Dean

What a fantastic last couple of games. Tremendous performance, really enjoyable to watch which is soooo important, Palmer a real standout… I might have to become an optimist again!

Romero been approached by some dodgy betting mafia or something? Bizarre.

Yeah that was sooo much better and, above all, really enjoyable to watch.

We haven’t even had the recession yet. I struggle to see how this current reign can withstand that when it comes. But I’m repeating myself. It’ll be fun again to be a fan one day. But worse first imo.

Have to say I’ve really tuned out this season - focusing on other stuff more including other sports. I think too many are expecting a return to normal. We’re in the early stages of a more drawn out period in the wilderness, and I see a decent chance it ends with a forced sale by current owners.

No not really 😂 though his record would probably great if granted all those things . See my reply to bisright.

Sorry my post was a bit facetious. I do see the quality of Enzo, but can you build the case with fewer conditions attached? Eg just a new striker plus the players we already have? I have a bit of an aversion to our “let’s just get” culture, which btw I don’t think you are an exponent of based on other positions you’ve taken.

Kepa’s capable of being the best goalkeeper in the league… if we could just give him a world-class defence to protect him, a world class number 4, and Haaland as number 9.

Even with all my Balkan bias, I don’t get Vlahovic. If we had to go Balkan, I’d take Mitrovic over Vlahovic in a heartbeat.

This will probably get ridiculed but i think Havertz is one of the players that should be given the benefit of the doubt, shouldn’t be judged based on this season. To me he’s def not in the “unsalvageable” category at least. Been frustrating as hell but the whole team has been completely at sea this year and it has fed on itself as the season has gone on and confidence has just disintegrated. He still has age on his side, and potential. He might be a lot better than we’ve come to think and selling him could be a risk. It’s amazing how transformative a decent structure, proper coaching and a bit of confidence can be. My bigger concern is that those don’t materialise.

This is true and v valid. Partly why I said he to blame too. I guess though there are many questions here and I don’t claim to have any answers: why and what led to this decision? him, club, fans, social media? It seems to be a multi-way street. The social media part needs investigating imo. are the borders just TOO fluid? Should there be more friction introduced? rules put in place to incentivise more long-termism in the game? were we all just pretending all along that there was SOMETHING other than money driving things but we just threw in the towel at some point? many more but enough for now. I honestly dont know am just observing something that for me at least is an issue. It’s impossible for me to conceive of there ever being “club legends” again if this continues..

Ok. I guess I’ll be truly nailing my old timer colours to the mast here, but the prominence of discussions on eg how we can sell Mount to meet FFP rules reinforces my sense that something is wrong with the game. There is very little discussion of the “how do we get the best out of this squad” variety. Before anyone comes at me with “wake up, grandad, it’s all business now” and stuff about building brands, I get that. But it’s gone too far. Football was “all business” just two or three seasons ago but I feel even then fans would have made a stand re Mount. We’ve reached a point where there is zero attachment to any player - infected by some sort of weird adhd capitalism that’s probably been enabled by the smart phone and that i think will prove to be a poor recipe for success. As I’ve said before, people like to talk about “building for the long term etc” but nobody has the stomach for it. The players, and certainly Mount, are guilty here too btw. everyone’s tainted - I catch myself out sometimes. Then I ask myself - what’s it for? Without SOME continuity and community spirit, this is not going to work.

Yeah it’s definitely bigger than the players, and evidently bigger than the managers. We’ve been in this doom loop where each error begets a bigger error. Potter seems like more of a golden age by the day. Best one can hope for is we get out of that doom loop and things at least improve under Pochettino. Top half of table would be a start. Talk about lowered bar, but it’s the reality. Beyond that though, eg top four - no chance. have to consider the competition in terms of metrics like financial resources, overall management of club, squad, manager and how settled they are etc. on every single one of these, there are at least four clubs ahead of us, some of them by miles. Something would have to break elsewhere.

This is our fault too

😂