Beefy is a legend

I was good friends a while back with the brother of a referee named Michael Ryan. He ref'd a game I went to at Bramall Lane in Feb 2003. In that game Norwich won 1-0 and he sent off two Blades players. There was carnage in the home stands towards him. My friend told me that afterwards, instead of being in the post-match lounge, referee Ryan was escorted by Police to his car promptly after full-time and immediately left. It's pretty unfair to accuse refs of conscious bias towards home teams.

Literally not a chance that anyone is invading, or militarily attacking Russia in its own territory. The nuclear deterrent is very effective in relation to that.

The reality is we need to look after ourselves and get to about 35pts. If we do that the other results are largely irrelevant. That points tally will get us in and around 17th. I still think that will be beyond us. Palace is a significant game because if we don't win that we will have 16 or 17 points after 25 games and we will surely be back at the foot of the table. If we can find a win then that will offset the likely defeats to come v Citeh and Liverpool and keep us close to 17th. But like others have said, at least we are in the conversation now. And if we go down in a close run thing, that isn't half as embarrassing as finishing bottom without even troubling the rest of the league.

I'm inclined to agree. We have 4 huge home games v Brentford, Burnley, Newcastle and Palace. Even if we do really well and take say 9 points from those, we still need another 10 points to get to 35. You really are scratching around as to how we do that. We probably will have to win one of the games at Leeds, Brighton or Southampton. Then maybe we can beat Spurs on the last day particularly if they don't have a great deal to play for. We are going to have to pull out a couple of superb wins from somewhere, that's for sure. There is a hell of a lot of work to do and I'm particularly concerned about Newcastle. They are going to add 3 or 4 quality players and they have a pretty nice run of fixtures coming up.

In last 9 games freefalling Brentford have 6 points. Norwich have 7 points. Perception is a weird thing.

Exactly. I may think we are down, but every single time I get to the Carra I will still sing, support and hope that the players give the crowd something to hold on to. Every game is still a chance to win, to prove people wrong, and just because I think our season is done doesn't mean we can't win any single game in isolation, and I will still support the side to the hilt. I never go after individuals by chant, I never boo. At the moment, irrespective of results, what the players actually need to do is provide a level of performance that enables the crowd to get involved in the game. Because playing like we did against Arsenal, the most supportive crowd in the world isn't going to produce much positivity.

The league table is what it is. A 3 point gap isn't a problem albeit there are games in hand to be concerned with too. But it's the reality of the level of our performance. Teams with -34 goal difference after 19 games don't stay up. Teams with 8 goals in 19 games don't stay up. Added to that Newcastle are signing England players and are bound to sign much more quality, whereas we are going to do precious little. The league table and the points on offer aren't why many of us already accept we are down. It's the performances, the clear lack of quality in the squad. The loss of our footballing ethos and identity.

I am inclined to agree. And above all I feel that the Farke sacking basically ripped up 4 years of improvement of the club in so many facets in the vain hope that someone, anyone, else might keep us up. However bad things were at times under Farke, I still felt that we were a team who knew our identity and how we would go about trying to score goals. That is completely gone now. I can foresee a really rough year ahead because this squad is not prepared for another tilt at the Championship. And when our league position is back where it was 5 years ago, that's when things really will turn ugly. And then, with toxic fans at Carrow Road, we won't be able to come back up. And really, this is what disappoints me most about Webber this season. Not the failings in recruitment. But moving away from an ethos that defined the club. Webber came in and said he wanted the club to play a certain style of attractive football. Where is that ethos now?

We wouldn't have been able to get Gibson to help us out of the Championship without an obligation to buy though.

Was saying on Twitter earlier, we look like a side with no real idea as to how we are trying to score a goal. It's a far cry from the last manager who, for the vast majority of his tenure, and defensive weaknesses accepted, always produced sides who knew how to attack.

A fan led buy out would be great if there is a fan or fans with about £200m to spare. Otherwise, I don't see that it makes us any better off. We already have fans in charge of this football club.

I agree quite strongly with what you've said here. However, it doesn't accord with the club's messaging. Tanks, bazooka's and grenades were apparently signed. It was clear that the higher-ups were marketing this season as one in which we had pushed the boat out and expected to give it a right good go at surviving. The Farke sacking itself evidenced that the club expected the squad assembled to compete to survive. You can't really criticise fans for having an unrealistic set of ambitions for the club in the PL against a backdrop of such messaging. I personally felt that it would be very difficult, once again, to survive. But I did expect us to compete a little more and do better than 21 points. The reality is that performances have actually been far worse than two years ago. We were naive and vulnerable defensively then, but we played good football, scored goals and gave most teams a proper game. There's been very little of that this season.

I'll give you my honest opinion, Branston. I thought the first half v Southampton was the worst we've played all season. Absolutely shambolic and it was a miracle that we weren't 4-1 or 5-1 down at half time. The second half was much better and we nicked a set-piece goal and an undeserved win. I thought Smith had tried to change too much, too quickly in that game. Wolves I thought was very good and really showed some decent signs.. We looked a bit more compact and defensively resolute, although didn't create many chances and didn't score. Newcastle was absolutely dreadful. We didn't adapt to playing 10 men at all when we'd clearly gone there to defend and counter-attack and we were indebted to a wondergoal to avoid an absolutely crushing defeat. Spurs and Man Utd were similar games. We looked decent and tidy in possession but still offered only a sporadic goal threat and lost both without scoring. Man Utd were very poor. The games since, Villa, Arsenal and Palace, have been, Chelsea apart, the worst performances of the season. Even with the mitigation of injuries and illness, we had 6 of our summer signings in the starting line-up v Palace and were so far off even competing that it was truly embarrassing. You know how bad it is when the gallows humour starts in the away fans. Over the piece, 3 goals in 8 games. We scored 3 in the last two games that Farke was in charge. So, overall, I don't see much improvement really. I thought under Farke the first half v Brentford was the best we've played all season. We also had no Normann and Kabak for the first 4/5 games and a very tough start and had taken 5 points from his last 6 games in charge. We have 5 points from Smith's 8 games in charge. So, in reality, whilst I acknowledge there were some decent signs in the Wolves game, I really haven't seen much to suggest Smith has got any more out of this group of players, who simply aren't good enough.

There's another point to this. Farke revolutionised training at the club. Training sessions were increased and the tactical elements of playing his system were complex and took quite some time to adapt to. Days off were moved to allow recovery sessions the day after games. It will have been a less than simple process to rip all of that up and alter the tactical setup. And whilst some say that there were signs of improvement under Smith, my own view is that we looked to have tightened up defensively but at the expense of attacking output. We scored 2 goals in Farke's last game in charge, we have scored 3 in 8 games under Smith, with two of those being goalkeeping errors and the other an absolute wondergoal from Pukki. To be honest, under Smith I think we've had 2 good performances out of the 8 games, Wolves and Man Utd. We were incredibly lucky to beat Southampton and, but for that, Smith's record would look completely horrendous. I don't blame either manager though. In all honesty, this squad simply isn't anywhere near good enough. With all of our best players fit all season, we might have a chance. But that never happens. Every team has to deal with unavailability of players. When you scratch past the surface of this NCFC squad, what is underneath is completely sub-standard.

I was just watching Sky's podcast on the Ashes. Nasser Hussain came out with a quote that translates perfectly across to NCFC, and to this thread. "People always want their pound of flesh when things go wrong. Someone to blame. But always ask yourself. Am I confident that change will make things better? Change for change's sake is not improvement."

You must have missed the 7-1 v Colchester.

There's this old saying about babies and bathwater etc. The summer recruitment has been terrible. Webber has some responsibility for that. However, it's also fair to say that the financial constraints forced us to shop in certain markets which were always going to be risky for recruiting PL quality. I also think that the strategy of going for 20-21 year old players hoping that they will appreciate in value at some stage and turn a profit was to the detriment of our short term goal of being competitive this season. So Webber has of course to shoulder some blame. But he's also done a hell of a lot of good for this club, and in reality we would be hard pressed to get anyone as good as him, let alone someone better. Acknowledge the mistakes but then move on and try to do better next summer.

Could we have made Emi stay here? In theory, I suppose the answer is yes. What would the outcome have been? Well we would have been unable to sign half a dozen of the players we did, and we'd have had an immensely unhappy player on our hands. Harry Kane is one of the best strikers on the planet. He was forced to stay at Spurs and has, as a result, contributed 3 goals this season. In reality, we had to let Emi go and we got good money for him. The issue is not Emi leaving, it's been the shocking way in which the money we got for him was spent.

Johnson clearly risks a vote of no confidence if he tries to push through greater restrictions dependent upon support from Labour votes. It literally could be the end of him. If the mood music is toward an even greater rebellion than the 100 or so MP's who rejected vaccine passports etc, then I think it's unlikely he would even seek to bring forward a vote on greater restrictions. As such, I think Boxing Day games will go ahead, Covid cases in playing staff permitting. There seems to be some discussion around postponing the 28th Dec round of fixtures simply to give players more recovery time given clubs are playing with reduced squad sizes. Will wait to see what happens with that.

If that were the only consideration then sure, fine. But lockdowns bring with them a huge number of problems. Economically of course but also in terms of domestic abuse, reduced availability of treatments for other medical conditions, mental health deficit. We were told the route out of all this was vaccination. The majority of people have done what was asked of them and there is increasingly a lack of appetite for further restrictions. The government is facing a situation where the majority of its MP's will oppose further restrictions, and they will only have a chance to get anything through with significant labour support. It's not a position that Bozo will want be in.

Actually getting new restrictions through the commons will be increasingly difficult from here. 100 tories rebelled just on vaccine passports.

I think they will be on, Covid cases at each club permitting. Fans will be allowed in. It is looking as though it will be very difficult for the government to get greater restrictions through the commons now, which don't forget is now closed for Xmas and would have to be recalled to vote on any proposed restrictions. But given 150-200 Tory MPs could vote against more restrictions it actually starts to look more difficult for further restrictions to get through. There is an increasing lack of appetite in parliament and in the country for more lockdowns etc. We've got our vaccines and are getting our boosters. Those were supposed to be the route out of all of this.

Ultimately the squad isn't good enough to stay in this league, whoever is in charge. The issue now is whether we've made it even more difficult for ourselves to come back up again from the Championship. We've gone away from a long-term mantra, we've sacked a guy who absolutely ruled the Championship, and we have half a dozen players who won't be here next season. On the face of it, it's going to be a lot more difficult to come back again this time.

I have a Boxing Day ticket available in the Lower Barclay for Arsenal. Please direct message me if interested, first come first served. Cheers

Absolutely. My point is not necessarily that Tzolis and Sargent will never be good enough. It is that, for this season, they are not at the level required to contribute sufficiently to a side staying up. On my point re. PL experience, I was only pointing out the fact that we signed very little of it. There are reasons why that is the case, the main one being our meagre budget by PL standards, which was also a point that I made. In some respects, it is the messaging that is the problem. Webber spun the signings as given Farke a few tanks and a bazooka. It was spun as a genuine effort to stay in this division. The reality is that we did not recruit players at the level required to stay in this division.