ThunderPower_14

Agree that O'Neill seemed like an inspired choice at the time, and we played some great football under him with a very exciting team. Obviously Randy wasn't a football person and as such put a lot of trust in O'Neill, which O'Neill pissed up the wall with his inflated contracts for poor players. What could Randy have really done? You have to back your manager and his decisions all the way. Unfortunately by the time Randy realised that maybe MON wasn't making great decisions in regards to transfers and contracts, it was too late to fix it quickly. What could have been done to avoid the situation? A Director of Football type appointment overseeing MON? Would MON have agreed to that? Randy having a bit more input with transfers and contracts? Would MON have agreed to that? It seemed like as soon as Randy questioned anything O'Neill was doing, he was off, so you'd have to say that he probably wouldn't have agreed to any less autonomy. I don't really blame Randy for what happened under O'Neill. He backed his manager which is the right thing to do, he just unfortunately didn't realise how bad it had gotten until it was way too late. But once that had happened, it was Randy's responsibility to pick up the pieces, and the way he's done it can definitely be criticised. Not a lot of stability, some questionable appointments, and probably worst of all a CEO who wasn't very good at his job. When we needed leadership at the top, we had an absentee owner and a CEO who wasn't a football guy, and it showed. 2010 was the time to poach someone like Tom Fox. Late 2014 is too late. Randy needed to recognise that clearly there had been some bad decisions made due to a lack of accountability with MON and ensure that that didn't happen again. We really needed to get the right people in place running the club asap following the MON crisis and instead we faffed around for a few years under austerity measures while our squad deteriorated and much smaller football clubs caught up and overtook us. And now, we appear to have gotten the huge wage bill monkey off of our backs, and we are totally rudderless moving forward until a buyer can be found. Make no mistake, if we are lucky enough to fluke the points to stay up this season, things will need to change dramatically if we are to stay up the following season. We're as good as down this year or next on our current path, and the way the club is currently being run, we're much more likely to do a Leeds than a Newcastle. Randy wont be getting 150 million pounds for a Championship club if he can't get it for a Premiership club. We need a definite, noticeable change in strategy and we need it before the next transfer window opens. Whether that comes with new owners or a new manager or what, it doesn't really matter at this point. We just need to start swinging haymakers.

That's all really hopeful but it was all really hopeful in the offseason where we apparently had investors from all over the world lining up. Hopefully someone can see the potential we have as historically one of the bigger clubs in England as well as the relatively low cost of entry. They'll have to spend a bit of money when they get here but it's all about running the club well.

This but it's usually a lofted throughball over the top leaving them wide open despite me having switched to 5 at the back with 3 defensive mids to protect my lead. Maybe I need to put a sweeper in that formation I had a game last night against Liverpool that was 3-3 at half time with 4 of those goals being score directly from kickoffs in the 45th minute. I won 4-3.

I'd also suggest that other clubs need less of a cultural change to be competitive. We are just ratshit at every level of the club at the moment. You'd have to clear just about every member of the backroom staff out and do a huge assessment on the squad before clearing out lots of players. It's a massive task that would take years. We are a restoration project and in football that basically means a bottomless money pit for the first few years. Compare that to a club like Swansea, West Ham or Southampton or even **** West Brom who are already pretty well run and the difference is massive. I read yesterday that West Ham were getting Umbro as a kit supplier from next season, had a look at their squad, their manager and their position on the table and found myself feeling really jealous of West Ham. West Ham for **** sake. What a **** disgrace.

I've just gotten into the Premier League with my club and i'm finding the classic AI issue that FIFA has, which is that instead of making a good team really brilliant tactically, your players just forget how to play football against them. After 4 seasons with a fairly similar setup team going up through the leagues, I know where my players should be, but if i'm playing Chelsea or Liverpool, suddenly none of my players want to make a run, i'll dribble up the wing and cut through only to find that my strikers are still jogging up from the halfway line with nobody on them. Same in defence, you'll be marking a winger as he brings the ball up, and he'll try to cut around you but you'll contain him for 4 or 5 seconds before he passes out, and suddenly they've got 4 blokes unmarked in your box. Frustrating.

We're financially outpaced by the likes of Swansea, Southampton and West Brom. How does that even happen from the base level of 3 consecutive 6th placed finishes? Why can Spurs and Everton go from strength to strength while we have been lucky to avoid relegation for the past 3 seasons? We've been absolutely run into the ground. If we go down we'll be more likely to do a Leeds than Newcastle, because we just wont invest the sort of money required to get back up. I want Lambert out but while we continue to be run so poorly and fail to compete financially with even our relegation rivals, changing the manager at this stage would be like shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic.

As others have said, I can handle losing those 4 games on the trot against tough teams You know what, I can even handle a shit loss to QPR. What I can't handle is our total inability to get anywhere near scoring. 0-13 and very rarely looking dangerous in 450 minutes of football is not acceptable.

I have absolutely no interest in FUT but i'm quite enjoying the career mode on this. The scouting system is much better than what they had in FIFA 13, which is the last one I played. None of the league 2 sides tickled my fancy so I used the creation centre to make my own club (as I still only have a PS3 and can do so) and i've worked my way up to the championship over a few seasons. I sim about half the games.

As others have said, if we're blaming the lack of Delph for not having a decent chance to score in 5 games, we're in big trouble. You have to be more resilient than that if you want to last in the Premier League. Honestly i'd rather we throw everything forward for 90 minutes and try to play Benteke into form. If we concede we concede. Something tactically has to change.

I believe Lambert is better than McLeish, but if that's the bar we're setting we may as well forfeit the rest of the season and prepare for the championship. I'll begrudgingly accept 4 consecutive defeats against that sort of quality of opposition. What I wont accept is the total lack of any threat at all going forward. I'm at the point where i'd rather we just go longball, get Gabby to play like he did when he was in his early 20s and win us some corners, and just spend every training session working on set pieces. I have no idea where the goals are coming from. A fit Benteke can finish but we've got to sort out the two passes before the finish yet.

Love the club, hate everyone currently involved with it. We're not just losing, we're losing playing boring, uninspired football where we just faff about until we inevitably **** up and concede. Any goal we score is basically a fluke

**** off

We've hit like 5000 crosses and not one has gotten close to a striker.

Get ****. We've been all over them and that happens.

I'm on the board. Vale Gough Whitlam

So this is totally dead now, right?

There is a good chance that this is a bindunne but it's pretty amazing

I think I would make an effort to follow the WWE again if Cena turned heel. FFS even Hogan turned heel eventually.

Muppet's Christmas Carol is pretty excellent

Yeah look I totally agree. It's total bullshit that clubs like Man City and Chelsea get into the Champions League every year because of their "world class players" and "great league performances" over a former European Cup winning giant in Aston Villa simply because Aston Villa have been mismanaged for 3 decades. Can't wait to host Red Star Belgrade at Villa Park in next year's Champions League.

I want this sort of thing to happen more often

I really have no strong feelings one way or the other on Orton. I really liked him as the legend killer when he was beating up old guys, I thought that was hilarious, but he's been boring since. That said, I laughed my ass off at that video. It would have been funnier with a WCW era DDP though.

No Australian films? um The Castle? Wolf Creek is pretty good but not top 10 good

I can't do 10. I'll just do a clear cut few Pan's Labyrinth Star Wars: A New Hope Baseketball Mallrats Wayne's World

Absolutely brilliant.