Duracell

2 hours ago, Barney1991 said:

It says he’s safe till January so that’s not closer they’ve basically said put up with it. It wouldn’t be knee jerk either it’s. It like it’s only happening. Ow where we’ve gone backwards and it’s dull. It’s been like this since march and instead of using the summer to add and go again and improve we’ve gone the other way 

Of course they'll say that - that has to be the plan if they're not sacking him immediately.

They can't say "we want to sack him, we're just keeping him until we find a suitable replacement but shhhh nobody tell him," if that were the case.

Nor could they publicly - officially, or via talking to local journalists - give anything other than a vote of confidence. You can't say you're planning to sack a manager. You either back or sack.

But usually, these public votes of confidence foreshadow a sacking.

How often do you see boards publicly back a struggling manager who then turns it around and leads to success? 

I think some are overreacting to what's essentially a message saying "we haven't sacked him yet."

If anything, it makes it closer to him going. Club sources never tell you someone's job is safe when the team is doing well, because that's obvious. When they feel the need to say it, it's because they feel compelled to say something.

Also serves as a pre-text if they do sack him, it's not a knee-jerk reaction and they've really thought about it.

Steve Bloomer's watching, helping them fight, guiding the heroes in the black and the white and and timeless blue and the founders green and the victory blue and the centenary gold and the premier burgundy and the community pink...

Sometimes prolific strikers can be a detriment to the rest of the team. I always thought that with Darren Bent in our side we ended up scoring fewer overall, as the whole team was geared to getting him at the end of moves and he offered absolutely nothing in the build-up.

Not the case with McGoldrick. He was our number 9 and our best number 10. He had the ability to finish moves that he often started himself. 

We're replacing two players, not one.

Indy500 on Sunday if you want to watch a motor race.

I could forgive the mistake or even the red from Davies but the light jog back from the initial mistake is so, so disappointing. 

Bit annoying how you could compose almost half a starting XI of players who used to play for us who are playing at a level above where we are as a club right now.

Not sure Elsnik entirely fits the bill, but he must be close.

One thing you do have to give credit to Warne is getting fully stuck in with our traditions as a club. He’s fully immersed himself with our annual Lent/Easter collapse in form. 

Are we trying not to get the point on purpose here?

Since we’ve been out of the top flight consistently for over 20 years, and other clubs who have been up there have invested in stadia since then, our clubs standing has fallen relative to where it was in say the late 90s.

There’s nothing controversial in that.

What I do find interesting is that the other two clubs to come down with us the last time we were properly in the Premier League (I don’t count 07/08) - Sheffield Weds and Ipswich - have fallen even further away from their heights and haven’t been back to the top flight since. Neither have been able to invest in their ground.

This season wasn't a free hit when we got rid of the free hit manager and replaced him with a League One promotion specialist on a 4-year-deal. We firmly nailed our colours to the mast when we did that.

I think we're witnessing a painful regression to the mean. We were clean and clinical in our run of easier games but it's starting to unravel because our squad is too disjointed. 

I don't agree that we "should" be pushing top 2. Almost every player in our squad wouldn't look out of place in a top 2 side in this league, but our squad is too much of a weird mix of grafters and tidy footballers for us to trouble the more coherent sides. Doesn't help that half the squad is learning how to shave and the other half is eligible for a free bus pass.

Many people complaining about a liberal metropolitan elite controlling the media, ignoring the fact that large media organisations with increasingly large links to the political party in charge - in particular, party donors - portray the government favourably, with criticism from employees silenced.

Anyway, enough about the book I'm reading about the Nazi Party's use of the media in their rise to power. Linekar obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

I'm glad we've established the obvious link between David Attenborough and austerity this early into the thread.

10 minutes ago, DiggerB said:

Has to be this. Lyrics are apt, I think?

 

Black and White Town is the "X is a ****hole, I want to go home" chant turned into a dad rock song.

Flip the question round. If you enjoy releasing energy and swearing in a 30,000 seater stadium, why would you choose to sit in the family stand?

51 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

It’s nice to be back in a position for a promotion push to be derailed tbh. I’d almost forgotten about the February curse. Takes me back to the good old Mad Mel days.

Making us do February again would have been an appropriate sanction for our FFP breaches.

13 hours ago, CBRammette said:

I think Max brings such an air of calm to the team and I dont mean that in a negative way - everyone seems to know he's where he needs to be doing what he should be doing. I'm not saying he is perfect as he's still so young and learning but really notice him not there

Whole team's different with Bird in it. Every single player. They can make riskier runs, can expect a pass into feet if they're a forward, or a ball out wide for full backs and wingers. These players can play their game without having to think.

He doesn't do Hollywood passes that often, but he pulls off those slightly-more-difficult than average passes relentlessly, every time. Very few CMs at this level can do it. It's the marginal gain that separates us from the rest of the league and puts us up there with the best.

That's where the calm comes from with Bird. Having a player like that in the spine of your team makes everything run like clockwork.

Just now, LittleEatonRam said:

"Have Derby been too naive?"

"Have Derby shown West Ham too much respect?"

Which one is it, it can't be both!

I have absolutely no idea what they’re on about.

Glad we’ve finally got to the bottom of the issues plaguing our notoriously leaky defence.

I'm a Year 6 teacher, so deal with this age group day in, day out.

They fool you into think proper people at that age, but you forget how little they are. They don't know anything about anything. All they've done is get good at tricking adults into thinking they do.

They don't know about boyfriends and girlfriends. I have Muslims in my class who "pray" facing the wrong way. Kids who support Chelsea one week, Man United the next. One week the person they sit next to is public enemy number 1, the next week they're randomly best mates. With absolutely no context. 

"Woke" or whatever is confusing to kids because absolutely everything they interact with at that age is new and confusing. Coordinates. TimesTables. Fronted Adverbials. 

It's not information overload, but it's different to your experience. Just listen is the best advice I think, you don't always need to give advice. She's going to change her mind 129219048209 times on every issue under the sun before she's an adult.

13 minutes ago, Rammy03 said:

He deserves massive credit for the recruitment in the summer as it was a very difficult situation but come on, we wouldn't have even turned round that game yesterday under Rosenior.

How do we know that? 

Rosenior didn’t get the chance to prove himself properly, but I don’t care anymore. It’s a rare case in football where the situation seems to have worked out for everyone (other than Rotherham).

1 hour ago, enachops said:

Probably because the original post stated you must have seen them play. Unless someone’s been in a freezer for a fair few years, I think that rules Bloomer out of the running for this thread.

You’re making a lot of assumptions about my personal life which I don’t appreciate.

Honestly surprised we're 5 pages in and only one person has suggested Bloomer.

273 goals in 419 top flight games, and 28 goals in 23 England appearances. With that ratio, if they played more international games at the time, nobody would be able to touch his record. He remains the second-highest goal scorer in the top flight, beaten only by Jimmy Greaves.

A lot of the players mentioned were outstanding, elite players, but there were other options out there if you missed out on them as a target. Bloomer was the footballer of his era, a cut above in the same way as Ronaldo or Messi are now. It's remarkable that someone born 150 years ago before the age of celebrity footballers made such an impact on the club that we still sing about him before every home game.

19 hours ago, jono said:

Is he making the best contribution of his whole career now ?

Certainly up there, but he's been a consistent performer for many years now. He was vital to the way we played in 13/14, where he was virtually a left midfielder. We scored a fair few with him cutting the ball back from the goal line to Martin or Bryson, or we'd build up with him firing the ball into Martin's feet with a runner getting in behind.

I think the criticism has often come from the fact that his body hasn't always been able to execute what his brain wanted him to do. He always saw the pass, better than almost anyone, but wasn't always great at making the pass happen. I think this led to a myth about him being accident-prone.

He's always been a beast in aerial duels and difficult to get past defensively. I think he'll see out his career at CB.

3 hours ago, duncanjwitham said:

But there’s no structure to it, no organisation, it’s just whatever happens to happen at random.  We aren’t setting out to achieve anything specific. With Collins in the team, we should be putting crosses in all game, that’s basically what he’s there for.  But we don’t, we spend a bunch of time lumping big balls over the top for nobody, a load of time playing balls up to McGoldrick’s head, and so on.  There doesn’t seem to be any thought put into what players are actually good at, and how to get them doing that stuff as often as possible.

Wow, why over-complicate thing so much? Surely “just win the game” will do? ?

It often appears this way when a team is in transition. For example, when we went from Lampard to Cocu, the emphasis went on keeping possession. It manifested as keeping the ball at all costs, often looking like ponderous passing for the sake of it. It takes ages for players to adapt when they're used to playing one way.

It's the same issue but in reverse now - we've gone from Rosenior's way of playing out of trouble (often trouble created on purpose) and patient build-up play to high intensity, direct passing in behind and counter-attacking play. At the moment, it's not fine-tuned and it's very rushed.

I was against the appointment (and still am to some extent) for this very reason. It's not about one style of play being more effective than the other, but why we decided to rip it all up and go with a manager who plays a different style. And that's before you get into the fact that the academy sides have to adapt now too. If it's going to be a proper success, it will take time and it's remarkable that we're still hoovering up points while it's happening.

Hard to spot that one though, I didn’t think it was a penalty until I saw the replay. You’d only get those with VAR.