You rightly point out mistakes were made initially. The 'buy in bulk and hope some of them work out' plan did end up being totally flawed and it cost alot of money. That was in hindsight a terrible decision but I genuinely think we forget the ****show of a club we had become under Bates, the Arab group and last but not least Cellino who just sacked everybody to save money. Many clubs get decisions wrong and they continue to get decision after decision wrong. Our lot made a mess of it initially but learnt from that and I'd say have got most things right since. When this lot do sell up and hand the club over it will be in a much much stronger position than it was when they took over. You can't say that about many clubs.
I'm not damning with faint praise. All DOFs have hits and misses, its the nature of the gig, I think he's done well since that first year. My posts on this thread are completely consistent with ones i have made about Orta since he joined. The start was a disaster. Something acknowledged by Victor's boss, but not you. Since then they've all done great. It's called balanced objective opinion... appreciate that's an alien concept to the wind up king
Talking of Caleb Ekuban, he's now playing in Serie A for Genoa who paid over 2 million Euro's for him. Of course, he has yet to score
He did look like a handful until he saw the goal. The Tyler Roberts of Italian football. He actually scored a few in Turkey that got his move. They must have larger goals in the Turkish super league.
Its now expected that Ranieri will be sacked in the coming days. The Pozzi family as we know swap managers every other day and always act when the club in trouble. Ranieri was given 4 new players and it seems the dressing room is fighting against him…. Lots of trouble so watch this space because they are now in the drop zone and little time to recover even with a new manager
I've just watched Forest vs Derby. I don't think Brennan Johnson will be playing Championship football much longer. He looks a right player. 20 year old, pace to burn, can play attacking midfield or on either wing. I'd be more than happy to sell James and get him in or even a replacement for Raphinha if he went in the summer.
Or we lost money on. Fat kev.. Rodrigo and james equals a big loss to me. With james and rodrigo it's the fees and not the players.
My gut feeling is… A new guy will be in charge next season and the board will make signings for him in the summer. There are question marks about the signings of players like Rodrigo and James
Yesterday was a disappointing result for sure but we didn't play that badly. In a close game that defintely could have gone either way our fantastic young keeper made an absolute howler and we rightly forgive him for it. So it's the usual suspects who get the blame and having watched the game again that's very harsh. Rodrigo, Harrison & James all had many good moments in the match and you definitely couldn't fault the effort from any of them. Roberts came on and was off the pace but so was Joffy who also needlessly lost the ball on a couple of occasions and both were probably trying a little too hard to make an impact. Keep this squad together, add 2/3 players of quality and along with the young players we'll be a different proposition next season. Yet somehow all I read and it's the same after every defeat is how this squad needs major surgery which is absolute nonsense.
And another thing... The Toon were absolutely out on their feet yesterday but the goal came at just the right time to galvanise them for a big final push. I'm convinced that we'd have gone on to win the game without the goalkeeping error.
Or the robrtts error which left Ayling up the pitch and led to the free kick. I am fecking convinced we would have won with joffy starting and hjelde at left back and dallas in midfield. Square fecking pegs once again. Bielsa out.
Or Ayling could have just pressed the Newcastle player who regained possession from Roberts mistake and either won the ball back or just given away a cheap foul, instead he chose to back off and the break was on. Agree with you over Hjelde starting but not Joffy. He'd been out injured and the work load that Dan James showed is required for that role would have been beyond him.
