rjshare

agreed. i think if you are basing it on what the club have said then the criteria are: prem experience, and a willingness to continue taking the club in its current direction - and that means with a certain level of financial constraint and a priority on bringing players through from the academy. it can only be moyes...

if he didnt have prem experience it sounds like they wouldnt be considering him the right man.

"Safe" equates to boring in my eyes, a 'Curbishly' if you like. Will never win anything, but will never get relagated either, Brilliant were going to be Everton. Give me a bit of a rollercoaster anyday. Bring on Maradonna haha!! yep - its exactly what i am talking about. ever since lerner took over the talk has always involved buzz words like "sustainability", "steady-growth", "long term improvement". it translates to minimum-risk, calculated investment with consistency being the main aim, not flashy publicity stunts designed to grab headlines for a few weeks. look at our signings - we signed stuart downing, but never once made a move to get beckham on loan. it isnt suddenly going to change.

i think the 'prem league experience' thing is more just a veiled way of saying thanks but no thanks to kmac. i will be very surprised to he honest if we do appoint someone has never managed in the prem before because although there have been some truly great managers come straight in and been fantastic (wenger, mourinho etc) we arent in a position to get someone of that caliber and neither are we in a position to really take a big gamble on someone. i know its a bit of an uninspiring thought, but i really think that it will be someone probably decent, but also more than likely someone "safe".

Young need to stop his **** moaning and attitude problem whilst on the pitch, that a long with diving before he can start thinking he is billy big bollocks. and maybe hit a dead ball that doesnt clear the crossbar by several storeys.

and yet ANOTHER w9nk free kick from young... ...kmacs fault no doubt.

its exactly what i thought - he'll play at a good level, but imo it wont be sufficiently high to ever play regularly for us - see gardner, ridgewell, samuel for other examples!

its never going to be easy is it though going to an away game in europe on a weekday evening???

the good thing (if you can call it that) about delph is that we dont desperately need him back so we can afford to give him as much time as he needs before trying to play again. obviously it will be great to have him back in contention to play but as things stand we do have fairly good cover in the middle of the park.

This for me. If/when a new manager arrives he will have 25 (more or less) new players he might like/not like, not just Ireland. And if Ireland had been wrapped up a week earlier, would it really have made any difference? Could Ireland's transfer, made at a time without a manager, be a big hint that MacDonald is a serious contender for the job? Surely Lerner would have asked MacDonald whether he would fit into the team/squad. perhaps - but the whole deal was set in motion when mon was still here so it had already had one well respected endorsement. as you say it could suggest that kmac is in line for the job - it might also indicate that whatever kmac thinks, lerner thinks it is a good deal - and kmac will be back coaching the reserves next week anyway.

The only financial reasons as to why we sold Barry and why we have pretty much sold Milner are that Man City can pay them ridiculous wages. Both players wanted to leave. Simple as that. If O'Neill couldn't accept that fact then he was in the wrong job. what mon hasnt got to grips with is that although he hates seeing his players go to clubs who pay more wages than his club - none of the clubs who pay the highest wages want him as manager

i can see entirely why you feel concerned by the deal, but i think you have to look at it as being an exception due to exceptional circumstances rather than a new club policy regarding transfer dealings. if it all goes t1Ts up then its randys money that randy has wasted by buying a player that turned out to be a bad egg. however - randy trusted mons judgement for four years and if mon was happy to be bringing ireland in then i guess randy must think he will be a good aquisition. when (or if) a new manager comes in then ireland will just be another member of the current squad that he inherits.

...or maybe there is, its just that we havent heard about it yet.

'Zackly. Randy Lerner is very lucky that the West Ham game went the way it did, or the mood on here would be quite different. Anyone is entitled to leave their job if their boss doesn't treat them the way they feel they should be. The MON haters will say that any successes now are due to using subs/different formations, etc. but try not to forget that MON built the squad. We'll see how things go in the next few games. Hopefully the MON haters are right, and we've been sitting on a poorly-used goldmine of talent no-one has ever said that he didnt put together a good squad - the "mon haters" as you so childishly call them just wanted him to play the other half of said squad occassionally. regarding the "subs/formations etc", nothing else has changed has it? - not one single new arrival, its all the same squad and yet we played better on saturday than at any other time in the last four years. i cant prove that it was because mon wasnt there but it certainly is a strange coincidence.

does anyone think that perhaps being settled on one wing for pretty much the whole game helped too? it remains to be seen whether he has found a bit of steel for those wet wednesday night games in december but he could have done no more than he did on saturday so i second what a few have already said about him on this thread - i am very happy to have been surprised by his performance and i really hope he can keep proving us who doubted him wrong!

i totally agree with you - except perhaps for keane. i'm sure he could do a job but he is just a bit meh - cant help feeling his best days are behind him. hopefully the reserves will now become just an extension of the first team rather than the scenario we have had under mon where they were pretty much a separate entity from the first xi.

i know we dont want this turning into another thread about old whatsisname - you know, the irish guy with glasses, but how the hell could he say that non of the youngstars (deliberate spelling) werent ready to make an impact???

regarding petrov - i thought he was a different player today. passing, movement, attacking runs, a goal. best thing mon ever did with this squad was walking away from them.

absolutely. i know it is only one game but it doesnt matter - it is a premier league match and albrighton and clark both showed that they do have the minerals to cut it at this level even if they arent the finished article yet. top performance, top decisions from kmac - great to see the youngsters coming on for a run at the end, top result, just a great way to start the season. i bet randy will sleep a bit easier tonight too...

sorry - we never ever played like this under mon because we never ever had young playing in a free role in the middle with a left winger on the left wing, a right winger on the right wing and two full backs playing as full backs. football doesnt have to be complicated...

i thought we were f*cked if mon left?

best footballing 45 i've seen us play for as long as i can remember. its all about one thing - movement. off the ball, there is movement all over the pitch, options, players making runs - the hunger has come back, everyone wants the ball and its brilliant to see. one swallow and all that but i couldnt be more impressed with kmacs start as manager.

i thought he is looking good so far

Don't get your hopes up. i'm not, but until he gets sold - he aint been sold. playing him isnt necessarily a bad thing as maybe kmac knows something we dont.

what if the milner transfer has collapsed and he is staying put?...