with us. He seemed to be happy to indulge Cortese, and Cortese was clearly unwilling to settle for anything but the best, and would not have tolerated failure.

Would I ? Yes Will it happen ? No

Appointing BFS after Mope feels like appointing Saggychops after Wigley; look how that ended. We still need to find a long-term candidate, not a panic/rescue candidate. Having said that, if I were Gao, I would tell Kueger to meet with Koeman to see if the hatchets can possibly be buried

Yep

Sorry, that has to be the end for Mope

So, from a critical run of 4 games, 12 points, we currently have 6. Not good enough.

About time for Forster's screw-up...

You and the rest of the planet...

Well, that really steps up the pressure....

Which means it will be 0-1 once Forster makes his weekly f**k-up.

Has MLG changed his log-in name ??

The club has got itself in a right mess somehow. We have a clueless manager and backroom staff and invisible executive. We have a Director of Football drunk and complaicent with his recent achievements who believes he has the Midas touch, but in reality its been downhill for over the past year. We will lose Bertrand and VVD in January, though considering their interest and commitment maybe thats not the disastrous news it once would have been.

Well, I'm about ready to do a deal with the devil and welcome Koeman back.

This is a good post, and I agree. Koeman was the Winston Churchill of football managers. Brilliant in a crisis, fairly crap when everything is running smoothly.

Like Redmond actually brings anything...

Karma is a beetch...

Mane and Pelle were not adequately replaced.

I'd agree with this. If we could start finding the net, I'd expect his error rate to drop.