I see Forest are doing alright.

[cambridgeshire canary 4,714]

Much as there's a part of me that want's to try and be a little jealous and angry at the fact that Fulham, Brentford and Forest are proving all those who called them relegation fodder prior to the start of the season wrong while our last few times in the prem have just resulted in us being spanked, embarrassed and mocked by all nonstop I guess it's nice to see them do well, even more so for Fulham given that they did seem to be stuck in the same kind of 'yo-yo purgatory' that we seem to be stuck in.

Much as I hate saying it in a way it's nice to see them show us how it's done. And yes, season is stll not over and even if they stay up they could still go down next season like Sheffield United and Huddersfield and all but still. 

And no I won't say 'why arent we' this time

[The Real Buh 2,411]

What turned the tide for them seems to be backing their manager in the premier league

that and being secret billionaires

[Canary73 61]

Palace and downwards at the moment are in the mix for the drop which is almost half the league.....

[Christoph Stiepermann 856]

I always look at GD when trying to guess who's going to get relegated from that league. It's not always right but seems to correlate more often than not so I don't think Forest are safe yet. Southampton, Bournemouth then one of Wolves or Forest imo. It easy to mistake going on a good run for turning a corner as seen with us last year when we briefly got out of the relegation zone. I still see them having one of the weakest squads in the league and they're not out of trouble yet. 

[Midlands Yellow 2,727]

3 minutes ago, Christoph Stiepermann said:

I always look at GD when trying to guess who's going to get relegated from that league. It's not always right but seems to correlate more often than not so I don't think Forest are safe yet. Southampton, Bournemouth then one of Wolves or Forest imo. It easy to mistake going on a good run for turning a corner as seen with us last year when we briefly got out of the relegation zone. I still see them having one of the weakest squads in the league and they're not out of trouble yet. 

Forest will stay up at a canter. It took time to bed in those three dozen new players but there’s a lot of quality in that squad. They are making the City Ground a bit of a fortress of late. 

[Mason 47 874]

I disregard any notion of applauding Forest. If £200m is the buy-in for a vaguely competitive team at that level then the system is utterly broken. Fulham have probably spent similar accumulatively over the past 2 attempts and they look like they'll stay up finally.

Brighton and Brentford (though backed by incredible wealth) deserve more credit, but the cycle is always thus. Southampton were the Brighton of a few years ago, unearthing gems and taking on the big boys, until the vulture-isation of their assets reaches a tipping point as is happening this year.

Even now we're seeing previously established teams starting to run out of breath in the financial sprint. It isn't sustainable.

[Pyro Pete 1,123]

Forest have signed 30 new players since getting promoted.

That even makes Chelsea look complacent.

[Monty13 1,440]

Fulham have spent more than we could have too, but the main thing they’ve done over the last few years is keep hold of Mitrovic at all cost. They also appear to have been slowly moulding the squad to improve it over that time.

I can’t get excited by Forrest, everything wrong with football finances epitomised there.

[TheDarkKnight 205]

21 minutes ago, Pyro Pete said:

Forest have signed 30 new players since getting promoted.

That even makes Chelsea look complacent.

In fairness to Forest, they had a fair few amount of loan players to replace.

As far as Brentford go, they are severely punching above their weight. When Conte leaves Tottenham I can see them going for Thomas Frank (And he will take Aaron Hickey with him). Brentford will sink like a stone.

As far as Chelsea goes. Usually when a Portuguese team buys a foreign player, they slap a release clause on them (Sporting Lisbon put a £100m release clause on Ryan Gauld).

No one usually pays the release clause. Chelsea are idiots.

Edited February 5 by TheDarkKnight

[percy varco 117]

Oh dear. Any team promoted that does not spend like Forest will be acused of not being serious about the Premier League. 

[Google Bot 1,723]

Crazy when you look at the prem table and see it's only Forest, Brentford and Newcastle that have gone without a defeat in the past 5 games. 

Brentford have taken 13 pts from their last 15.... It's an incredible achievement.

[Kenny Foggo 894]

You have to.invest to have a chance to stay in the Premier league hence the huge TV money. Its why I really don't want to go up with our current owners, Ward and Webber.

They are not up to it or have the finance to at least give ourselves a chance.

[Duncan Edwards 1,555]

29 minutes ago, Kenny Foggo said:

You have to.invest to have a chance to stay in the Premier league hence the huge TV money. Its why I really don't want to go up with our current owners, Ward and Webber.

They are not up to it or have the finance to at least give ourselves a chance.

So you’d rather we failed in the championship so we don’t fail in the Premier League? No ambishun, buh!

We’re surely not going to be anywhere near promotion this season but should we make the play offs and spawn it, nobody is turning it down, right? 

[sgncfc 1,046]

Still too early to call for Forest but signing Navas may well keep them up, and they seem to have a bit of luck going for them at the moment. 

If they and Fulham do stay up it means that Bournemouth, Southampton and one of the bigger boys are coming down, which won't make next season any easier. We should hope for a Forest meltdown.

[Capt. Pants 2,561]

1 hour ago, sgncfc said:

Still too early to call for Forest but signing Navas may well keep them up, and they seem to have a bit of luck going for them at the moment. 

If they and Fulham do stay up it means that Bournemouth, Southampton and one of the bigger boys are coming down, which won't make next season any easier. We should hope for a Forest meltdown.

Fulham are safe, they've already got 32 points.

You can add West Ham to the mix. So many twists and turns in the EPL this season, really difficult to call who will come down.

[aBee 76]

On 05/02/2023 at 20:19, TheDarkKnight said:

In fairness to Forest, they had a fair few amount of loan players to replace.

As far as Brentford go, they are severely punching above their weight. When Conte leaves Tottenham I can see them going for Thomas Frank (And he will take Aaron Hickey with him). Brentford will sink like a stone.

As far as Chelsea goes. Usually when a Portuguese team buys a foreign player, they slap a release clause on them (Sporting Lisbon put a £100m release clause on Ryan Gauld).

No one usually pays the release clause. Chelsea are idiots.

Frank would be a better fit for Liverpool and I’d be more worried about him persuading them to buy Christian Nørgaard. 
 

Norgaard himself said something apposite to Norwich this week:

“There’s a lot of evidence that shows that the teams that try to practice the same football they did in the Championship in the Premier League go straight back down again.“

 

[TheDarkKnight 205]

11 hours ago, aBee said:

Frank would be a better fit for Liverpool and I’d be more worried about him persuading them to buy Christian Nørgaard. 
 

Norgaard himself said something apposite to Norwich this week:

“There’s a lot of evidence that shows that the teams that try to practice the same football they did in the Championship in the Premier League go straight back down again.“

 

True. Klopp lite.

It'll be interesting to see where Frank goes next. Man City might be his next port of call, because I can't see Pep staying after the latest debacle. Doubt they'll be sent down the leagues, though.

Yeah. Plus there has to be major investment in order to adjust.

[Thirsty Lizard 2,623]

11 hours ago, aBee said:

Frank would be a better fit for Liverpool and I’d be more worried about him persuading them to buy Christian Nørgaard. 
 

Norgaard himself said something apposite to Norwich this week:

“There’s a lot of evidence that shows that the teams that try to practice the same football they did in the Championship in the Premier League go straight back down again.“

 

In the Premier League last season we made a conscious effort to change the type of football that we played. It didn't work. 

[aBee 76]

17 hours ago, TheDarkKnight said:

True. Klopp lite.

It'll be interesting to see where Frank goes next. Man City might be his next port of call, because I can't see Pep staying after the latest debacle. Doubt they'll be sent down the leagues, though.

Yeah. Plus there has to be major investment in order to adjust.

If he’s in the running for Liverpool or City next I’m licking my lips at the remainder of Frank’s time at Brentford as it’ll make memories that’ll take the edge off the relegation that you think would inevitably follow his departure! It’s a long way from our last two poached managers going to Villa and Wigan! And even further from the horrorshow in the nether reaches of L2 under Terry Butcher just over 15 years ago. 

[aBee 76]

16 hours ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

In the Premier League last season we made a conscious effort to change the type of football that we played. It didn't work. 

It does need a manager who believes in the change and is capable of coaching it as well as a squad who can execute it. 

[TheDarkKnight 205]

46 minutes ago, aBee said:

If he’s in the running for Liverpool or City next I’m licking my lips at the remainder of Frank’s time at Brentford as it’ll make memories that’ll take the edge off the relegation that you think would inevitably follow his departure! It’s a long way from our last two poached managers going to Villa and Wigan! And even further from the horrorshow in the nether reaches of L2 under Terry Butcher just over 15 years ago. 

It's a tricky one.

In any other scenario, and Man City weren't in the curren pickly they find themselves in, and Pep left, they'd probably go for a manager who had trophies on hid CV. But with things as they are, i think they'd take a gamble.

I think Klopp has too much good will in the bank to be fired, but this is football, you never know. Look what happened to Tuchel.

[Thirsty Lizard 2,623]

8 hours ago, aBee said:

It does need a manager who believes in the change and is capable of coaching it as well as a squad who can execute it. 

Ah - I see - seems that we failed on all three points.  

[chicken 2,179]

On 05/02/2023 at 20:19, TheDarkKnight said:

In fairness to Forest, they had a fair few amount of loan players to replace.

As far as Brentford go, they are severely punching above their weight. When Conte leaves Tottenham I can see them going for Thomas Frank (And he will take Aaron Hickey with him). Brentford will sink like a stone.

As far as Chelsea goes. Usually when a Portuguese team buys a foreign player, they slap a release clause on them (Sporting Lisbon put a £100m release clause on Ryan Gauld).

No one usually pays the release clause. Chelsea are idiots.

Nope.

They still had to pay those loan fees and wages. Loaning those players gained them promotion. Interestingly, they didn't sign all of those on loan - which I seem to remember Villa did.

So what they did, essentially, was a low cost, low risk gamble on promotion then total refreshed the squad. Lets also not forget that they are paying Lingard something like £200k per week.

This in fairness rubbish isn't. If you compare it to us on promotion, ignoring the contentious sale of Buendia, we also had to overhaul our squad due to age, no longer needed etc, Tettey, Trybull, Klose, Leitner, Vrancic etc.

No one gets a pass or excuse - they haven't just signed 6 players to replace the loanees they didn't want after promotion. They've signed over a squad's worth of players. The are literally chucking cash at it until it sticks. Cash-ball. It feels more like Noel Edmunds has them running around in a Perspex box in crinkly bottom grabbing the money for player purchases.

[chicken 2,179]

10 hours ago, aBee said:

It does need a manager who believes in the change and is capable of coaching it as well as a squad who can execute it. 

I think as a general rule, teams that have tried to purely buy premier league survival have failed, at least at the first bite of the cherry.

If you look at teams that stay up the first season, they tend to have a very well organised, well drilled and capable core of players in and around the ideal age - 26-30ish. Brighton, Leeds, and Brentford are the obvious ones at the moment, but Shef Utd managed for a season, Leicester did it.

Villa are a funny one as they sort of did both. They bought the majority of the players they had loaned and helped them to promotion.

Bournemouth prior to relegation were almost the evidence of both, signing multiple players who made little or not impact on their first team leaving the tried and tested players still performing. Afobe and Grabban being too great examples of that. They threw money at it and it rarely seemed to work for them.

[TheDarkKnight 205]

1 hour ago, chicken said:

Nope.

They still had to pay those loan fees and wages. Loaning those players gained them promotion. Interestingly, they didn't sign all of those on loan - which I seem to remember Villa did.

So what they did, essentially, was a low cost, low risk gamble on promotion then total refreshed the squad. Lets also not forget that they are paying Lingard something like £200k per week.

This in fairness rubbish isn't. If you compare it to us on promotion, ignoring the contentious sale of Buendia, we also had to overhaul our squad due to age, no longer needed etc, Tettey, Trybull, Klose, Leitner, Vrancic etc.

No one gets a pass or excuse - they haven't just signed 6 players to replace the loanees they didn't want after promotion. They've signed over a squad's worth of players. The are literally chucking cash at it until it sticks. Cash-ball. It feels more like Noel Edmunds has them running around in a Perspex box in crinkly bottom grabbing the money for player purchases.

True, but they haven't broken any rules.

They've went in this direction, if next season they're still an EPL club, they've succeeded.

There's no rule to say that they can't do what they've done.

22/23 Nottingham Forest's net spending is -£157m. In the same time Chelsea's net spending is -£482m.

Not even going to bring Manchester City into the conversation.

[aBee 76]

9 hours ago, TheDarkKnight said:

True, but they haven't broken any rules.

They've went in this direction, if next season they're still an EPL club, they've succeeded.

There's no rule to say that they can't do what they've done.

22/23 Nottingham Forest's net spending is -£157m. In the same time Chelsea's net spending is -£482m.

Not even going to bring Manchester City into the conversation.

They’ll believe it money well spent if they stay up as looks likely now and they have the ideal manager to sift, sort and optimise a random squad. I expect they’ll ship out the ones who don’t make it and keep buying. Their treatment of O’Brien probably means they won’t have much joy buying from the Championship. Their strategy if they have one is like the one Watford did well on for a while, including having an European team to shuffle to/from but with the sensible tweak of not adding the manager role to the merrygoround. I do hope they go down soon though as it’s not a very sustainable model. 

[Barham Blitz 206]

On 07/02/2023 at 09:16, aBee said:

Frank would be a better fit for Liverpool and I’d be more worried about him persuading them to buy Christian Nørgaard. 
 

Norgaard himself said something apposite to Norwich this week:

“There’s a lot of evidence that shows that the teams that try to practice the same football they did in the Championship in the Premier League go straight back down again.“

 

As presumably you've see a lot more of Brentford than the rest of us, IYO how have things been tactically tweaked between the Championship and the Premiership ?

Genuine question as from the little bits I've seen (essentially MotD so possibly subject to the whims of a BBC editor !) it is maybe a little more vertical than was the case in the Champs but you still seem to largely be playing pretty decent possession based stuff.  Has there been a trend in the types of player you've replaced / brought in ?

[aBee 76]

2 hours ago, Barham Blitz said:

As presumably you've see a lot more of Brentford than the rest of us, IYO how have things been tactically tweaked between the Championship and the Premiership ?

Genuine question as from the little bits I've seen (essentially MotD so possibly subject to the whims of a BBC editor !) it is maybe a little more vertical than was the case in the Champs but you still seem to largely be playing pretty decent possession based stuff.  Has there been a trend in the types of player you've replaced / brought in ?

We’ve moved to being a lot less reliant on possession. In fact this season one of our “problems” has been in games against weaker teams where we’ve had a lot of possession and not been able to create enough to convert that to goals (eg against Wolves and Everton at home we ended up with draws and my son remarked that our 2-0 against Bournemouth was one of the least exciting or eventful games he’d seen!). 
 

But that is an evolution from last season where we changed from the Championship to becoming much more focused on pressing from the front than was needed before and accepting that most opponents would have better players and be more ruthless in exploiting errors. So we invested in defending and having power and pace going forward. Last season’s three signings were Ajer (CB), Onyeka (combative CM) and Wissa (nippy forward with great finishing). We worked on set pieces and using our CBs to bully opponents in attacking corners. The ethos was to make opponents have to work very hard to win, which is why aside from a meek 4-1 loss at Southampton we had no really heavy defeats. I remember on here someone wisely saying you get the same points for 0-1 as 0-7 but I know which of those against say Man City is preferable in terms of confidence in set up!

This season we’ve worked very hard on having the flexibility to play 532 with a disciplined low block that turns to fast counterattacking in numbers against teams who’ll restrict us to the 20-30% possession we got beating City, Man U and Liverpool (aggregate 9-2!). We go 433 more against the weaker teams as we did in the Championship and late last season with Eriksen in the team but that’s still a work in progress. I would expect us to play 433 more generally after Toney’s sold and when we’ll have less power but more pace and movement up front. This season we’ve invested heavily in flexible forwards/attacking midfielders (Lewis Potter, Damsgaard, Schade) none of whom have had a lot of minutes yet. 
 

12 of the 16 who played in the 3-1 win over Liverpool were with us in the Championship and I think all but one of them were in the squad for the play off final defeat in 19-20. So the recruitment has been long term with players bought on the basis of being capable of stepping up after a season or two. Probably our best player this season has been Jensen who was very much the fans boo boy for most of the last 4 years but has turned into our new Eriksen (and has outscored Eriksen statistically) but combined with also now being our top presser.
 

There’s been a huge emphasis on fitness and work rate- after we beat Man U 4-0 ten Hag was so annoyed by Brentford having run 13.5km further than them that he brought the first team in on their Sunday rest day to run that distance and make the point about what they had to be up to (they’ve done rather well since). 
 

The other thing is not a change but a continuation. When getting promoted you believe you can beat anyone. But don’t need to think about it too much because it’s just a thing you do naturally by being obviously superior (we had to have a bit of it just because of the need to focus on positivity to win the play offs for the first time ever and after losing the year before). Personally, regardless of anything else, I thought Farke’s effective admission before a ball was kicked that you had no chance against the nasty run of top teams you started against was the wrong mindset change and potentially ruined your chances. Most didn’t fancy our chances first game against Arsenal (fans I had a drink with before the match all agreed a draw or even a plucky narrow defeat would be good). But the manager and players were up for a win. And still are. Our last defeat was an absolute nightmare 4-0 at Villa in late October but they didn’t let it knock them. 
 

So don’t be too downhearted about losing to Burnley. They look like they’ll do well next season. It doesn’t mean you and your players are rubbish. I remember Wagner at Huddersfield. We beat them 5-1 on the last day of his first half season then first game of the next season lost 2-1 and they were very different and went on to promotion. 

[chicken 2,179]

18 hours ago, TheDarkKnight said:

True, but they haven't broken any rules.

They've went in this direction, if next season they're still an EPL club, they've succeeded.

There's no rule to say that they can't do what they've done.

22/23 Nottingham Forest's net spending is -£157m. In the same time Chelsea's net spending is -£482m.

Not even going to bring Manchester City into the conversation.

How they've not broken any rules yet I am not sure. I think that says more about the state of play of FFP more than anything else. This is exactly the sort of thing it said it would prevent - but clearly hasn't. And judging by the speed in which things move, I wouldn't hold your breath in saying "they haven't broken any rules".

In any case, I was mostly pointing out your "in fairness" comment. No "in fairness" about it. They would have spent this money whether they owned those loan players or not, to suggest otherwise is daft. Like I said, they've signed enough players now to be starting to replace the players they signed last summer to replace those loans and the others.

I only ever hope bad things happens to clubs like that. I will love it if Man City are hit with huge consequences, but they won't be. 

[AJ 1,000]

On 05/02/2023 at 16:41, The Real Buh said:

What turned the tide for them seems to be backing their manager in the premier league

that and being secret billionaires

I actually applaud the fact they've stuck with their manager, spending all that money and still doing a bit rubbish at the start of the season, other teams like Watford and Wolves would happily have culled the manager. They've definitely spent their way out of trouble though, 28 new signings is absolutely ridiculous 

Edited February 9 by AJ