Football

The managers linked so far:

Paolo Fonseca
Roberto Martínez
Frank Lampard
Lucien Favre
Steven Gerrard
Eddie Howe

A club in a relegation battle, and the only two managers with more than a season's experience managing in the PL have both been relegated.

I'd love to see them stuck trying to get out of the Championship for a few years.

Now this is a proper goal @cozey

https://twitter.com/efl/status/1450788177447374854?s=21

keeper committed himself good and early in that clip

3 * 15 mins
Game 1 0-4 😔
Game 2 1-1 😁
Game 3 1-2 😬

It was hard watching, it's hard explaining how to take up space and where to be. But I think we got there. One of our midfielders is really skilled. Some really great adventurous passing. One of our defenders has really grown in confidence and was really switched on all the time.

Paternal review: MJ was lost on the wing for a bit, she does take up good positions. Moved her into the middle for a bit. Wasn't great but kept plugging away. Moved to the back and was actually very good. No one got goal side, shoving her forward around. And then.
We're getting pushed back. She receives the ball on the edge of the box, there's oncoming defenders, a touch to control it and a simple square pass inside. Freeing the midfielder to run it out.

"All day long" was my embarrassing shout of pride.

Love it. Watching my son play is an absolute joy for me.

Sounds like a win to me, despite the actual scorelines.

Brilliant. Sound like real progression in the games.
"all day long" 😂⚽👍

Thanks for the update. Sounds like you’re going in the right direction. At this age they say learning the right things is more important than the result.

Rate Martinez as a keeper but he’s been chatting it of late and riling opposition for club/country so good to see him shipping a few and crowds trolling him.

And ‘Grealish money well spent’...that line can get to fuck. Buendia and Ings were woeful last night-El Ghazi is much better. Special mention for Watkins. Does nothing, ott hype.

Villa’s goal though...top bins!

Very strange day at the hawthorns so far…

Kick off delayed by 15 mins for a medical emergency with an Albion fan.

10 min delay for a Bristol city head injury (stretched off).

Now a Bristol city fan medical emergency so second half delayed.

Hope all concerned are ok but they’re still working on the Bristol city fan…

🤞🏻

Bristol city fans now singing “I’m city ‘til i die” which seems a poor choice of song.

Bloke is being carried out but looks like he might be ok.

Everton reminding us that they’re one of the big six

And they would've won the European Cup that year if Gary hadn't joined Spurs and English teams hadn't been banned and blah blah, ad nauseum... 😴

Felt sorry for Norwich watching the game last night, that wasn't pretty...

Striker who didn’t score in 5 months on loan with us bagging a hattrick against us for one of the worst teams in the league is truly peak Everton.

I did see this and think it looked like your mate who's not that good at football.

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To be fair to him, he was really unlucky not to score in his time with us. Did a lot of things right, miles better than Rondon has been.

a great day out at the home of the European champions yesterday. I went to the Malmo game on Wednesday too. 11 goals in 4 days was a good return.

Norwich were very poor but you can only play ...cliche etc.

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Felt sorry for Norwich watching the game last night, that wasn't pretty...

It's difficult to feel sorry for them with that business model - get relegated, pocket parachute payments, spend just enough to get promoted, buy nobody, be shit, get relegated, pocket parachute payments, rinse and repeat.

2 good games to go to. Poor Norwich they are doomed

Even harder for Norwich when you can’t play the one shining light player you have.

That was a quality finish though. I saw he'd sent Pickford the wrong way but I didn't know he'd pointed!

Yeah I haven't actually seen the goal yet. Just photo didn't look that flattering!

It's difficult to feel sorry for them with that business model - get relegated, pocket parachute payments, spend just enough to get promoted, buy nobody, be shit, get relegated, pocket parachute payments, rinse and repeat.

If it's any consolation it's not a model the fanbase are fully warmed to...genuinely thought this season would be different after the shambles of the previous season following Project Restart.

Then we sold Buendia before the season started. And then had 14 out of our 27 players catch Covid. And then failed to get in the signings we were really after (inc. Ajer and Billing - we did spend over £50m though, £35m of which came from the Buendia sale). And then found out Skipp wasn't coming back so ended up signing alternatives later than necessary.

We've brought in Gilmour and don't play him (when we did at the start it was in a brand new 4-3-3 formation with him being asked to defend too much), and we've managed to ostracise Cantwell over something that's going on off the pitch - all after abandoning our attacking 'Farkeball' approach the opening four games against Liverpool, Man City, Leicester and Arsenal and then failing to beat Watford...we went for nine defensive players which strangled our attack, we got two 0-0s and then tonked at Stamford Bridge in an embarrassing display (as was the 5-0 at Man City to be honest).

Off the pitch we also managed to mess up our main sponsorship deal and lost them (BK8) weeks before the season started so had to scramble to get Lotus in, which led to our COO falling on his sword, and have also lost our Head of Recruitment amongst a few other departures. Apart from that, it's all fine!

All joking aside, something's not right at the club and it comes from the top - Delia and Michael can't afford to run a football club, so have set us on this 'self sustainable' path that only works by doing what the press are now rightly calling us out on...it's infuriating!

On top of everything, our Director of Football's due to be off at the end of the season having publicly said he wouldn't extend his contract which surely doesn't help the club with any planning - we're becoming a laughing stock and it's not a nice feeling at all...!

Well United getting torn to shreds Liverpool not even breaking sweat. Taxi for ole

Gary Partridge's summarising is very amusing..