Mhsc

In conclusion, buying a club for lots of money, binning all of their winning players and staff, and replacing them wholesale at great expense with a bunch of inexperienced guys at every level of the club, might not work.

When players play like this you have to assume they want the guy fired. They look like they've totally given up on playing for him.

That was a non event man, just a coming together, got to run in there if you're Jackson, would be furious with him if he didn't

And had nothing to do with the goal whatsoever

That goal was 100% on player incompetence and not Maresca tbh. We've been creating lots of opportunities and dominating the game until then. Colwill and Tosin so poor, they just don't have that hunger and intensity for defending, caught asleep at the wheel yet again

Does Sanchez actually work on his distribution at all? I can understand in live situations but from a straight forward goalkick you should be able to land passes into normal areas pretty consistently as a goalkeeper, I mean even an amateur can learn this, its just countless hours of practicing kicking the ball from exactly the same spot.

A bit of luck for us in that case

Things are so tight we could definitely benefit from a bit more GD I'll go with 1:0 We are not a high scoring team anymore but we have barely conceded goals recently.

Delap is on the bench

All of the other teams will be saying the same We are all where we are because we've all lost tonnes of points we "shouldn't have"

Wow. Terrible time for them to have this happen, they've got 2 PL games in 3 days. Hope he's alright - has to be something serious, the guy is only 47. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c98gjez5yd7o Newcastle boss Eddie Howe has been admitted to hospital and will miss the club's Premier League fixture with Manchester United on Sunday.

Final game of the season could be a real cup final sort of situation

No real title race and relegation fight this year, but the fight for the various European spots is keeping the league pretty damn interesting. Almost anything could happen from this position.

Oh dear. Probably he had a license from Ecuador but you can only use a foreign license for like a year in the UK I think and then you have to sit and do the test. He's probably been driving without a valid license for like 4 years... No idea how he was even getting insured (or if he was insured). 23 years old and can't get the basics of his life together... Not a good look tbh.

That was the rationale for many of our woeful big money forward signings though. They all hampered us for years afterwards and were very difficult situations to get out of. At the risk of going through this entire debate again, it is very possible (perhaps even probable) we will just end up with a very expensive player who doesn't do a lot for us, and end up in an even worse situation than we're in now. And then we will look back and condemn the sporting directors for blowing everything on a player with one elite season in his career, persistent injury problems, and who's main motivation is openly and transparently exclusively about maximising his wealth. I think the argument for someone like Delap is not that they might be able to do it in 2-3 years but that a guy who scores 12 PL goals (so far) for Ipswich, massively outperforming his xG scoring from basically nothing, if placed in a team that creates way more opportunities he maybe can already do a 20 PL goal season. And at a much lower risk to our ability to succeed over the next few years if it goes wrong. From the expensive options, Isak would be my pick, at least he has shown he can do it in PL and there is something to be said for the strategy of aggressively going after elite PL players as they emerge no matter the cost (a strategy that back in time did Man Utd very well, and more recently Man City did really well).

Haaland is indeed perhaps the only exception I can think of in world football where you might justify spending big money on him despite very obvious limitations, although its interesting that City have collapsed this year, in a way they have never collapsed in all of the years in which they had more complete players up top.

Agreed. In general I don't want any of the Vlahovics of the world unless we're picking them up on very favourable deals. The pure-finisher type like him can fall off a cliff too easily, when the only thing being provided is finishing and they go through a bad spell at their only elite skill... Basically become a passenger. Sometimes they stay a passenger for years, or just never get it back to the level required. We've signed endless strikers like that over the years and they never work out over the long term. I'd really like to see us only spend big on players who can be a menace even when they're not scoring, and improves us just by being on the field and going about their craft. If we sub out NJ for a pure goal scorer it will net out at 0 improvement probably (or maybe we get worse). Liam Delap is one of various interesting options although I'm sure you have a thorough list on this already.

Tell that to Arsenal fans, they despised him and still don't rate him Our fans would turn on him in <6 months

To be fair, in nearly all of our successful periods we played quite tedious football Perhaps the double under Carlo was the only exception really.

Nkunku reminds me of Claudio Pizarro. Just totally disappointing.

So many decent keepers have been available since Courtois left, we've briefly had an in form Mendy thanks to Cech's recommendation, but otherwise its basically all been dross. I can barely even remember the relaxed feeling you have when you know you will very likely only concede goals that are unstoppable shots. Quite remarkable how bad we are as a club at picking them. And at overspending on the ones we do sign, fighting absolutely no one for their overpriced signatures, but paying top dollar anyway.

Why? They are 12th with nothing to play for. I think we can certainly win, for all our problems, we are still favourites vs Brentford (even if they did have something to play for).

Shame Caicedo didn't get that goal - unbelievable performance from him as usual. Baffled that anyone does not rate this guy. Imo he's the most likeable player in the squad by far from a fan PoV, puts everything on the line for us game after game. Always turns up and steps up when others do not. There is nothing I dread more than him picking up an injury or a suspension - we just don't have enough to get by without him imo.

Good news all around.