The Premier League thread

Yeah I know I'm being negative but we got 2nd place and won three trophies with Jose and that wasn't good enough.
We are playing the same awful football most of the time with better more dedicated players and winning nothing with Ole.
The guy has no plan for playing teams that sit back and no real back up plan when we are losing.
I hope I'm wrong and it turns around but I have not seen one shred of evidence so far to make believe it will.

So I'm sticking with charlatan

Yup this is make or break time, this is his third season. I believe he said we'd be challenging at this point...

Yeah that's kind of the second part of the problem too. When our heads drop after a bad result, we seemingly need a fucking neck fusion surgery to pick them back up again. The mediocrity bleeds into the next 5, 6, 7 games and we seem to almost stumble into momentum again and paper over the cracks rather than actually fixing problems.

While guys like City move on quickly and go and smash the next team 5-0 after a bad one. It's really when you look at other teams we 'should' be at least competing with you see we're just lacking something fundamentally.

I think McTom has a much lower ceiling than other people in the team but my god, I'd have him starting over Fred or Matic every day of the week. Watching Southampton deliberately funnel the ball into those 2 useless lumps of flesh so they could press it off them or force them into bottling simple passes was absolutely embarrassing for a team of our supposed calibre.

It could be worse. You could be Arsenal.

We need to have Pogba in midfield. Hopefully that happens soon when the likes of Cavani, Sancho, Rashford come back. I've been fully Ole in, and thankfully didn't catch the game yesterday, but now's the time to do something. If we just struggle to get top 4 and don't win anything, then maybe a change is needed. But who even is there? I reckon the likes of Conte will just be shit tbh. I'd take Brenton maybe.

Can say I have definitely preferred being a fan whilst Ole is manager, than LVG or Jose. Both their attitudes were crap, and we were crap. Sure there is still the odd turgid match, but basically all of those other two were that. People always bring up Jose winning the Europa. Every single match was turgid. Could barely watch us trying to grind out results against European minnows.

We'll be top if we beat west ham 5 nil at their place tonight

Pardon my ignorance of European football, but are there any new managers from outside the big clubs that are threatening to break into the elite tier?

A few years ago it felt like there was a steady supply of top level managers coming through. I’m thinking the likes of Klopp and then Tuchel at Dortmund.

There used to be Nagelsman but now he’s at Munich I don’t know who’s waiting in the wings. Madrid going for Ancelotti again seemed to indicate a lack of options.

I’m getting a list together for Edu but happy to forward to the Glazers if needed.

De Zerbi at Shaktar is definitely a big name manager of the future. And Rose currently at Dortmund is likely to be another in that lineage.

If I were Arsenal I’d be all over Potter.

You’d think that Potter would be looking at moving on by the end of this season, or next season at the latest. Brighton seem liable to go down at some point, in spite of the good work Potter is doing. Eddie Howe must loom large in young English manager’s minds as a somewhat cautionary tale.

Did anyone ever actually go in for Howe in the end? I know there were consistent links to Spurs but I don’t know if any Prem teams actually offered him a job in the Bournemouth years.

I'm not sure what you were watching. Everyone thought De Gea was the best keeper in the world because we were being battered. Now he faces far fewer shots people think he's shit.

In 15/16 we scored a whopping 49 goals in the league. 16/17 we scored a much improved 52. Fun. Preferred watching us sneak past lower league sides in crazy 4-3s myself. But to each their own. 

Ole has had to play players like Pereira and Lingard for large periods he's been manager. Both had something like 40 apps each in his first season. If he doesn't find a way to get the strong looking squad we have now to do something, then I'd be worried. Though it is a worry regardless if McTomminay, Fred and Matic are actually our best midfielders. 

I think there have been times that have been much more miserable in recent memory that anything remotely positive will be seen as success for some, which is cool. You've got to take your enjoyment where you can get it sometimes.

But Kal hit the nail on the head really. I don't think anyone on the outside we're supposed to be directly competing with gives two shits about us or feels like a sleeping giant is slowly waking up. Even finishing second in the league we were a virtual zero entity for the majority. A few others had shockers which elevated us but we never even remotely looked a threat to the one team that bothered turning up.

That's very harsh indeed imo.

No intent but it was clumsy and extremely dangerous.