13 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

Only two weeks ago, Maresca was on board with this strategy. Whatever happened with the "worst 48 hours" thing is probably the trigger for this change.

Step 1: The "worst 48 hours" line.

Step 2: Yesterday. The club's recruitment strategy is wrong.

Either a power struggle, or he wants out. He knows he won't win a power struggle.

1 hour ago, dermott said:

Step 1: The "worst 48 hours" line.

Step 2: Yesterday. The club's recruitment strategy is wrong.

Either a power struggle, or he wants out. He knows he won't win a power struggle.

He also knows there's very little, if any, improvement from last season and needs to justify that.

52 minutes ago, Andy North said:

He also knows there's very little, if any, improvement from last season and needs to justify that.

There's more at stake I think.

14 minutes ago, dermott said:

There's more at stake I think.

I know that but he's covering all bases.

3 hours ago, acaeus said:

The belief that the next manager will fix everything by “playing players in their proper positions” is speculative at best. Some of these players are too young to even have a proper position yet. The next manager will come, little will change on the pitch, and the cycle will repeat: new manager, same squad, same blame.

Just a manager who isn’t a stubborn prick who refuses to change from his tactics, which involve playing players in strange positions because it worked once and he got to be smug, despite the fact the tactic rarely works & bores the fans to tears because said manager loves the smell of his own sh*t. Just that. It’s not much to ask.

2 hours ago, Andy North said:

He also knows there's very little, if any, improvement from last season and needs to justify that.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Thankfully his time is coming to an end - not soon enough for me.

21 minutes ago, Bebe1980 said:

You can fool some of the people some of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Thankfully his time is coming to an end - not soon enough for me.

As much as we all dislike the directors, I doubt they are forcing him to play Tosin over Acheampong.

Or Gittens over Garnacho.

Or shoehorning Badiashile at any waking moment.

Or being here 2 seasons and still starting every away match with zero to no intensity.

Broken record, but we've seen his ceiling. This is it. Leicester had the best squad in the Championship and they still played this slow, dull football with brazen rotation. I still expect the same should Maresca get better players.

COCO THE CLOWN IS BANNED FOR THE NEXT GAME (ASTON VILLA)

If this is indeed a battle of SDs vs Manager it is going to be very interesting to see which side the owners come down on.

What they should do is get rid of all of them.

What they'll probably do is keep all of them !

10 minutes ago, Sexyfootball said:

If this is indeed a battle of SDs vs Manager it is going to be very interesting to see which side the owners come down on.

What they should do is get rid of all of them.

What they'll probably do is keep all of them !

We're f**ked on all fronts:

Waiting for the clown to pick our best team...

Whilst waiting for the owners to get rid of the clowns they appointed to serve up this dross.

Just now, Bebe1980 said:

We're f**ked on all fronts:

Waiting for the clown to pick our best team...

Whilst waiting for the owners to get rid of the clowns they appointed to serve up this dross.

Yes - gallows humour is pretty much all I have left for 25/26 LOL

3 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

If this is indeed a battle of SDs vs Manager it is going to be very interesting to see which side the owners come down on.

What they should do is get rid of all of them.

What they'll probably do is keep all of them !

You forgot the bit where they sell the club to someone who knows what they’re doing.

At the end of November, we were a win against Arsenal away from being right on top of them. 21 days later and we are barely hanging on to 4th, 10 points behind Arsenal and 7 points behind Villa who could barely score a goal at the start of the season.

We never just slowly drop off, we fall off a cliff. At this time of the year, it's never just one bad result and we bounce back, we just drop more and more points.

1 hour ago, Munkunku said:

You forgot the bit where they sell the club to someone who knows what they’re doing.

As close to 13th as we are to 3rd.

Squad is pretty bad, with some glaring weaknesses, but he makes it worse.

15 hours ago, Sexyfootball said:

If this is indeed a battle of SDs vs Manager it is going to be very interesting to see which side the owners come down on.

What they should do is get rid of all of them.

What they'll probably do is keep all of them !

I think it is pretty obvious which side they are on.

I 100% agree with Neville here. We’re way too easy to play against. Any team that shows abit of fight usually gets a result against us

Gary Neville: “I just get the feeling they aren’t going to get where the ownership want and that’s not the fault of the manager or players. They should have built a squad to win, NOW. They’ve built a squad to grow but problem is, you grow and you grow and then you’re never quite there because the other teams are cold hearted killers at times.

“Chelsea need some BEASTS in their team, they’re not nasty to play against or hard to break down. I think they (owners) need to intervene and give the young players in the squad a real spine and some real fierce characters”

(@SkySportsPL Gary Neville Podcast)

While Neville makes a good point it's something us fans have been saying for a while.

The problem is that it is literally the owners stupid policies that are holding us back.

They need to admit that they got that wrong and be more flexible with their transfer strategies.

The problem is they are more likely to double down and buy even younger players than admit to any mistakes and buy someone Premier League ready.

1 hour ago, JM7 said:

I 100% agree with Neville here. We’re way too easy to play against. Any team that shows abit of fight usually gets a result against us

Gary Neville: “I just get the feeling they aren’t going to get where the ownership want and that’s not the fault of the manager or players. They should have built a squad to win, NOW. They’ve built a squad to grow but problem is, you grow and you grow and then you’re never quite there because the other teams are cold hearted killers at times.

“Chelsea need some BEASTS in their team, they’re not nasty to play against or hard to break down. I think they (owners) need to intervene and give the young players in the squad a real spine and some real fierce characters”

(@SkySportsPL Gary Neville Podcast)

He’s been spot on recently about us, he said something similar when he was commentating on the Leeds match. He was fuming that we were pissing around with the ball while losing passing it between the defenders over and over again!!

Problem is Eghbali.

6 hours ago, JM7 said:

I 100% agree with Neville here. We’re way too easy to play against. Any team that shows abit of fight usually gets a result against us

Gary Neville: “I just get the feeling they aren’t going to get where the ownership want and that’s not the fault of the manager or players. They should have built a squad to win, NOW. They’ve built a squad to grow but problem is, you grow and you grow and then you’re never quite there because the other teams are cold hearted killers at times.

“Chelsea need some BEASTS in their team, they’re not nasty to play against or hard to break down. I think they (owners) need to intervene and give the young players in the squad a real spine and some real fierce characters”

(@SkySportsPL Gary Neville Podcast)

I agree with respect to how the board is building the team, which we have been questioning for long. They’re more interested in buying young players to sell for profit, but they’re sh*t at it. Where I don’t agree is that the manager is not at fault. We may not challenge for relevant trophies with this board and their signings policy, but we can certainly play much better football than what Maresca has the team playing. We need a more experienced coach and we could be a top 4 team contender rather than just getting there by chance in the last game.

Our problem is quite straightforward. Let's say we have an open striker spot.

How do we fill that spot. Do we find player who improve our existing st? Do we find player that give us certain skillset? No, we find st who fit our financial model.

It is that simple. So every summer we kinda end up in similar situation because it is hard to find player to improve a top 4 team if you are looking at young player with lower salary. Of course, you can hit jackpot as we did with Palmer and maybe Estevao.

So what we rely on in term of improving the team is player development and player development take months and years.

So, on top of everything else already well documented here the bald clown f**ks up week in week out.... add:

When things aren't going well, tries to deflect attention away from himself and blames others for his mistakes.

5 hours ago, Bob stark said:

Our problem is quite straightforward. Let's say we have an open striker spot.

How do we fill that spot. Do we find player who improve our existing st? Do we find player that give us certain skillset? No, we find st who fit our financial model.

It is that simple. So every summer we kinda end up in similar situation because it is hard to find player to improve a top 4 team if you are looking at young player with lower salary. Of course, you can hit jackpot as we did with Palmer and maybe Estevao.

So what we rely on in term of improving the team is player development and player development take months and years.

J.Pedro cost £60M and is on 156K a week. Woltemade at Newcastle was £69M and on £108K a week for comparison.

Who should we have signed up top instead out of interest?

1 hour ago, GarnachoCheese said:

J.Pedro cost £60M and is on 156K a week. Woltemade at Newcastle was £69M and on £108K a week for comparison.

Who should we have signed up top instead out of interest?

Why Jp? The st that we signed was Delap.

Secondly, similar to neto signing two seasons, I am not convinced that Jp signing is purely football player deal

Edited December 23, 2025Dec 23 by Bob stark