The Great Mass Debater

Not be Webber?

So what are you saying the club could have done better on? If it's not sacking him after that free-hit Premiership cash-grab, the club bounced back and got promoted again winning the league and breaking a record I believe, so Im not sure how the club paid the price then. If you're suggesting we should have sacked Farke before the end of that season, well, we tried that 11 games in with Smith and that was catastrophic. And he had £60m of new players to work with, which any mid-season replacement for Farke wouldnt have had - they'd have had the same bunch of kids and 3rd tier German players Farke had. So Im not sure how the club is paying a heavy price due to Farke? Run me through your thinking here

The loyalty to Wagner, who has achieved nothing at the club, makes it even more baffling that Farke, a man who had achieved plenty at the club was shown so little. What has Wagner done to justify the faith that was not shown to others?

That was certainly objectively a nicer kit. But Im a purist!

Efan Ekoku's revelation that he hated the bird **** kit. What about you?

Its Wagner!!!

Wagner has said Placheta's future is as a left back. Placheta's coaches in Poland said they also saw his future at left back. He's not good enough to be a winger. Perhaps a little like Elliott Bennett who I always thought would have been better utilised as a fullback

Considering the manner in which Farke was sacked, after a win should Wagner be feeling more nervous??

Might there be an argument that the club does not possess the coaching talent to help Rowe with that? So make up for his inexperience - ie teach him how to adapt and progress?

While we're at it, does anyone know what the club see in Idah? Im not sure on what his long contract was based on

Anyone understand why Barnes seemingly raves about Sargent? Just being a good teammate and trying to get his confidence up or has Barnes clearly seen something? Because every time I've seen him play he was

No. Wagner should be getting results now. Transition period is well and truly over. This is his team and his tactics, and it's not going very well. I cant see him turning it round like the famous Mark Robins goal saving SAF from the chop before he could get going. Wagner is toast I think. They've only stuck with him because of the transition of power. Now is not the time to change the manager from their point of view, irrespective of how poorly he is doing. Wagner is essentially a dunsel at this point. Back to the Farke thing. The question I have for most is - do you give Farke a pass for his first Premier League season? We knew the team needed strengthening after a surprise promotion achieved with German 3rd tier players and kids. But there was no investment. Byram being our only fee for £350,000 I believe. If we accept Farke was sent to war with no weaponry for that season, and it was treated like a free hit is his should his prior Premier League record be disregarded, given the hopeless position he was put in. I think it should, and probably so did the club hence not sacking him - they agreed it wasnt his fault. So if we disregard that season, Farke truly genuinely sacked off the back of 11 games. We have lost 8 of our last 10 games - and yet Wagner is still here. So my question is - why is a man with no credit in the bank shown more faith than a man who had oodles? That's why I believe Farke was treated poorly. If you feel he should be judged by his Premier League record as a whole then fair enough, it was awful. But the club clearly felt Farke was mismanaging a squad full of diamonds. We now know that he wasnt. He was given a bunch of duds. Farke was the one who paid the price for it, when really it should have been whomever was responsible for recruitment. Being priced out of the Ajer signing for example, by Brentford - a club we should be able to go toe to toe with. He proved to be a good signing for them and may illustrate that with more ambition we could have got first choices over the line, instead of wasting the money where we did. If I was Farke and my job that season was on the line, I would have been hopping mad that 10.5m of my warchest was splurged on one for the future (Tzolis). That money would have been far better spent on increasing our offers for targets we were outbid on to get them over the line.

Anyone able to explain why Rowe has gone from free-scoring to, well, not? Has something changed or has he merely seen the end of his purple patch?

I suppose it comes down to who you blame for that relegation. We'd been somewhat of a surprise package winning the Championship, certainly the season before there were few signs of what was about to come. Indeed I thought Webber was a one-trick pony and had simply tried to do with Farke what he had done with Wagner at Huddersfield by raiding Borussia Dortmand 2 again. Certainly after Farke's first season I thought he was a pound-shop Wagner. Like booking Embrace when you couldnt get Oasis. Yet Wagner looks far from the real deal at the moment. It's very unlikely he will survive this and is a dead man walking. But is Farke to blame for that relegation? Liverpool was men against boys. We believed in Farke and the kids, indeed we had more shots at Anfield than any opposing team in the previous 2 years I believe. Just a false start we hoped and when Pukki scored his hat-trick against Newcastle it looked like we were going to ride the momentum like many a team in their first Premier League season (Sheff Utd and Reading come to mind). Neutral fans loved us in the beginning like they had with Swansea - our approach was commended and we were being talked of as potentially being the best team ever to go down. But then the bubble burst. Ultimately the surprise promotion saw the club take a 'free hit' approach, cop the money and parachute payments and provide a secure foundation for the club going forward, with the plan to bounce back by being ready to hit the Championship again running. This is what also saw us become hated by the neutral who saw us as cynical money-grabbers with no ambition to have an authentic attempt at staying up. Farke was sacrificed because the club had faith in the players they had recruited, and not the manager. Their intonation was that Farke was a nearly man who was squandering genuine quality (the bazookas), and a new manager would stop them underperforming. We now know those players were duds, not world beaters, and that Webber's recruitment has been consistently poor. So when Farke wasnt able to keep the team up with some kids and some players plucked from the German third tier, and then given duds on our return after having his best and key player Emi sold out from under him - who do you hold responsible for the poor start. Given what we now know about the quality of the players he was working with? I mean Smith didnt get anything out of that group. Sargent, Rashica and Tzolis were all awful recruits. As was Billy Gilmour. It was as if the club learned nothing form the RVW and Naismith signings. So I dont hold Farke responsible for that relegation. Nor do I hold Smith accountable. The failing is of the club and its approach as a whole - but they made Farke the fall guy, the scape goat, the patsy. It will be interesting to see how he fares at Leeds.

I havent watched us this season. Rather fallen out of love with football as a whole and decided to take a break from actively following football. From my perspective Wagner had a good start and it seemed like all was going to be rosy as his philosophy had been embedded with a good pre-season and Wagner now had the types of players he wanted for his system. Then came the slump. It was said of Bielsa that his teams, like Wagner's, needed the right players to cope with the demands of the system, and that ultimately his teams collapse and run out of steam, somewhat of an inevitibility about the final destination of his tenures. So is this what has happened with Wagner? A promising start being merely a false dawn as his tactics are fundamentally flawed? That it was only a matter of time before teams worked out how to exploit the weaknesses in the system - the idea of a manager getting 'found out'. Or does he not have the players? Farke didnt have the players at Premier League level to make his type of football work. Great in the Championship but not feasible in the Premier League without the calibre of player to make it work. So are Wagner's tactics sound but he doesnt have the right players for it? It is notable that the slump started when we lost Barnes and Sargent. If they had been available, might things have been different? Or has Wagner been given lemons again and this is merely showing through? Its an honest question because I genuinely dont know and this is me asking people who have actually been watching the football. Wagner does have a record. Not only did he get Huddersfield promoted, he also kept them up. So he has had a level of success in English football, that we were clearly hoping he could replicate here. So he is not a busted flush. What is the difference between his success at Huddersfield and how it is going here? Presumably he had the same philosophy at Huddersfield. Why isnt it proving successful with us? Did he have players that were able to make his tactics work when at Huddersfield?